Cirque du Soliel's Delirium

Way back in August, Alex and I celebrated our paper anniversary, the first. We’d celebrated by going to Banff and spending the night at the Banff Springs hotel, having a wonderful dinner (note: chocolate fondue is wonderful, but uncomfortably filling), and attending the Mozart on the Mountain concert in Canmore.

As part of our paper anniversary, I gave Alex tickets (paper) to the next Cirque du Soliel show, called Delirium.

We’ve seen Cirque before in Calgary, earlier when we were dating. I’ve also seen Cirque in Vegas and a couple of other minor times (and off-shoot troupes) in and around Ontario and Quebec. In short, there was no reason not to get good tickets the moment they went on sale.

The kicker was that Alex knew that Cirque was coming, and kept bugging me to get tickets. I stalled repeatedly and played stupid (I do it rather well, admittedly; comes from being naturally idiotic) and managed to keep her unaware that the tickets were, in fact, already purchased. So when the time came, it was a wonderful little surprise.

We had good seats. Not floor, but really darn close. Close enough that we could almost hear people on the stage (I thought I could, but given the clarity of the sound system it was sometimes hard to tell).

It was a weird show, unlike any previous Cirque show I’ve seen. This could largely be due to Franco Dragoni having left to do his own thing, and his protégés having taken over. The stage was long and thin, with “backstages” on either end. The entire stage couldn’t have been more than about six metres wide. Each side could be “draped” with a long curtain, which was translucent. You could see through the curtains to the other side. This gave a more ethereal look and allowed for projection onto the stage environment.

The show was far more musical than previous shows, and made even less sense than Cirque shows usually make. (Yes, it’s about the power of dream and imagination, a common theme, but I was still scratching my head to make out some sort of overall plot device.)

The first act was a solo singer who performed with members of the Cirque troupe. It’s hard to pin down the style (other than being Cirque-like) using Gaelic and Arabic lyrics, by the sounds of it. Active, invigorating, and sold us on a CD during the intermission.

The main show started shortly thereafter. Lots of acrobatics, drums, strange instruments, people hanging from the rafters and a weirdo on stilts (again, typically Cirque). The neat thing was all the video that is shown on the screens that drift across the stagefront every so often.

But no clowns.

Overall, totally worth the price of admission. I love Cirque du Soliel. They’re always worth watching, even if it’s not one of their big, extravagant Vegas shows.

Hmm. Which reminds me. I do need to revisit Vegas sometime to catch the other shows I haven’t seen…