DELIRIUM REVIEW
It was a really nice night. The weather was pleasant, so waiting outside the arena for a half hour wasn't too awful. My friend Steph and I browsed the souvenir tables and picked out some goodies. I got a t-shirt for my sister and I and a $20 PRE-program. We then got some snacks and headed to our seats on the floor. I'm thinking section 3 row C should be pretty decent (there wasn't a proper seating chart at the time I bought my tickets and I never bothered to check back to see if the arena site had been updated) ... we were seats 9 and 10. We get to our section ... which was at the very end by the wing of the stage ... only the seats went from 1-6. OK, so stupidly we're looking around for our seats with a huge tray of french fries and chicken and sodas scattered all over it on top of bags full of souvenirs. An usher comes over and looks at our tickets. He says, "there's been a change in the seating at the show tonight. You'll be sitting ... here." We're escorted two rows up to the front in seats 3 and 4. Another usher comes over and gives us a lame lecture on how the lights two feet in front of us are really hot and they'll be shining down on us and in our eyes, but only for a few seconds .. so don't be worried. The stage was no more than six feet from us and nowhere near eye level. We couldn't see the top of it and it was probably a good five feet off the ground. If someone wants to argue that the show is all about music with the acts being secondary ... I completely understand that. But when you pay $115 and miss ENTIRE acts because your seats suck ... it would have been no different if I went there blind cause I probably would have seen the same amount of the show that way than if I had paid a full $115 for the seats we were brought to. We ended up sitting next to a couple who were Cirque fans. We got into big discussions with them and they were asking about the Vegas shows. It was lovely.
The drums for Nitza were set up right in the middle of the stage. The musicians walked out and she came up from under the stage. She only stayed in the center, so we struggled to see her. They had some live video of her on these four screens of to each side, but we had to turn around to even see those. In any event, Nitza was amazing. She has a great voice and I really liked some of her songs. I was thrilled to be seeing her after hearing her on the KA album. She was shaking her ass. Twenty-five minutes later she's done and there's a twenty minute intermission. The techs are all dressed like bank robbers/scuba divers and they come steal the drums off the stage in their ski masks. This is all going on behind a scrim that slides along the outsides of the stage ... and it had a DELIRIUM projection on it. So, all I saw was a big D in my face. There's all sorts of shit being loaded in and out ... I kinda felt like I was at Corteo during their intermission with the set up of Paradis.
Things are starting to come together. From the wing right next to me I see drums and musicians behind this black curtain. The show begins with this diamond(?) shaped tent(?) that covers the opening in the middle of the stage (the same one Nitza came out of). Four artists come out of the diamond or whatever it is and they're wearing not a lot except these black wrist sleeves with lights on them. They do a lot of jumping and dramatic arm movements, but the guy who was dancing in front of us was excellent. All of his movements were very pronounced and his presence stood out the most. The four dancers spread out - two at each end of the stage and one on each side. Then others started filling in the gaps, particularly with this dome shaped prop that artists would climb and jump on and off of and drum on. And BAM ... I think Dessy came out from inside of it like Jesus Christ rising from the dead. The musicians played from behind the curtain. Then for the next act, the drum set was on a piece of stage that moved it from behind the curtains onto the stage and from the stage back behind the curtains. The whole musicians coming in and out was weird. I think Jacynthe was up next and she came out suspended in the air in some ridiculous silver dress with a hollow sparkling silver spiral that went from maybe her waste to about twelve inches below her feet. I didn't catch her being lifted up, but I saw Dessy one time ... it she was like a tiny crumb being sucked up by a heavy duty vacuum cleaner. She SHOT UP and then over the black curtain that closes off the wings. Everything moves through the air like in Quidam or Corteo ... on little tracks. There were some dances that went on here and there, but I really couldn't see them. On occasion, there were also two narrow screens that dropped down over the stage that had some projections playing on both sides. I remember some guys being shown knocking at doors and then at one point their knocks turned the door into waves kinda like the KA battlefield when the artists put their feet down on the stage. And then this scrim that ran along both sides of the stage that extended up to the lights and tracks ... sometimes they were drawn during real acts, like the aerial hammocks. I saw the hammocks come out, but not much after that. I'm really not sure if it was because it was just hard to see through the scrim, or if it was low lighting, or if it