Cirque du Soleil – Dralion

Tsk. After being pleasantly surprised to find I got paid for the two weeks I interned back in July, my bank balance was looking a bit healthier (seeing as I had budgeted to NOT get paid, and saved accordingly). And after buying half a car with BF, I just wanted to keep beefing up the savings as much as I could.

Don’t worry, I didn’t quite wipe out the progress I made. But….I got an email advising us of a special staff offer – discounted Cirque du Soleil tickets. I was really surprised, cause I thought Dralion had already left town. Seeing a Cirque show is one of my to-do-before-I-die things, so after a bit of agonising, I decided to take the plunge and just do it. Overtime plus birthday money covered it all. Might not have been frugal, but it will be an experience…an extravagant, splashy-outy one, but one I have been SET on and not just a random decision. Seats cost us $95 each (down from $119), plus booking fee which came to just under $200. There were also cheaper seats ($75 and $50), but they were so far back and off to the side, we nixed that idea. 

Just ORDERING tickets was somewhat exhilarating. I’m a total noob to this stuff. I’ve never played Lotto – wouldn’t know where to start – and I’ve never bought tickets to anything online (I’ve tried, though, oh how I’ve tried. 2007 RHCP concert comes to mind). I was all worried, wondering how I would get the tickets – would they be sent out in time? What if we got crap seats? Ah, the wonders of technology. I get to PRINT my own tickets, and we got to CHOOSE our very specific seats using their awesome java-type programme which showed a seating plan of the entire place.

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Anywho, Thursday was the night, and it was amazing.  (It was a spendy night.  We made an evening of it – I had classes, then work, and T had his class in the afternoon, so we met up, ate dinner at the Roundabout pub in Royal Oak ($33), popped across the road to get a drink and snack to take with us from Pak n Save ($4), parked – right up front with the VIPs and VWs, BMWs and Holdens, because a friend of T’s was the parking guy ($6) and one ridiculously overpriced hot dog for him ($5.50).

What can I say? If you’ve seen it, you know how incredible the things they do are. If not, well, they were just unbelievable. The goofy Italian-looking clown/ringmasters did a great job of entertaining us at the start, end, and between acts, without ever speaking a word (of English, that is. They squawked, shrieked and laughed aplenty and had us rolling around at their slapstick antics. They recruited a man from the audience to play along on stage with them, who we later found out was actually part of the whole act.)  There were crazy contortionists, twisting themselves into positions I almost couldn’t bear to watch. There was balancing on poles, balls, hands, heads. Graceful dancers of all kinds, albeit in rather corny costumes. There were amazing aerial acts, swooping around on lengths of silk; dancing dragons; juggling to the power of ten; tiny dancers forming human tiers three and four tall; lizard like trampolinists soaring up, down and back onto the walls, seemingly sticking to them like real life spidermen. We both agreed they were our favourite act – they seemed to defy physics and gravity, never losing momentum, yet never stumbling as you might expect each time they sprung up and came to a crisp pause at the top of the walls.

An honourable mention also goes to the last couple of acts – the rings and the skipping. The supporting performers got their chance to shine, instead of simply dancing and slithering around the main acts; they mounted rings of all sizes onto a mini trampoline and dived, vaulted and flipped through them – gave me bad flashbacks to gym class, actually. They fouled up a couple of times, which just endeared them in my eyes. They swiftly regrouped and repositioned their hoops and carried on, uber-professionally. They even almost managed to do so in time to the music. I wasn’t too keen on the second part, however – skipping and flipping through massive jump ropes of yellow material, which caused far too many mistakes. The pyramid jumps were the most nervewracking. The poor guys at the bottom were obviously shaking under the strain, and it was painful to watch. Too many slipups in that one.

It’s almost better to watch some of them in slow motion, so you don’t miss anything. One, because sometimes they’re just that damn fast, and two because for the multitasking-challenged like me, it’s hard to focus on more than one thing, and there’s so much going on at once.

It made me want to be part of a show again. I’m not a performer, but I get a buzz out of being involved with them. Every single year I was in the school talent quest doing something; I hated being on stage, but perversely, I got such a massive high off it and would be walking on air afterwards. And I have such great memories of intermediate – my school devoted second term, every year, to the schoolwide production. It was always a musical, and EVERY student was involved, if not acting, singing or dancing, then doing lights, sound or props. Our shows were always brilliant, because that was our job everyday for two months, not just fitting in rehearsals after and before school. They probably don’t do that anymore – it was pretty unorthodox, and the teachers behind it have probably gone by now – but I think it was a fantastic idea.