Cirque Le Masque: Carnivale

[magid]

Thursday night I went to see Cirque Le Masque's Carnivale at the EmersonCutler Majestic. It's a fun show of many mostly-acrobatic acts tied together in a loose story arc about a girl coming to Rio to be part of Carnival.

The one clown (Weego) was in the audience as people were coming in, dressed in black and white stripes all over, with an exaggerated butt and belly. He reappeared through the show, in an amazing number of costume changes. Also, it was great to see a clown without the traditional clown make-up.

Between and sometimes during the featured acts there were a number of dancers, who kept the energy up (little down time), helped with props, and advanced the frame story. The main focus, however, was the center stage acts:

• a pair of identical twins (Serenity Smith Forchion and Elsie Smith) on an interesting dual rigging of silks, which gave them interesting opportunities for moves (I found out later that one of them had a bad foot from an in-air bump the week before; it was impossible to tell from the performance)
  
• two brothers (Max Laurino, Roberto Laurino) with one 'sitting' on a seat upside down (feet in the air), spinning his brother on his feet with all sorts of flips and rolls and twists (I'm sure there's some name for this; I just don't know what. They'd trained since they were young, coming from a six-generation circus family)
  
• a balancing act involving lots of cylinders and planes to balance on them (Stoyan Metchkarov), which was not up to the level of the other acts, I thought
  
• a mime (Mario Diamond), using people drafted from the audience to do a mimed love scene
  
• a slack-wire artist (Evgeny Vasilenko) not only walking along a slack wire, but swinging on it, and even balancing on his head!
  
• a guy rotating on a German wheel (Andrei Roublev), doing some impressive feats of balance and acrobatics (plus quite a nice costume *ahem*)
  
• a jump rope troupe (Tarilyn Isenhart, Laura Isenhart (yes, sisters), Erica Tillinghast, Meredith Crafton) doing some impressive moves with speed and precision. They also brought people up from the audience.
  
• the identical twins on a trapeze variant that instead of one bar was a rectangle that could rotate around where the one bar would have been. This had gorgeous choreography, with strength and agility and gracefulness.
  
• a guy (Danny Perez) who spun some geometric shapes (a triangle, a triangular pyramid, a cube), which caught the light amazingly, looking like they had colored fire edges. Really, the lighting designer made this act, which was otherwise unimpressive to me.
  
• a pair of men on straps (Stoyan Metchkarov, Aleksey Nazarov) doing some impressive strength moves. I would've been more appreciative had they not been raised and lowered mechanically (the first/last time I saw straps done, by BJ Erdman, his climbing into the straps was part of the art). That said, it also made me think of men doing gymnastics on the rings, with some of the positions, and that's always cool.
  
• "Strength and Balance," another family act (father, son, and daughter: Everado C. Garza, Everado P. Garza, Elizabeth Garza) with all of them painted silver, moving into interesting acrobatic positions very slowly. Which doesn't sound nearly as impressive as it was; it was lucky they were last, because it would've been hard to come after them!

Two thumbs up, definitely.

And I was amused to find out in the talk-back session afterward that they're in the process of working on a new show, titled Evolution. Yes, this year's Burning Man theme. I hope I get to see that one!

Comments

[gilana]

(I'm sure there's some name for this; I just don't know what.

I believe it's generally referred to as a Risley act, although Wikipedia claims the base person is lying down for that. I've always heard of it for any acrobatic foot-balancing act, and it is a very old circus standard.

I'd be tempted to try to go see this, if it weren't for the fact that I'm going to see TWO Cirque shows in Vegas in just over a week!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thank you! The program said "Risley Acrobatics," and I just assumed that was the artistic name of the act, rather than a description of the style. And the base person was sort of lying down, in that his torso was parallel to the ground, his feet above. Without seeing the piece of equipment in use, however, my first thought would be an odd sort of padded chair (with extra bits that were shoulder supports).

I think the run ended with today's matinee, unfortunately, so the temptation is all theoretical.

Two Cirque shows! I'm envious! Have a lovely time!