Skip to main contentCirque naysayers--en garde! There are a few out there who question Cirque du Soleil's hype. They say Cirque is formulaic, manipulative and tired. Really? What do you call the wide eyes the performance group unlidded at the Oscars this year? With its physical interpretation of special effects, Cirque wiped out years of numbing Debbie Allen choreography. Be picky if you must, but you can't deny Cirque's infectious charm. And lucky for Portland, the Montreal-based group is coming back, two years after its successful run of Saltimbanco, with its new show, Dralion.
Once again its Grand Chapiteau (the distinctive blue-and-yellow big top that stands at 61 feet high and is 166 feet in diameter) is back up, along with its brood of smaller tents housing rehearsal space, dressing rooms, a school and a full kitchen.
Since its founding in Quebec in 1984, Cirque has become one of the world's leading circuses. It has also become a world circus--its performers hail from all the inhabitable continents--and this fusion of talents and training has created something extraordinary.
Dralion turns to China for inspiration. Based on a dream of a dragon by its creator, Guy Caron, Dralion (a hybrid creature in equal parts dragon and lion, symbolic of East and West meshing) combines the Cirque's state-of-the-art daredevildom and avant-garde busking with traditional elements of China's famous circuses.
Construction on the piece began with Cirque staff heading to China to observe the work being done in China's myriad circuses. After hiring various Chinese artists (35 of whom were acrobats), the troupe headed back to Montreal to begin work. Dralion took two years to develop, with translators jumping about at rehearsals with the performers juggling Chinese, French and English back and forth.
Though influenced by the Chinese circus, Dralion is more than a chinoiserie. Chinese aspects can be found in the costuming and other design elements, and the famous Cirque orchestra has introduced some traditional instruments into its raucous electro-symphonies. There are also the dralions themselves, looking much like fantastical New Year's street dragons with their crocodiles of attendants, and a bamboo-pole performance piece.
But the usual (if the word can be used in connection with Cirque) marvelous acts of the circus are here: heart-stopping aerial work (including a rather romantic pas de deux), teeterboard aerodynamics, and the expert riot of clowns unleashed in the house. There's also a ballet on lights, in which performers build themselves into a human ziggurat that rises from a ring of oversized light bulbs.
Fear not, all ye who have rightfully boycotted circuses with animal acts. The Cirque is strictly a monument to the astonishing strength and imagination of men and women. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
WWeek 2015