Acrobatic Ladder. Photo by Maja Prgomet
Cirque Du Soleil’s show Corteo is playing now through Sunday June 9, 2024 at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax and what a way to feel a celebratory sense of (mostly) normalcy as the pandemic (seems to maybe) recede more and more into the past than spending a warm June evening packed in with thousands of others under the proverbial Big Top eating popcorn and watching some of the best acrobats and clowns in the world do what they do best.
Corteo opened in Montréal on April 21, 2005, and has since been restaged in an arena format. This new show premiered on March 2, 2018 in New Orleans. The word Cortéo is Italian and means “cortège” or procession, as the show is told through the eyes of Mauro the Dreamer Clown, who is imagining his own funeral as a carnival parade made up of his fellow circus performers. It was created and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca and has choreography by Debra Brown, and music composed by Jean-Francois Cote, Philippe Leduc and Maria Bonzanigo.
As the show emerges as a dream sequence it doesn’t have the same strong linear story that other Cirque shows have, instead each act is more self contained; I found it akin to an acrobatic Fantasia, and since there are elements of the Baroque period mixed with imagery of a 19th Century European travelling circus, I also found aspects visually similar to Tim Burton’s film Big Fish. The show was partly inspired by The Grand Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown on display at the National Gallery of Canada, and also by Federico Fellini’s 1970 film I Clowns.
Pasca really captures the chaotic nature of a travelling carnival, with over fifty performers filling the stage, at times they speak overtop of one another, in various different languages, while there are a myriad of different acts: juggling, and tumbling, and clowning around, taking place throughout the space. It is out of this organized chaos, where even shoes and lights sometimes have minds and feet of their own, that the sixteen more cohesive acts ebb and flow from Mauro’s imagination.
There are so many stunning and awing moments that are astonishing even just in the practical athleticism, precision, level of danger and courage, and technical skill on exhibit throughout the jam-packed two hour show. Add in the lights, the music, the sets and the props, and the storytelling and it is an absolute feast for the senses. The Dreamer Clown’s four former loves swing together from giant chandeliers above his bed, a pillow fight breaks out with trampoline mattresses in a vivid and playful ode to a childhood slumber party, Mauro attempts to play ball with a marionette, a man climbs up a ladder and does a dance with it, hoping to reach an angel, a group of young women get thrown across the air from hands to hands, tumbling precariously through space high above the stage, another group of performers launch each other high in the air from a teeterboard, while others do tandem swinging on high bars called Tournik, where two sets of performers swing and do flips on the bars while facing one another, and somehow never manage to smack each other directly in the face. In the midst of all the most daring and unbelievable feats, one of my favourite acts was the jugglers, who were quite subtle as clowns go, but extremely charming. Watching two of them chuck discs frisbee-style at a third as fast as they could while the third caught them all in sequence was remarkably satisfying.
The musical score by Leduc, Bonzanigo, and Cote is a mixture of Klezmer-style, Baroque, and Spanish folk music, using accordion, drums, violin, guitar, various precessional instruments, and with a female and male vocalist singing in Spanish, French, and Italian. This also helps to give the show a very European flavour, roots us somewhere between the Baroque period and the 19th Century, and captures the spirit of carnivals moving from hamlet to hamlet on wagons. The staging of the musicians, also, in their own tiny orchestral formations on either side of the stage also feels accurate to the world of the Big Top’s heyday.
There are over 260 costumes in Corteo, designed by Dominique Lemieux and with makeup designed by Nathalie Gagné. The costumes help to root each performer in the world that they inhabit, whether it be the carnival, or the dreamlike world between heaven and earth, or the clouds. They are each so intricate and original, while also, of course, having to be safe and functional for the acrobatic performers. Martin LaBrecque’s lighting design also needs to be both artistic and functional, and it is just as intricate. I was continually amazed by how many times I completely forgot that we were seated in the round and that there was an entire half a hockey arena worth of people on the other side of the stage. Almost throughout I either couldn’t see the other audience at all because of the lights, or my eyes completely tuned them out. It was an amazing trick.
What really grounds Corteo in imagery familiar to audiences from iconic 19th Century Carnivals and Circuses is the cast of characters. Mr. Loyal is the ringmaster character, who here has an impressive talent for whistling, there is a white clown, who walks on a tightrope upside-down holding a candelabra, the August clown, a more typically rambunctious and prone to calamity figure, a horse (performed by two humans), and also a Giant Clown and two little people clowns. Featuring very tall folks and little people was historically common in both circuses and carnivals, especially in the United States, with one of the first recorded mentions of a little person in association with a carnival in Boston dating back to 1771. Of course back then these folks were viewed largely as curiosities to be gawked at not as real people deserving of respect. And in Corteo, while it does feel like these three performers are reclaiming their places as performers in their own right, and that this is something to be celebrated, there are still moments where the crux of the gag is just their size, and these tend to fall flat with a contemporary audience (at least in Halifax). The “Clowness” works best when performer Valentyna Pahlevanyan is able to draw laughs from her portrayal of her Grand Dame character; I wish there had been more opportunity for the Giant Clown and the Little Clown to shine in this way too.
The definitive act of Corteo, along with the image of Mauro on a bicycle riding through the air, belongs to Mauro and the “Clowness”, as she is strapped, Winnie the Pooh style, to six gigantic helium balloons and set on flight over the audiences’ heads. When she loses altitude the audience is encouraged to give her feet a gentle push to send her back on her way. It is definitely a most unique circus trick, one meant to be absolutely memorable, and it is the moment in the show where I felt the most like I had been sucked into Mauro’s dreamlike world, for the idea of floating aloft by balloons is such a prominent childhood fancy, and an image that we encounter so much in childhood literature and cartoons, but to see it happening in real life is something both magical and surreal. Here, of course, it’s Pahlevanyan’s size that makes this trick possible, but in the same way that it’s everyone in the cast’s size and body that makes every trick in the show possible, and it’s her humour and joy as she makes the rounds of the arena that the audience responds to with such warmth.
As someone well conditioned to proper theatre etiquette I always surprise myself at Cirque du Soleil shows when I hear myself impulsively expressing my feelings out loud during the show, which you can do at a circus performance. I heard myself say, “Wow, look at that!” at one point, and gasp, “Oh my God” at another. These shows work on a completely visceral level, watching not just feats of expertise, but also feats that seem to be the closest we can get to impossible, to enchantment, and pure wonder for the sake of it. Our bodies, too, respond more instinctively than in other art forms, and that can be part of the enjoyment of the experience.
After four years of being (quite literally sometimes) grounded in a bleak reality, grab your chance to fly vicariously and catch Corteo in Halifax before it floats away.
Corteo plays in Halifax until June 9th, 2024 at the Scotiabank Centre (1800 Argyle Street, Halifax). Performances are Friday at 7:00pm, Saturday at 3:00pm and 7:00pm, and Sunday at 1:00pm and 5:00pm. Tickets range in price from $71.00 to $163.00 (including fees) depending on seating, and are available here. There are discounts for children (ages 2-12) for all seating tiers except the floor.
According to its website the Scotiabank Centre is fully accessible. The recommended entrance for those with accessibility considerations is Gate B on Brunswick Street, closest to Duke Street, or, Gate D on Carmichael Street with access to the concourse via elevator. You can purchase tickets in a designated accessible area; if you have any questions, please contact the Scotiabank Centre Box Office: (902) 451-1221 or by email at boxoffice@scotiabank-centre.com.
