Last night Jess and I went to see Cirque du Soleil: Saltimbanco at the Qwest Center here in Omaha, and let me tell you, it was wonderful. Now, if you’ve seen Cirque du Soleil on TV and you think “My God, this is boring,” then you are just like me. This is what you need to understand: Cirque du Soleil is 100 times more entertaining in person. I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing it on TV ever again, but I could also happily go see on their shows live once a month.
Now then, I don’t really have any pictures of the show because it is not allowed. At all. They said any cameras would be confiscated and you wouldn’t get them back, as people using the flash could distract the artists and cause chaos. Sadly because of this, they won’t allow you to use a camera without a flash, just in case. I did manage to get 3 blurry cell phone pictures, though. The first photograph is the stage prior to the opening of the show:
You’ll see it is all covered with a sheet and looks almost carnival tent-ish. The stage remained like this until the show “officially” started. What do I mean by that? Well, as with most Cirque du Soleil productions, before the show really got started, the audience was messed with for about 10 minutes. Luckily everyone was a good sport about it and seemed to enjoy what was happening. Once that finished, the show really got started. I was going to write how it began, but Variety did a much better job at an intro for me:
Spooky masked, long-snouted clowns who look as if they might have arrived from outtakes of “Brazil” weave through the audience creating hilarity as a blue Alice-in-Wonderland cat-like mime prances on a shrouded white stage. The shroud is sucked through a hole in the sky as a rock band, beneath a stained-glass-like green canopy, launches into a pulsating song, and a caped, snake-haired master of ceremonies enters.
This is exactly what it was like. The band was amazing… seriously. I think that was a big part of what made the whole show so wonderful. The singer they had was amazing as well, she had a mesmerizing voice and didn’t lose the beat at all the entire show. In fact all the performances went perfectly with the exception of two. The juggler lost 2 of his balls when attempting to juggle 7 at once (after picking them back up he managed to get right back on track), and one of the “bungee-trapeze” artists missed his bar and took a minute to bounce back up to it. That’s pretty good, having just two minor goofs in an entire show like that.
My favorite part had to be the twin trapeze artists. Seeing them do absolutely everything in sync was an amazing thing to behold. I’m not very good at describing things like this, but apparently neither was Variety:
17-year-old twin sisters Karyne and Sarah Steben perform 50 feet up on a single trapeze like synchronized swimmers of the air.
I honestly suggest you go see this show, the entire thing is magical and hard to put into words. Here are my final two shots, showing the stage without it’s cover (I warned you it was blurry!):
The entire show was 2.5 hours, with a 15 minute intermission. I keep saying it, but I highly recommend it.
