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Circus maximus
[Photo: Cirque du Soleil
The young performers play the diabolo, or Chinese yo-yo, a game of dexterity and ingenuity. |
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 7, 2002
Quidam has everything but the animals, and unlike other Cirque du Soleil shows, its characters tell a story.
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CLEVELAND -- With its colorful costumes, atmospheric lighting and mesmerizing music, Quidam is a dreamscape, a fantasy world under the big top.
It's also a string of bravura circus acts -- an aerial contortionist, acrobats who create a human pyramid, poised little girls who do amazing things with the Chinese yo-yo known as the diabolo, clowns and more.
Quidam has everything but lions, elephants and other animals, which don't appear in any productions by Cirque du Soleil, the Quebec troupe making its West Florida debut this week. However, unlike some Cirque shows, this one has a story of sorts, with recognizable characters and an emotional arc that runs through the performance.
Mark Ward is MC John, who guides Zoe on her magical journey of discovery.
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"It's hard to describe the show," said cast member Denise Gonzales. "It's not musical theater. It's not a play. It's not a circus. What makes it different from other Cirque shows is we look like real people. It's not so abstract."
Gonzales, a 14-year-old from Southern California, was speaking before a performance in Cleveland in October. She plays a girl named Zoe, who is restless and bored with her parents. Zoe sets the tale in motion when she puts on a purple bowler tossed to her by a headless figure with an umbrella.
"I think putting on the hat is finding my own imaginary world," Gonzales said.
Quidam, a Latin word pronounced key-dahm, suggests an anonymous passerby in the scenario of director Franco Dragone. The show, which premiered in 1996, has several meanings. On the one hand, it's a young-girl-coming-of-age fable in the tradition of The Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. But it's also meant to be a commentary on the turn of the millennium.
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'La Nouba' swings at Disney
Cirque du Soleil is French for "Circus of the Sun," and the Montreal-based troupe has been visiting the Sunshine State since 1989, when its tour of We Reinvent the Circus played Miami.
Who's who in Quidam
Artists of Quidam, interviewed in Cleveland, where the show was in October.
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"I think it's about being a person who's living at the end of the 20th century, a highly mechanized century where it's difficult to have your own identity," said Lyn Heward, chief operating officer of Cirque's creative content division at its Montreal headquarters.
Heward, referring to the headless, umbrella-toting Magrittelike figure as "the Quidam," continued:
"What does the Quidam represent? Not just an imaginary creature living in the mind of Zoe but also a reflection for all of us. How do the Quidams -- and everybody in that show is a Quidam -- find that moment to shine or sparkle, to light their match in the period of eternity?"
The Quidam story line is loose, with lots of room for different interpretations -- or no interpretation at all.
"It's not important for you to understand the story," said Serge Roy, artistic director of the show. "I think what we're trying to do is suggest things so you can create your own story."
Quidam also contains some subtle touches. The clowns, a French trio called Les Macloma, incorporate a bygone style into their performance.
[Photo: Cirque du Soleil
Isabelle Chasse performs her aerial contortion act high up in the big top. “I’ve always been comfortable with heights. It’s actually almost a liberating feeling,” she says..
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"The clowns have a little bit of nostalgia," said Welby Altidor, a Cirque talent scout who works out of Montreal headquarters. "In all the productions before Quidam, we had very modern clowns. Here, we wanted to give a little tribute to clowns from the 18th, 19th century, this great tradition of French clowns, of Russian clowns, so we have something that is a little bit of this world that doesn't exist anymore."
Still, as theatrical as Quidam is, with its suggestion of a narrative and references to circus history, it mainly succeeds on the strength of feats of derring-do. Many Cirque officials regard the finale, a number called Banquine, as their favorite act in all the company's shows.
In Banquine, a 15-member Slavic group uses no equipment or props as they throw each other high in the air to form a human pyramid.
"They're doing sensational stuff, but it's all 100 percent manmade," Heward said. "That is where you really see the best acrobats working together as a solid, sensitive team. It is unadulterated human energy, human composition. It's the purest of the acrobatic forms."
Quidam was the eighth of 13 productions by Cirque du Soleil since its founding in 1984. All are solidly grounded in the circus tradition, but in their increasingly sophisticated melding of acrobatics with music and theater, they have brought a new generation into the big top.
Young people raised on computers, electronic music and film are a prime audience.
"We're in an era of high stimulation," Heward said. "You get all of these kids coming up, the first generation of computerites. My son and daughter are 22 and 24. When they go to a show, they expect to be more stimulated than we were. I would satisfy myself at their age with a beautiful ballet like the Kirov, but they expect far more than that. They expect high performance. They expect visual stimulation: moving parts and technology. They don't read books, but they still want to hear and see a story."
In that respect, Quidam is Cirque at its best.
[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
Cirque du Soleil’s Grand Chapiteau is in the parking lot of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.
- SIZE: 61 feet high, 167 feet in diameter.
- CAPACITY: Seats 2,600.
- POWER SOURCE: Five generators supply 2,425 kilowatts of power.
- MOVING CIRQUE: The tour is transported in 45 trucks carrying more than 750 tons of equipment.
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At a glance
Quidam opens today and runs through Dec. 8 under the big top in the parking lot of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Tickets: $45-$65 adults, discounts available for children, students and seniors. Box office hours on the Trop site are noon to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at www.cirquedusoleil.com or by calling toll-free 1-800-678-5440.
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