THE nouveau cirque (or “new circus”) movement, which emerged in the 1970s and 80s, brought together many of the human performance elements of traditional circus (such as acrobatics, gymnastics and clowning) with aspects of street theatre and so-called “new wave” theatre (what we tend to call “performance art” or “live art” these days).
Companies such as Circus Oz (from Australia) and Archaos (the daring French troupe that excited audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe in the late 1980s and 1990s) popularised an art form that had begun as a counter-cultural phenomenon.
There is no company that epitomises new circus’s journey from the cultural fringe to the popular mainstream more than the world-famous Cirque du Soleil (“Circus of the Sun”) from Montreal, Quebec. With its origins in a modest group called Les Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul (“The Stiltwalkers of Baie-Saint-Paul”), Cirque du Soleil was established in 1984.
Since then, the company has grown from a small, tight-knit band of performers who struggled to make a living by touring around the province of Quebec to the biggest new circus producer on the planet. Indeed, the company has more than 20 shows that are either being performed currently (either on tour or in residencies at venues in cities such as Las Vegas and Orlando) or will be staged imminently (such as Spirit, the company’s self-styled “love letter to the natural realm of the Highlands”, which will be presented on the Macallan Estate on Speyside in May, to mark 200 years of the Macallan whisky brand).
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Cirque du Soleil’s latest tour of the UK and Ireland – presenting its insect-inspired show titled Ovo (Portuguese for “egg”) – begins (where else?) in Scotland’s biggest indoor performance arena, the OVO Hydro. The show has a Portuguese title because it was written, choreographed and directed (back in 2009) by the acclaimed Brazilian stage artist Deborah Colker (creator of Scottish Opera’s brilliant Ainadamar, which contemplated the final days of the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, in 2022).
One would expect of a piece of popular entertainment that is built around circus skills, Ovo has a considerably simpler story than Colker’s opera set in Andalusia during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Here, we find ourselves in a magical world of colourful insects which is ruled over by the decidedly silly elder statesman Master Flipo (played by Gerry Regitschnig).
The harmony of Flipo’s multi-insect community is disturbed when The Voyager (Robin Beer), a blue fly, arrives from outside carrying a large, mysterious egg.
No sooner has the self-regarding winged insect turned up in the colony than he falls head over sticky heels in love with the voluptuous Ladybug (Neiva Nascimento).
As the fly pursues his love interest, Flipo’s minions make off with the huge egg. This creates for The Voyager a double quest, to win the heart of The Ladybug and recover his beloved Ovo.
This, such as it is, is the story of the show. It creates possibilities for moments of clownish slapstick (such as the conflict between The Voyager and a love rival) which the young children in the audience, in particular, find hilarious.
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However, the bedrock of the production is, of course, the acrobatics and gymnastics. The insect world created on stage boasts a huge climbing wall, disguised as the craggy wall of a cave.
All manner of insects scamper up and down this wall, or come tumbling from within it. The circus acts begin with the red ants, which perform breathtaking manoeuvres on the Chinese poles.
Their rapid, “look, no hands” descents down the poles, only to stop themselves, suddenly, from crashing to the ground, have the audience gasping in astonishment. By contrast, the elegant dragonfly (Jonathan Victoria) executes a brilliant hand-balancing act on an apparatus that is designed to look like an organic structure that might grow in this bug-dominated ecosystem.
A newborn butterfly (Svetlana Delous) emerging from a cocoon is a scenario that, in Colker’s hands, creates the basis for a beautiful, tumbling aerial silk routine. And who knew that scarab beetles could throw and catch each other, six metres apart?
There’s also a fabulous juggling firefly (Tony Frebourg), two fleas (Corentin Lemaître Auger and Marie Lebot) impressing on a trapeze and an amazing, spinning hair-suspension act by a Lace Bug (Danira Quintanar).
Everyone will have their own favourite act, but I was particularly impressed by the (by turns gorgeous and hair-raising) balletic duet on the duo straps. Two butterflies (Catherine Audy and Alexis Trudel) perform moves on aerial straps that seem as impossible as they are fascinating.
The show benefits from live songs and live and recorded music. The benefits of a couple of moments in which audience members are coaxed on-stage (a real,-old school music hall device) are less obvious.
Nevertheless, Ovo – with its spectacular circus routines and its brightly coloured, brilliantly utilitarian costumes – is a fabulous exemplar of Cirque du Soleil’s world-famous work.
It also whets the appetite for their new work, Spirit, which opens in Scotland soon.
The Glasgow run of Ovo ends at the OVO Hydro tonight. Spirit will be presented at The Macallan Estate, Speyside, May 9-31: cirquedusoleil.com
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