Stop & Look At The World At Our Feet, Asks OVO Production From Cirque Du Soleil

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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 large: 28′ large 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 vegetation, merging our human, popcorn-eating, 20-ounce can beer-swizzling, iPhone-fixated selves with the pure world.

The Circus of the Sun (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 beneath our toes, how several types of bugs exist outside our understandingand the way the tales of essentially 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 large OVO is all of a sudden lit from all sides, and multicolored veins circle it. Then the OVO deflates, and quite a lot 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 in the back of the best stage, its lithe appendages lit with purple.

As they transfer and work together, weave and retreat and reappear, the bugs chatter amongst themselves in a sort of bug-talk. Assume 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. Pink 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 start, demise, and life. It signifies the bewildering puzzle of life cycles.

When one bug flirts with one other from a distinct species — cross pollination! — the grasshoppers sneak in and attempt to steal the OVO.

Whereas a internet stuffed with cocoons seems to the again of stage left, bathed in wealthy blue and inexperienced mild, a single cocoon rises on the identical time from beneath the stage. It reshapes into an extended flowing tube of material, and from inside it emerges a brand new bug life. The bug’s awakening is dance — ethereal, swish, well mannered, gravity-defying. Then one other cocoon replaces it; this excessive flier is enveloped in a internet and mist with a background of purple smoke tendrils. Swirling, spinning, dropping almost to the stage, this blooming insect is energized with the probabilities 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 chortle 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 struggle. 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 comes — all of the whereas viewing the world in a means that no people can, because of its two monumental 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 every day sample of insect life. It isn’t till the OVO seeker and his new love, the ladybug challenges them with bug-talk and so they exit, chagrined. Calm returns.

Dueling musicians maintain our consideration, but a number of ladders are being hoisted over a internet. The Trapeze! The bugs are flying, tossing one another from one platform to a different whereas the ground-dwelling bugs residing in a vibrant rainforest look on. Olympic athletes Olga Shcherbatykh (Ukraine 🇺🇦 2004) and Nansy Damianova (Canada 🇨🇦 2008) competed in creative gymnastics competitions earlier than becoming a member of the present.

Following an intermission by which a number of folks of varied ages return to their seats with butterfly headbands or miniature hats encased in flowers or hand-held OVOs which might 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 fabric. A purple 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, cling by their knees, and pose, frozen in time. All have costumes that seize essentially 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 aware but in addition single-minded — the product of survival of the fittest but in addition evolution, in order that they will solely exist in the event that they defend one another and, mockingly, adapt.

Three scarabs — with Ozzie Ozbourne-like with costumes variations of the identical black, purple, and white, Edvard Munch scream masks, and mullets — do ground workout routines, holding all their weight on a single finger, inverting into rolls, strolling backwards on their palms. They’re sturdy and scary, a pressure with which to be reckoned. In the meantime, the Queen Bee sings, and the cocoon hangs in good inexperienced and yellow mild, contracting and increasing because the life forces inside it develop towards start.

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 group 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 vegetation with a tech objective to signify a tableau with 24’ x 8’ dimensions. A group 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′ large 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, by which all of the bugs are on stage, a whirl of movement and colour and lightweight 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 equipment 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 struggle poverty around the globe by offering sustainable entry to protected water. This dream stems from the data that the best to water is key to the survival of people and communities everywhere in 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 completely different nations, 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.”