I've seen a lot of what Cirque du Soleil has done, and for the most part, enjoy them enough to watch them over and over. This one, though, is not quite up to par. It wasn't nearly as good the second time around as they usually are.
The male singer was the most incredible part of the entire show. His vocal range in amazing--to the point that I spent a good bit of time trying to decide if he was a woman with a range that extended lower than usual, or a man with a range that extended upward. That said, I think the camera spent far too much time on the singers. They rarely do anything that requires your visual attention, but the cameras were constantly cutting to them, and holding far too long.
I agree completely with the above assessment of the cameramen--they jumped around far too much, especially with the first portion of Aerial Contortion in Silk. It looked as though with would have been incredibly ethereal, as a whole, but when the camera was jerking between one flyer, then to the singer, then a flick of the entire stage, then back to a single flyer...that performance should have been a graceful dance, and the camera work chopped it up into something more suitable for the MTV generation of music videos. It didn't seem like the cameramen ever figured out that fast, staccato performances can use fast camera movements, but slow, graceful performances need slow, graceful camera work.
The clowns also left something to be desired. The parodies were too overacted, and they slapped the audience in the face with the jokes. While most of the clowns in the performances I've seen use a bit of subtlety in the humor (I'm thinking specifically of John in Quidam), these had absolutely none.
Of the performances themselves, only two really stood out to me--the juggler and the trapeze bit. The control the juggler had over both his own body and the balls was incredible. He used his back, head, and feet with as much skill as his hands. The trapeze, I felt, was good (rather than excellent), and improved by the music selection. The thumping heartbeat rhythm in the background, speeding up as the performance went on, was the perfect choice for the performance, and did much to improve the sense of anxiety.
The male singer was the most incredible part of the entire show. His vocal range in amazing--to the point that I spent a good bit of time trying to decide if he was a woman with a range that extended lower than usual, or a man with a range that extended upward. That said, I think the camera spent far too much time on the singers. They rarely do anything that requires your visual attention, but the cameras were constantly cutting to them, and holding far too long.
I agree completely with the above assessment of the cameramen--they jumped around far too much, especially with the first portion of Aerial Contortion in Silk. It looked as though with would have been incredibly ethereal, as a whole, but when the camera was jerking between one flyer, then to the singer, then a flick of the entire stage, then back to a single flyer...that performance should have been a graceful dance, and the camera work chopped it up into something more suitable for the MTV generation of music videos. It didn't seem like the cameramen ever figured out that fast, staccato performances can use fast camera movements, but slow, graceful performances need slow, graceful camera work.
The clowns also left something to be desired. The parodies were too overacted, and they slapped the audience in the face with the jokes. While most of the clowns in the performances I've seen use a bit of subtlety in the humor (I'm thinking specifically of John in Quidam), these had absolutely none.
Of the performances themselves, only two really stood out to me--the juggler and the trapeze bit. The control the juggler had over both his own body and the balls was incredible. He used his back, head, and feet with as much skill as his hands. The trapeze, I felt, was good (rather than excellent), and improved by the music selection. The thumping heartbeat rhythm in the background, speeding up as the performance went on, was the perfect choice for the performance, and did much to improve the sense of anxiety.