Cirque du Soleil’s touring show “Ovo” put on a spectacular multi-media production yesterday rendering San Franciscans microscopic size in a world uniquely Cirque fused with Brazil. Ovo presents an untamed world of the tenacious and audacious, full of live music and Olympian feats fused with the sounds of the rainforest. Heather and I enter the grand chapiteau. Here's a preview story with a slideshow.
Click here: Ovo slideshow
A cartoon yellow and blue big top and a beautiful warm blue San Francisco sky. An exuberant affirmation of life in a refreshing bayside setting. Is it spring? It was my first Cirque du Soleil and I had heard great things. A must see. And it would be.
My colleague Heather Ehmke and I had strolled from BART along the Embarcadero past the ferry building, a Treasure Island view, that bow and arrow sculpture and over the bridge past AT&T park and the marina.
We turned the corner around the stadium . . .
and found inside a cheery yellow and blue bigtop, Ovo!
The power of suggestion: Let's get small
Cirque celebrates it’s 25th anniversary by not only moving with the times but also with an eye to the future with Ovo. It’s a view into a world beneath our feet, full of vibrance and energy, bustling with life. Ovo’s creators felt inspired by Brazil. Chantal Trembley used the lush rainforest, the audaciousness, the intensity, the untamed spirit. Cirque sets Ovo in ant hill, a forest, a cave, a web.
The show begins with the egg. It’s size is remarkable—does it reduce the audience to microscopic size or is the egg two stories high? What's going to hatch? Where does the egg go? Moreover the human size insects indeed reduce the audience to the world of tiny and fragile while the performers actually seem daring and impossibly unbreakable if not immortal. Is this our place in the world? An enigma? Do we care as long as we let go and live a little? Love a little? As Steve Martin used to say in the ‘70s before these performers were born, let’s get small.
Yet the audience seems to be hip and attractive and fairly young with good hair; with not that many actual children. Most seemed to be in their twenties to forties and urban. They sipped wine at eight dollars a plastic cup; munched popcorn at $11.50 for a small bucket. Hot dogs cost five bucks although large. The best deal seemed to be two dogs, two drinks and popcorn for $24.50.
Evocative
The costumes are not re-creations of actual insects but only invoke their images, with for example red stems arranged in a Mohawk for the mosquito stinger; lace pants suggesting the dragonfly wings. This is Liz Vandal’s first show with Cirque. She’s from Montreal.
The music plays as big a role as the world class aerial acrobats and gymnasts, some of whom competed in the Olympics. They come from all over the world but I noticed many Russians and Asians and a few Canadians. International flags fly from the tent’s top.
Multi-sensory and fusion
The sound effects weave into the music and the show spectacularly as the performers play. The duel with the swords sounds particularly funny and gets Monty Pythonesque.
It’s live music and this is a class act. Like a nightclub. No live animals. However I did not notice the aromas pumped into the show, the smell of damp earth for example. I probably considered that to be the Bay we were on.
The band dresses as cockroaches or cafards, the chanteuse coming from Canada. Marie-Claude Marchand. As we used to say in New Orleans, clean house—clean cockroaches.
Fans of the weird medium of macabre comedy animation would love this—fans of Tim Burton and Danny Elfman or The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The insects also have their own language that sounds like bleeps and blips from a 1950s sci-fi movie and the different species can communicate even if it’s a finger thump on the forehead. Some language is universal. There is no sign language other than this.
The singer and the bongo player emerge on the main stage, emerging from their little cubby holes on either side of the stage. I also heard some beautiful acoustic guitar and romantic French accordian. The show has a good deal of the exotic, sensual and romantic as well as the comedic and exuberant. And death defying, did I say death defying?
Moreover. A cashier in the boutique said he is a local musician and met the band. He exclaimed excitedly about the Brazilian music. Ovo also makes music with real insect noises on a keyboard and sets up speakers throughout the tent for surroundsound, a new form of fusion. The program lists samba, forro (traditional from the northeast), carimbo (featuring Latin and African sounds), Rio funk (intense electronic music from the favela shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro) and samba-reggae.
Heather and I found some great Carnival masks as well as goofy jester hats.
The cast
So about the athletes. It’s partly the story of a lovestruck foreigner channeling Jerry Lewis (the French love Jerry Lewis) and a robust ladybug. Crickets with an appetite menace constantly; a spider web stretches over the stage with a SpiderWoman contortionist who projects the aura of Cruella DeVille or a Black Widow.
The show begins as we meet the Foreigner and the Foreigner and Coccinelle (Ladybug) first lay eyes on each other. That’s Michelle Matlock of the United States.
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We see the Dragonfly or Libellule, Vladimir Hrynchenko of the Ukraine, with his art of banquine. It’s the Russian art of hand and chair balancing. He sets the tone—winning a new love is a delicate act of balance and best if one makes it look effortless if not captivating.
It’s quite a revelation to see the headshots in the program next to their costumed selves. How I would love to get into such a costume and makeup and join the cirque.
Next we see the Butterflies or Papillons, a Spanish web duo. This romantic couple performs on a rope and in eggshell white costumes. They even get horizontal in tandem on this rope, I had my heart in my throat at one point. Maxim Kozlov and Inna Mayorova.
An aerial artist on the silks sheds her cocoon.
The firefly or luciole performing diabolo is Tony Frebourg of France.
A juggler with a lot of stamina never missed a beat and stayed in motion constantly as he juggled more and more on his magic rope.
I loved the slinky hairy caterpillar that seemed double jointed. He meringues joyfully like a carnival dancer in a puffy shirt. Heather remarked he is so fluid she couldn’t see the performer inside.
The flying act or grand Volant with the golden scarabs or scarabees features mainly Russians with one from the US, one from France, one from Kazakhstan.
The five female fleas or puces performed acrosport.
The biggest roar from the audience came for the red ants or fourmis, a gymnastic group of young Chinese girls with amazing precision, balance and leg strength. These are six foot jugglers and players of Icarian Games.
Joseph Collard of Belgium served as ringmaster throughout, Flipo a balding rainbow colored butterfly clown who teaches the Foreigner, Francois-Guillaume Leblanc—how to attract the ladybug.
The opening of Act Two involves a spider web and the spiders or araignees, with contortionist Svetlana Belova of Russia as the SpiderWoman in white.
Highwire or slackwire performer Li Wei of China earned a collective gasp from the audience when he was handed a unicycle which he would ride in an alternative style.
The wildest scene took up the entire stage and the two-story rock climbing/egg nitch wall behind it with twenty performers and a trampoline. The crickets seemed to be the most international of all acts, coming from Switzerland, Canada, France, the UK (one of the three a woman), Denmark, Brazil, Japan and Russia. Many eggs to hatch.
"Ovo" runs through January 24, 2010 in the parking lot of AT&T Park in San Francisco then goes to San Jose, California.
For more info: Cirque du Soleil
For more stories by this writer check out the San Francisco opera blog at http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2366-SF-Opera-Examiner
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