KarenRobot and I went on a mum and son night out in Manchester on Friday as the circus came to town. Cirque du Soleil is our favourite circus to watch so we were super excited to have been invited along!
Ovo, Portugese for ‘egg’, tells a tale of the goings-on inside a bright and colourful insect world. The show is not so much about the egg per se, but more about the general idea of movement itself with the array of insect-based characters performing breathtaking skills through acrobatics, dance and comedy. Ovo is the 25th Cirque du Soleil live performance to be released, and was launched on Cirque’s 25th anniversary back in 2009.
The show begins with a 28ft wide and 24ft tall inflatable egg. Totally acceptable when you come to see a show by Cirque du Soleil – the imaginations of the curators must be utterly magnificent because the costumes, staging, and most of all the performances were absolutely second-to-none.
Throughout the show we met trampolining grasshoppers, foot juggling fleas, a diabolo flinging firefly and spiders who contorted like nothing I’d ever seen before. The skill sets of these performers are truly awe-inspiring and the work they put into these shows must be life-consuming.
The Russian Cradle, pictured above, had the audience gasping as the performers flew through the air. Multiple people in mid-air at the same time makes for a performance and a half, and the audience absolutely loved it. At the end of the section the performance began to jump down onto the safety netting and I thought the first one had fallen – everyone gasped! The truth is though that these performers are exceptional and actually even their descent at the end of the performance is graceful and spectacular.
Another memorable character from the performance was… Creatura. A weird and wonderful creature moving in such a fluid manner that I really wasn’t convinced there could be a human inside the costume!
The foot juggling ants were the first performers but they weren’t the warm up act by any reckoning. It’s one thing juggling oversized slice of kiwi fruit but juggling one another is next level teamwork!
All Cirque du Soleil shows are impressive, and Ovo was no exception. This is no traditional circus though. There are no clowns in the traditional sense, and three main characters who served the role of ring master between them. The comedy of the circus was still present though as the main performers; the Ladybug, the Foreigner and Master Flipo entertained the crowds with their slapstick comedy and cheeky little love story.
I must give a special mention to the slack rope performer which I think was my favourite part of the show. With each stage of his performance, Jiangming Qiu added more and more unbelievable feats to his part of the show. Amazing!
Ovo is currently touring and it’s next stop is Birmingham before the show moves on to France – see the full list of dates here.
