Cirque du Soleil Varekai (November 2017)

Cirque du Soleil Varekai - Every Show Is a Unique Masterpiece

My spouse and I attended Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai at the PPL Center on a Sunday afternoon in mid-November 2017. We purchased our tickets online via the PPL Center website. Our only complaint is that we paid for Morning Call Club seats in Section 113; however, half of the seats in that section are not actually accessed from inside the club.

Cirque du Soleil (which means "Circus of the Sun" or "Sun Circus" in French) is based in Montreal. Two former street performers (Guy Laliberte and Gilles Ste-Croix) founded the group in 1984. Its theatrical, character-driven approach and the absence of performing animals or a circus ring define Cirque du Soleil as a contemporary circus ("nouveau cirque"). Each show combines circus styles from around the world, with its own theme and storyline, enhanced by off-stage musicians. Under the direction of Franco Dragone, Cirque du Soleil expanded from 1 show to 19 shows in over 271 cities on every continent except Antarctica. The shows employ approximately 4,000 people from over 40 countries and earn over $810 million per year. The multiple permanent Las Vegas shows alone seat more than 9,000 people a night, adding to the 90 million people worldwide who have experienced Cirque du Soleil's shows. Touring shows are traditionally split into two acts of 60 minutes each separated by a 30-minute intermission. Permanent shows last 90 minutes without any intermission. Typically, both touring shows and resident shows perform a total of 10 shows per week. Touring shows usually have one dark day, whereas resident shows have two days per week without performances.

Cirque du Soleil shows normally tour under a “Grand Chapiteau” (“Big Top”) for an extended period of time until they are modified as arena tours. The infrastructure that accompanies with each show is essentially a mobile village that includes the Grand Chapiteau, an entrance tent, artistic tent, kitchen, school, and other items that support the cast and crew. Each site takes about eight days to construct and three days to disassemble. Anywhere from 50–75 large tractor-trailer containers are necessary to transport the vast amount of equipment. Five generators provide electricity to the site. All tents are a standard size, constructed in Bordeaux France and weighing 11,524 pounds, 62 feet high, and 167 feet wide. A single performance seats more than 2,600 spectators. Currently, there are multiple designs for the Grand Chapiteau tents. The traditional blue and yellow tent used throughout the Americas and Oceania comes in two designs: one with vertical stripes, and one with swirls. An all-white tent is used when touring Europe, and a specially designed, earthquake resistant, blue and yellow Fuji Dome is used when touring Japan.

Past shows include Saltimbanco, Quidam, OVO, Toruk, Luzia, and Fascination (the first time that Cirque du Soleil produced a show that took place in an arena rather than a big top; it was also the first that Cirque du Soleil show performed outside of North America).

We saw the show called “Varekai”, which means “wherever” in the Romani Gypsy language. The Greek myth of Icarus tells of a man who flies too close to the sun, melts his wax wings, and falls back to Earth. In the Cirque show, Icarus’s failed ambition lands him in an exotic, diverse, and colorful tropical forest. Icarus is wrapped and unwrapped in white flexible netting, then a cast of vibrantly-costumed characters follows him as he wanders in and out of a bamboo forest. The characters look down a hole as a white aerialist descends on a trapeze, then balancing acts occur atop a slip-sliding floor surface, leading to twirling Georgian dancers who leap into the air and drop to their knees. Twin aerialists swing high above the crowd, creating flairs. The more traditional clowning always draws in the audience, this time with a slightly sketchy magician and his over-the-top assistant. His later act as the Vegas lounge lizard chasing a spotlight up to the rafters and back into an audience member's lap is hilarious! One character “sailed” a hot-air balloon over the crowd. The show ends with one of Cirque's trademarks, the Russian Swings, in which the men dress in muscle suits and land on a platform, somersault into a canvas landing strip, or jump from one swing to the other frontwards and backwards. The two soloists (male and female) sing in a kind of gibberish, accompanied by powerful emotional music. 

We loved our fourth Cirque du Soleil show (we’ve seen O and KA in Las Vegas, and Ovo in Boston), and we look forward to seeing more!