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As we enter the live performance seating, sounds of crickets and bullfrogs greet us. An infinite OVO — Portuguese for “egg” — sits on the stage, almost as excessive as it’s extensive: 28′ extensive by 22′ tall. The overhead spotlights are chlorophyll inexperienced, so we within the viewers are basked within the colours of the woodland. It’s as if we’re crops, merging our human, popcorn-eating, 20-ounce can beer-swizzling, iPhone-fixated selves with the pure world.
The Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Solar) efficiency of OVO in Windfall, Rhode Island, was enjoyable, and a lot extra. It was a day immersed within the lifetime of the bugs that encompass us. It additionally entertained us with high-level acrobatic acts that redefined the boundaries of the human physique.
OVO invitations us to ask questions concerning the ecosystem under our ft, how various kinds of bugs exist exterior our understanding, and the way the tales of probably the most miniature of creatures can compel us to suppose in new methods about our planet.
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The Cirque du Soleil imaginative interpretation of the lifetime of bugs opens as the massive OVO is all of a sudden lit from all sides, and multicolored veins circle it. Then the OVO deflates, and a wide range of bugs, ants with leaves, grasshoppers, beetles, and aphids takes its place. They climb up a backdrop rock wall, leap throughout the stage, and pop up and down. A spider hangs behind the correct stage, its lithe appendages lit with crimson.
As they transfer and work together, weave and retreat and reappear, the bugs chatter amongst themselves in a kind of bug-talk. Suppose Minions or R2D2. The bug-talk implies that their language is common — as they climb up and slide down poles, peering stretching, circling, posing handing the other way up, the varied bugs reply to a collective communication that embraces all and Others none.
As is instinctual, the bugs play collectively inside species on this early stage of the efficiency. Purple beetles are engrossed in one another, not seeing the grasshoppers emerge. The music adjustments tempo and so does the tempo of the dancing and tumbling. In the meantime, an acrobat carries an OVO across the base of the stage as a reminder of the cycle of beginning, dying, and life. It signifies the bewildering puzzle of life cycles.
When one bug flirts with one other from a special species — cross pollination! — the grasshoppers sneak in and attempt to steal the OVO.
Whereas a web stuffed with cocoons seems to the again of stage left, bathed in wealthy blue and inexperienced mild, a single cocoon rises on the similar time from beneath the stage. It reshapes into a protracted flowing tube of material, and from inside it emerges a brand new bug life. The bug’s awakening is dance — ethereal, sleek, well mannered, gravity-defying. Then one other cocoon replaces it; this excessive flier is enveloped in a web and mist with a background of crimson smoke tendrils. Swirling, spinning, dropping almost to the stage, this blooming insect is energized with the chances of life. A violinist performs whereas insect ground acrobats, extra 4-footed than 2-footed, crawl beneath, peer intently, take up the air, tremble then snicker and gleefully tumble. They’re all thrust right into a primordial stew the place survival and self-preservation exist alongside curiosity concerning the world round them.
Two bugs disagree in bug-talk concerning the whereabouts of OVO and mime a sword combat. After being sprayed, one bug falters, and the viewers sees that the bottle has a cranium and crossbones on it. It’s a nod to people’ damaging affect on the Earth’s ecosystems.
A tube worm with 4 appendages flips, climbs, tumbles. It does cartwheels, handstands, backwards walkovers, and is derived — all of the whereas viewing the world in a method that no people can, because of its two huge black eyes. After which, when two katydids enter the stage — twig-like, on stilts, with stick arms that grasp on the bugs round them — they threaten to upend the each day sample of insect life. It isn’t till the OVO seeker and his new love, the ladybug challenges them with bug-talk they usually exit, chagrined. Calm returns.
Dueling musicians maintain our consideration, but a number of ladders are being hoisted over a web. The Trapeze! The bugs are flying, tossing one another from one platform to a different whereas the ground-dwelling bugs dwelling in a vibrant rainforest look on. Olympic athletes Olga Shcherbatykh (Ukraine 🇺🇦 2004) and Nansy Damianova (Canada 🇨🇦 2008) competed in inventive gymnastics competitions earlier than becoming a member of the present.