was the projections that were being show on them. Hammocks seemed pretty short. It was basically like Anton's net act. Some African dancing. Some stupid hand straps (not to be confused with regular straps) thing where several artists took turns swinging across the width of the stage and out into the audience. There were several small lights that came down and that's what the hand straps were attached to. And some handbalancing ... that was brought out on a tall almost cone shaped piece with a flat top rather than pointed ... the cane(s) went in the top. It was elevated and that's the only reason I saw this act. He used one cane. Then two. Then some new type of cane that reminded me of a pair of pliars ... they were in a V shape and the artist could adjust the amount of space between the canes. The act was boring. Nothing really impressive. It was some time around here that Dessy came floating out again in some MASSIVE dress. It flowed off of her and was draped over the edges of the stage and I believe it was actually hooked into the stage. Several artists went under her dress and danced and their shadows could be seen. Then the set up camp under her dress again ... ripping out some posts and setting the dress up like it was a damn tent. And the carneval started. It was a mess. Out came these two huge wooden props after. They were dropped off at a diagonal kinda between sections 1 and 2 and 11 and 12. They were in the shape of an arch ... I remember one point Jacynthe running up and slipping as she was trying to make her way to the top of it. Ooops. It looked like an upside down U. Some hoop action. It was performed to LET ME FALL. This is the only act I can match up with its song. It was boring too and short. Everything was rather short except handbalancing, four man acro, and manipulation. I saw a decent amount of the acro act ... it was one of the more impressive. They did some nice tosses. The real strap act was uneventful. They did a few twin moves. The manipulation act SOUNDED pretty good by the crowd's reaction ... but I wouldn't know because I only saw the last twenty seconds of it when she walked up onto the wooden bridge prop that blocked the majority of her act for us. She looked pretty intense from what I could see on the screen. And all the sudden I see these white Varekai body skating stars being loaded up onto the tracks. LORD and the filth began ... that trash English Alegria with a few Spanish lines thrown in. Everyone started pouring out of the wings and tossing these gigantic white balloons into the audience to pass around like it was beach volleyball up in there. The fucking end.
I'm almost ready to say Soleil de Minuit was better. I'm sure the projections would have been nice if we weren't sitting on top of them. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the show minus the music more if we weren't thrown in the front row and we had center seats. People are crowding the souvenir tables asking if there's a CD to this show ... I wanted to grab a gun and blow my brains out. All these virgin Cirque fans who don't know the music who leave with big smiles ... I wanted to slap it right off their faces. The English is atrocious. Even if someone really does offer me a free ticket to the show in CT, I wouldn't take it. I don't wanna listen to that music again. English lyrics sound like something hard and sharp being dragged down a chalkboard. It doesn't matter if they were good English lyrics. It still would have sounded like shit.
Here's the Albany seating chart that wasn't on the website when I went to buy tickets. The white X is our section. The red dot next to it is this random seat that was tucked into the black masking leading backstage. I really hope that wasn't a seat for a paying customer. The black behind the dot is masking on the floor level ... which looked like they used partly for costume changes. The black lines on the stage ends are curtains that could be raised up and down. There's too much commotion going on each time that curtain is raised. You can always see a tech or five swarming around or someone waiting to make an entrance. That was slightly distracting too. I heard some cues on occasion. The yellow lines are those two screens with the projections made on the front and back. The white coming out from the stage are the large screens.
The drums for Nitza were set up right in the middle of the stage. The musicians walked out and she came up from under the stage. She only stayed in the center, so we struggled to see her. They had some live video of her on these four screens of to each side, but we had to turn around to even see those. In any event, Nitza was amazing. She has a great voice and I really liked some of her songs. I was thrilled to be seeing her after hearing her on the KA album. She was shaking her ass. Twenty-five minutes later she's done and there's a twenty minute intermission. The techs are all dressed like bank robbers/scuba divers and they come steal the drums off the stage in their ski masks. This is all going on behind a scrim that slides along the outsides of the stage ... and it had a DELIRIUM projection on it. So, all I saw was a big D in my face. There's all sorts of shit being loaded in and out ... I kinda felt like I was at Corteo during their intermission with the set up of Paradis.
