Beyond Selidor

All day long I've had the song Bigger Than Big by Super Mal ft. Luciana. It's been really distracting. Every time I tried to write a headline, this stupid song would flood into my head. Strangely enough, it made me feel utterly miserable. I'm in one of my dance-music-is-depressing-because-it-means-tonight-we-party-tomorrow-we-die moods. [/emo]

I was hovering around on youtube today, and I somehow got on to watching clips of Cirque. (I think I was trying to show Raphael how the music from the show Dralion was similar to Nightwish music.) The end result was that I Cirque-pimped all evening, inflicting my obsession with Cirque on poor innocent bystanders. But it reminded me (as if I needed reminding) how absolutely brilliantly, steritoriously, in-the-shop, cunningly awesomely nifty Cirque are.

I don't care that people think they're corporate and blandly new-agey. To me, their shows are true art, each with its own character.

The first show I saw, We Reinvent the Circus I can't remember much of. I was three, I was in New York, I was scared of clowns. Mum decided to take me to the show. This is what happened.
Me: I don't like clowns. They're scary. I don't want to see a show with clowns in it.
Mum: This isn't that kind of circus. There won't be any clowns.
(Mum and I enter the tent, to be greeted by four clowns, escorting the audience to seats.)
I forgave her, because the show with the clowns started a lifelong love affair. All I can remember about We Reinvent is that they got 12 people on one bicycle.

I didn't see any Cirque shows after that until 1997, when Saltimbanco came to Australia. Mimi and I went with Dad and it was amazing. It was one of their older shows, and it had a real old-school circus feel. It was all about taking circus back to its roots, to the street performers and so on. It had a snazzy soundtrack, which kind friends in New York burnt for me later on. I can only find the adagio act, which is not the best of this show, because it's quite old there's not much online.

I then watched Quidam on TV and yearned and yearned to see it. I loved it so much that I made the Diablo girls' music the music for my floor routine at gym.

But I would have to wait a bit longer before Quidam came to Australia.

To tide me over, I watched their Imax film, Journey of Man which was portentous, but with beautiful circus.

In 1999, their show Alegía came to Sydney. Mum, Mimi and I drove up to watch it. We saw it with my grandfather and a girl who was a friend of the family. If Saltimbanco was all about seeking out the roots of circus in a joyful tribute to harmony, Alegía was more jaded. It had a Venice-is-sinking, the ancien-regime-is-crumbling jaded world weariness about it that was really alluring. It was good, but not as incredible as the other shows. The Fast Track is good. This gives a good summary of what this show was like.

Then Cirque didn't come back for ages. We watched their TV show on SBS, but it wasn't the same. Finally, in 2004, Quidam came to Sydney. We went with my grandparents. I was almost dying of anticipation. I had been looking forward to seeing this show since I was 13 years old. Quidam's schtick was 'anonymity in the new millenium'. 'Quidam' means an anonymous passerby, in Latin. It had a slightly apocalyptic feel, interspersed with random moments of joy. The act I was dying to see was Banquine, the finale. I was not disappointed. Banquine seems to capture everything about life, from the jaded, accepting way the adagio acrobats perform their routine, to the joyful way they fling themselves into the air; from the regretful way they return to the earth to the caller (the main guy in white trousers and braces) sticks his final adagio move, gives the audience a look of pure contempt and then leaps back to earth. (I'm an English Literature student. I over-analyse and I'm unapologetic!) I am going to embed this act, because it is quite possibly the best piece of circus art I've ever seen in my life, and, with the zeal of a prosyletiser, I aim to convert you all to raving Cirque lunatics.



When I saw that act live, I cried.

To tide me over before the next show came to Australia, I watched Dralion on TV. Dralion's mood is a mixture of sombre and joyful; to me it seems a celebration of multiculturalism and indeed, of the world. It's very pseudo-Asian in imagery, lots of dragons and stuff like that.

You'll see what I mean about the New Age-ishness

The dual trapeze is also incredible, as is this act. There are more, just search for them. Dralion has the most consistently good acts, but it won't hold the place Quidam does in my heart. Nothing will top Banquine.

Two years ago a new show, Varekai came to Australia. Mum, Mim and I saw it in Sydney, and I later wound up working for them in Canberra - and saw it again. It was very good. I probably know the music off by heart because we had to fit our work in with the flow of the show. (We set up for one hour, sold for one hour before the show, cleaned for the first act, sold for the interval and then cleaned up for the second act. We weren't allowed to be seen cleaning when customers were around, so you learned the nuances of the show very quickly, especially the sound of the final songs of each act.) It sounds stupid, but I really got into working for Cirque. Listening to the music of the show pumping out while I was working, I felt like *I* was performing too. The energy was incredible.

The Russian Swing finale was great. As was the juggling and this act which was probably my favourite.
This act was the finale of the first act. You see what I mean about the energy. We'd all be dancing around, taking deep breaths and getting ready to face the masses.

Mimi and I are terrible Cirque snobs. We sit there, analysing each show. We watch the faces of the callers to see when they call 'ready' (in whatever language they speak) to let the other members of the act know they're ready to start their next awesome move. We watch who is spotting (watching the act to make sure no-one is falling) and the sneaky ways they try not to let the audience know they're spotting. We analyse the meaning of the shows like texts. We get exasperated when people cheer things that are actually very easy to do (the splits, a somersault) and don't applaud things that are hard but don't look so flashy (such as the impossible-to-find 'Statue' act from Saltimbanco). We're Adagio people from way back, so we're a bit snobby about adagio stuff.

We're planning to do a trip one day to America just to see their permanent shows - there's one in Las Vagas and a couple scattered elsewhere in the US, in places we're not interested in visiting for any other reason.

But as long as there's a Cirque in the world, I will never think that life is not worth living.

Wow, that is the most links I've ever posted in one lj post. I'd better check to make sure they all come out okay...