Cirque du Soleil's Varekai overwhelms the senses.
Author: Juliet Wittman
Again
and again, Cirque du Soleil's Varekai puts you in that
state of enjoyment where you're not even capable of thought; you're
just watching, breath suspended, wanting what you're seeing to go on
forever.
Everything one associates with Cirque du Soleil is here -- the
artful settings and costumes, the pulse-quickening, evocative music,
the sometimes half-baked mythologizing -- but the real point of
Varekai is movement. The company routinely acquires the most
gifted acrobats, circus performers, jugglers and contortionists in
the world, and its acts are spectacular. But it isn't just the
performers' daring and athleticism that astonishes; it's their
perfectionism and artistry. They routinely do the physically
unimaginable, and they do it with bodies beautifully placed, feet
pointed or deliberately flexed, moving from position to position so
gracefully and purposively that they seem to be dancing even the
changes of posture. Look at the women's hands in "Body Skating," for
example, and you'll see that every movement is carried through to
the fingertips.
These days, Olympic-level gymnasts, who once strove for ethereal
elegance, seem to have given up all interest in aesthetics. Women's
exhibitions consist of stunted gnomes doing impossible -- and, after
a few repetitions, impossibly boring -- feats. It's interesting that
it took the circus, traditionally associated with green cotton candy
and cheesy costumes, to remind us of the sheer wonder of the human
body in flight.
At the beginning of Varekai, Icarus falls to the ground,
accompanied by one poignant, floating feather. He lands in what
seems to be a rainforest. It's constructed of bamboo stands; on the
ground are a few steam-emitting geysers, through which people
sometimes appear and sometimes vanish. Strange creatures populate
this world. They look like beings we've encountered in dreams and
include a kangaroo man leaping on spring-loaded stilts.
In the myth, Icarus flew too close to the sun. His wax wings
melted, and he plunged into the sea and died. This Icarus, played by
the delicate-featured Anton Chelnokov, is more fortunate, even
though the woodland creatures confiscate his wings and trap him in a
net. The net rises and falls, and Chelnokov moves with it in a kind
of gymnastic dance, sometimes supported by the net, sometimes
trampling it, holding still or slowly twirling, sad, calm and
visually beautiful.
Icarus encounters a green caterpillar woman. As they gaze at each
other, it's hard not to think of Prospero's enchanted island in
The Tempest and Miranda's exclamation when she sees
Ferdinand: "Oh, wonder, how many goodly creatures are there here....
Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures in it."
Sometimes the story lines of Cirque du Soleil productions seem
confused, extraneous, even a little pretentious. But the Icarus myth
is an inspired choice. Having lost his wings, Icarus/Chelnokov must
find new ways of flying -- and flying is at the heart of the
performance. Several acts also involve ingenious ways of extending
human movement. A performer trundles across the stage within a pair
of giant wheels. Gymnasts rise and fall on aerial straps or curve
their bodies over, through and around a triple trapeze. Dergin
Tokmak, whose legs were deformed by polio when he was a child,
dances and sometimes flies using crutches, and the caterpillar girl,
Irina Naumenko, performs her amazing contortions on low canes topped
with wooden squares before transforming into a butterfly.
More than twenty years ago, figure skater John Curry explored the
boundaries between skating and ballet, working with such
choreographers as Kenneth Macmillan and Twyla Tharp. Ice amplifies
dance steps, he observed: A single leap can take a skater across the
entire surface of the rink. Varekai choreographer Michael
Montanaro must have been having similar thoughts when he staged a
segment on a slick, sliding surface. "Body Skating" is one of the
most infectiously joyous events in the show.
Wearing black-feathered headdresses reminiscent of the helmets of
Greek warriors, British twins Andrew and Kevin Atherton perform
astonishing feats with aerial straps. There's something in their
grace, which is both catlike and powerful, and in their grave
concentration that's even more moving than their gymnastic prowess.
The trapeze act, too, is as much about the beauty of moving human
shapes in space as it is about sudden drops and heart-stopping
catches. Though if it's those you're after, "Russian Swings"
provides all the terror and excitement you could want.
Claudio Carneiro and Mooky Cornish furnish a couple of clown
acts. Carneiro, elastic-limbed and pseudo-smooth, impersonates an
inept magician and also a nightclub singer faced with a spotlight
that seems to have a malevolent mind of its own. It's a simple joke,
but hilariously executed. In baby-blue socks, her ankles wavering
over high-heeled baby-pink shoes, Cornish serves as the magician's
assistant. At first glance, Carneiro and Cornish's antics seem to
have little to do with the theme of flight, but Carneiro's
haplessness and Cornish's dimpled thighs provide a welcome reminder
that the human body comes in many forms and that -- despite the
godlike soaring of the Cirque du Soleil acrobats -- it is
essentially of the earth.
Varekai provides an almost overwhelming feast of music,
dance, visual inventiveness, humor, physical daring and pure
pleasure.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company..
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