Cirque de la Symphonie

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Date Reviewed: 16/07/2016

by Irena Begelfor

Cirque de la Symphonie is an unexpected auditory and visual feast. 

This show opens with Dvorak's Carnival Overture - a fitting beginning for things to come. The audience settles in. The MSO, under the direction of conductor Benjamin Northey, make this piece flow like poetry.

We move to another familiar piece of music, the mysterious and feminine Danse Macabre. A long pair of bright purple aerial silks drop from the ceiling of Hamer Hall, a female aerial performer walks on the stage. Within seconds she is suspended in the air and is dancing with the purple silks, twisting into them. Then, she dives, at enormous speed and stops just before hitting the floor. You hear people quietly gasping in the audience. It is beautiful. It is elegant. It is shocking. 

The next piece was light and jovial, Jose Gomes De Abreu/Colnot, Tico-Tico. This piece was called "Quick Change" with a woman stepping into a changing room and within seconds coming out in a new outfit - she must have changed at least eight times.

Cirque de la Symphonie was anything but typical, each number like no other. One performer was manipulating and moving within a life size aluminum cube. There was a Hula Hoop number where the performer could barely pick up the hoops that she was spinning around her body. Even her headpiece was spinning a hula-hoop! 

The Aerial Straps number was another one that made people gasp for air as the performer displayed spectacular aerial poses. He flew like a bird, over the audience. 

The Cyr Wheel was jaw dropping. The Cyr Wheel is a round acrobatic apparatus. The performer stands inside the Cyr wheel and grasps its rim, causing it to roll and spin gyroscopically while performing acrobatic moves in and around the rotating wheel.