The narrative line of Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam is thus described: “Young Zoé is bored; her parents, distant and apathetic, ignore her. Her life has lost all meaning. Seeking to fill the void of her existence, she slides into an imaginary world—the world of Quidam — where she meets characters who encourage her to free her soul.”
Inside the vast expanse of Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum, however, it is a series of dazzling, sometimes breathtaking, acrobatic or aerial or clown acts that rules one’s imagination and frees one’s spirit to the workings of wonder and awe. Especially in a distant seat, faces are difficult to read and facial expressions that tell a story don’t register. Moreover, and let’s get the negatives out of the way at the outset, the choreography connected to “plot” sometimes seems cursory and unexpansive, at least, again, from a distance. These briefly experienced figures don’t have time to intrude long enough in one’s psyche.
But it isn’t the story we have come to see, after all, is it? We’re here to celebrate physical beauty and its defiance of gravity and other limitations, we’re here to celebrate the body as magical. And that’s what we get. Moments like the Aerial Contortion in Silk which, as well physically breathtaking, is sensual and erotic, a performance that makes time stop.
Aerial Contortion in Silk
Likewise, the male-female Statue in Part Two stops both time and the show. Even the live band soundtrack forgoes its over-pumped Eurobeat, faux ethnic loudness for a softer mood-shaping mysterious blend of sounds that helps to transform the imagination. The two performers use surprising and very pointed fulcra of balance and to do so their strength, especially in horizontal positions, is hard to believe. Much of Quidam seems to float in air, but these two, ethereal as they are, seem made of that same air.
Statue
Some of Quidam’s acts are simply pure physical fun, and they do things we can almost imagine ourselves enjoying, albeit with years of training under our belts. The German Wheel with a human spoke spins all about and thumbs its nose at gravity. Skipping Ropes shows a collective mastery of coordination and rhythm as twenty acrobats keep the beat going as solos or groupings of two or more negotiate multiple ropes.
The quite charming Diabolos act, with four performers, is a Chinese children’s yo-yo game that requires two sticks linked by a string on which a wooden spool is juggled, tossed and balanced. Cloud Swing is a delightful trapeze act full of fun and feminine pizazz and, like Skipping Ropes, a study in perpetual motion. The gutsy clown who masterfully uses audience members as part of his acts –a romantic date in a car and a film shoot in the pre-sound era- is magical in his own zany way, someone whose laughter and delight we can share, whatever our age.
Quidam has some flaws as noted, partly because a large venue doesn’t accommodate a need for narrative or choreographic detail. But Quidam does offer moments of pure beauty, moments of ethereal magic, moments delight and fun, moments of freeing energy, and it’s always a good thing to have one’s jaw drop in surprise and wonder, n’est-ce pas?
German Wheel