Following an intermission through which a number of folks of assorted ages return to their seats with butterfly headbands or miniature hats encased in flowers or hand-held OVOs which can be internally lit, the Queen Bee enters and serenades us with a soothing bug-talk ballad. Her bodice/ carapace is a tough materials whereas the remainder of her physique is draped in orange and black flowing material. A crimson bug emerges from the stage ground and saunters throughout the stage, carrying an rectangular lit OVO.
Subsequent it are yellow-and-red striped bugs on the Trapeze that flip, curl, climb, grasp by their knees, and pose, frozen in time. All have costumes that seize probably the most vibrant colours of nature. With toes pointed, swaying, greedy a leg there, an arm right here, they type one physique then separate into two distinct people. They’re unified but aside, a part of a collective acutely aware but additionally single-minded — the product of survival of the fittest but additionally evolution, in order that they’ll solely exist in the event that they defend one another and, sarcastically, adapt.
Three scarabs — with Ozzie Ozbourne-like with costumes variations of the identical black, crimson, and white, Edvard Munch scream masks, and mullets — do ground workouts, holding all their weight on a single finger, inverting into rolls, strolling backwards on their fingers. They’re robust and scary, a pressure with which to be reckoned. In the meantime, the Queen Bee sings, and the cocoon hangs in sensible inexperienced and yellow mild, contracting and increasing because the life forces inside it develop towards beginning.
A contortionist bends her physique past any human expectation — front-bending, back-bending, splits, and over-splits — whereas holding herself the other way up on a round steadiness beam. Whereas we’re mesmerized, a large-ish OVO is carried throughout the stage as a reminder of how love renews ourselves and life. It symbolizes fragility and our want as a neighborhood to care for the subsequent technology.
Flowers burst within the backdrop video roll. Cirque du Soleil labored with 4U2C to combine projections all through the present — it took over 40 days to shoot the miniature forest constructed from actual crops with a tech purpose to symbolize a tableau with 24’ x 8’ dimensions. A crew of 30 artists was concerned within the manufacturing of video content material.
Inexperienced bugs seem from inside the projection, climb the precise rock wall — which measures 64′ extensive by 30′ tall — then fall onto trampolines beneath them. They bounce again up and re-climb the wall whereas ground gymnast bugs run and flip in midair. The mountain climbing bugs fall in sequence and bounce again as much as the wall whereas the ground bugs do again flips and handsprings and walkovers. It’s exactly choreographed chaos — the Crouching Dragon of the bug world, the place feats past regular human mobility, capability, or endurance are a part of the lifecycle.
Within the grand finale, through which all of the bugs are on stage, a whirl of movement and coloration and light-weight consumes the stage. The acrobats pause, and the viewers thinks the present has ended. Then the OVO cracks, mild pierces outward, and a brand new cycle of life begins.
The press package from Cirque Du Soleil describes the present as “non-stop riot of energy and movement. The insects’ home is a world of biodiversity and beauty filled with noisy action and moments of quiet emotion.” Man Laliberté acknowledged and cultivated the abilities of the road performers from the Fête foraine de Baie-Saint-Paul and created Cirque du Soleil in 1984. In 2007, Man Laliberté entered right into a second lifetime dedication by creating ONE DROP to combat poverty around the globe by offering sustainable entry to protected water. This dream stems from the information that the correct to water is vital to the survival of people and communities all around the world and from the values which have been on the coronary heart of Cirque du Soleil since its inception: the idea that life offers again what you’ve got given and even the smallest gesture will make a distinction.
With 100 folks from 25 totally different international locations, together with 52 artists, OVO has thrilled greater than 7 million folks in over 160 cities since its 2009 opening.
“The hidden, secret world at our feet is revealed as tender and torrid, noisy and quiet, peaceful and chaotic,” the press launch explains. “And as the sun rises on a bright new day the vibrant cycle of insect life begins anew.”
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