Cirque du Soleil: Difference between revisions

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That particular troupe made a make-or-break visit to an arts festival in Los Angeles in '87 and immediately became a sensation with its one-ring, animal-less format and a style more akin to European circuses than the Ringling Bros-dominated format familiar to Americans. In essence, the Cirque aesthetic combines the theatrical, theme-driven concepts and characters of European shows with the focus on acrobatic skill of Asian circuses.

Cirque has made a variety of film and TV productions. Most are filmed performances of the touring shows, but there have been original efforts derived from the shows and many behind-the-scenes documentaries. There's been a concert tour adapting the music of the shows and several books including the 20th anniversary marker ''20 Years Under the Sun'', which helped flesh out this entry.

 

 

{{creatortropes}}

* [[Ambiguous Gender]] - Many of the costumes and makeup evoke this on purpose to make the performers/characters seem more androgynous.

* [[Audience Participation]] - Most of the shows have this to some extent.

* [[Bilingual Bonus]] - While many of the songs with lyrics are in [[Singing Simlish|made-up languages]], there are others that use real ones, so if you can speak Italian, Spanish, etc. you may get this.

* [[Cash Cow Franchise]] - As an example, ''Saltimbanco'' was retired from the lineup after the initial tour ended in 1997, but revived the following year and is still performing as an arena show.

* [[Costume Porn]] - The book brought out to mark the company's 25th anniversary was about the costumes of all the shows over the years, which should tell you how much this trope applies to them.

* [[Cut Song]] - When old acts/transitions go, so do their songs, so many a soundtrack (usually recorded within a year or two of the opening) has a fair amount of material that's no longer in the show.

* [[The Rival]] - In the U.S., the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, especially now that Cirque has shows on the arena tour circuit. Ringling Bros., which almost always performs in arenas, is the epitome of traditional circus and uses animals, something Cirque eschews with the exception of doves in ''Believe''. Ringling presents three different tours that are each revamped with a new "edition" every one-to-two years, as opposed to each Cirque show being a unique, stand-alone production that can run indefinitely.

* [[Scenery Porn]] - The resident shows are crazy about this; the tours are pretty too in smaller-scale ways.

* [[The Show Must Go On]] - Despite horrible critical reception, shows such as ''Criss Angel Believe'' and ''Banana Shpeel'' continued to perform—the latter, after being burnt by the press in its Chicago tryout, went through its ''second'' retool to go on to New York as planned and after ''that'' was unsuccessful, attempted a North American tour. Only its poor reception in Toronto, its first stop, brought the show to an end. As for ''Believe'', it had a substantial [[Retool]] that dropped most of the Cirque-based elements and is still running.

** On the other hand, from day to day this trope is averted—despite the general consensus that the circus will go on stage no matter what the circumstances, Cirque stops its shows if there is an accident involving technology or their personnel.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Circus Index]]

[[Category:Theatrical Productions]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/Canada]]