Things are starting to come together. From the wing right next to me I see drums and musicians behind this black curtain. The show begins with this diamond(?) shaped tent(?) that covers the opening in the middle of the stage (the same one Nitza came out of). Four artists come out of the diamond or whatever it is and they're wearing not a lot except these black wrist sleeves with lights on them. They do a lot of jumping and dramatic arm movements, but the guy who was dancing in front of us was excellent. All of his movements were very pronounced and his presence stood out the most. The four dancers spread out - two at each end of the stage and one on each side. Then others started filling in the gaps, particularly with this dome shaped prop that artists would climb and jump on and off of and drum on. And BAM ... I think Dessy came out from inside of it like Jesus Christ rising from the dead. The musicians played from behind the curtain. Then for the next act, the drum set was on a piece of stage that moved it from behind the curtains onto the stage and from the stage back behind the curtains. The whole musicians coming in and out was weird. I think Jacynthe was up next and she came out suspended in the air in some ridiculous silver dress with a hollow sparkling silver spiral that went from maybe her waste to about twelve inches below her feet. I didn't catch her being lifted up, but I saw Dessy one time ... it she was like a tiny crumb being sucked up by a heavy duty vacuum cleaner. She SHOT UP and then over the black curtain that closes off the wings. Everything moves through the air like in Quidam or Corteo ... on little tracks. There were some dances that went on here and there, but I really couldn't see them. On occasion, there were also two narrow screens that dropped down over the stage that had some projections playing on both sides. I remember some guys being shown knocking at doors and then at one point their knocks turned the door into waves kinda like the KA battlefield when the artists put their feet down on the stage. And then this scrim that ran along both sides of the stage that extended up to the lights and tracks ... sometimes they were drawn during real acts, like the aerial hammocks. I saw the hammocks come out, but not much after that. I'm really not sure if it was because it was just hard to see through the scrim, or if it was low lighting, or if it was the projections that were being show on them. Hammocks seemed pretty short. It was basically like Anton's net act. Some African dancing. Some stupid hand straps (not to be confused with regular straps) thing where several artists took turns swinging across the width of the stage and out into the audience. There were several small lights that came down and that's what the hand straps were attached to. And some handbalancing ... that was brought out on a tall almost cone shaped piece with a flat top rather than pointed ... the cane(s) went in the top. It was elevated and that's the only reason I saw this act. He used one cane. Then two. Then some new type of cane that reminded me of a pair of pliars ... they were in a V shape and the artist could adjust the amount of space between the canes. The act was boring. Nothing really impressive. It was some time around here that Dessy came floating out again in some MASSIVE dress. It flowed off of her and was draped over the edges of the stage and I believe it was actually hooked into the stage. Several artists went under her dress and danced and their shadows could be seen. Then the set up camp under her dress again ... ripping out some posts and setting the dress up like it was a damn tent. And the carneval started. It was a mess. Out came these two huge wooden props after. They were dropped off at a diagonal kinda between sections 1 and 2 and 11 and 12. They were in the shape of an arch ... I remember one point Jacynthe running up and slipping as she was trying to make her way to the top of it. Ooops. It looked like an upside down U. Some hoop action. It was performed to LET ME FALL. This is the only act I can match up with its song. It was boring too and short. Everything was rather short except handbalancing, four man acro, and manipulation. I saw a decent amount of the acro act ... it was one of the more impressive. They did some nice tosses. The real strap act was uneventful. They did a few twin moves. The manipulation act SOUNDED pretty good by the crowd's reaction ... but I wouldn't know because I only saw the last twenty seconds of it when she walked up onto the wooden bridge prop that blocked the majority of her act for us. She looked pretty intense from what I could see on the screen. And all the sudden I see these white Varekai body skating stars being loaded up onto the tracks. LORD and the filth began ... that trash English Alegria with a few Spanish lines thrown in. Everyone started pouring out of the wings and tossing these gigantic white balloons into the audience to pass around like it was beach volleyball up in there. The fucking end.
I'm almost ready to say Soleil de Minuit was better. I'm sure the projections would have been nice if we weren't sitting on top of them. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the show minus the music more if we weren't thrown in the front row and we had center seats. People are crowding the souvenir tables asking if there's a CD to this show ... I wanted to grab a gun and blow my brains out. All these virgin Cirque fans who don't know the music who leave with big smiles ... I wanted to slap it right off their faces. The English is atrocious. Even if someone really does offer me a free ticket to the show in CT, I wouldn't take it. I don't wanna listen to that music again. English lyrics sound like something hard and sharp being dragged down a chalkboard. It doesn't matter if they were good English lyrics. It still would have sounded like shit.
Here's the Albany seating chart that wasn't on the website when I went to buy tickets. The white X is our section. The red dot next to it is this random seat that was tucked into the black masking leading backstage. I really hope that wasn't a seat for a paying customer. The black behind the dot is masking on the floor level ... which looked like they used partly for costume changes. The black lines on the stage ends are curtains that could be raised up and down. There's too much commotion going on each time that curtain is raised. You can always see a tech or five swarming around or someone waiting to make an entrance. That was slightly distracting too. I heard some cues on occasion. The yellow lines are those two screens with the projections made on the front and back. The white coming out from the stage are the large screens.