For 25 years, Cirque du Soleil has captivated Australian audiences with gravity-defying performances and enchanting stories. The Canadian supertroupe first conjured its unique performative magic on these shores in 1999, and it’s a spell that has never been broken.
The magic of light and rain
To celebrate this anniversary, Cirque du Soleil has returned with Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico, a vibrant production that immerses audiences in a Mexican dreamscape filled with myth and sounds. The name Luzia combines the Spanish words for light (luz) and rain (lluvia) and provides the elemental symbols that guide audiences through a poetic journey.
They are also the elements that fill the Big Top and create the atmosphere. “Through the light, rain, and water within the show the different areas of Mexican landscapes are represented, and audiences transported,” says the company’s artistic director, Gracie Valdez.
Luzia’s international tour has already been met with acclaim in North America, Europe and Asia, with the New York Times describing the show as “peak Cirque”. Reviewers of early shows in Australia have been generous in their praise of its epic scale and vision. It seems that worldwide, audiences are eager to once again experience something truly extraordinary.
Few entertainment companies can stage shows as grand, intricate, and beautiful as Luzia. Cirque du Soleil has long set the standard for contemporary circus, with its thematic storytelling communicated through extreme physical skills, including acrobatics, contortion, aerial performances, trapeze and clowning. Heightening the visual display of this athleticism and artistry are the art direction, lighting, and musical composition that create the worlds in which spectators can get lost, if only for the duration of the performance.
A journey through dream and reality
Every aspect of the show emerges from writer-director Daniele Finzi Pasca’s connection to Mexico, and his 10 years-plus working on the concepts. Valdez says: “It’s a beautiful love letter to the country and culture.”
Luzia follows a parachuted traveller, dropped into an imaginary Mexico in which time and space have become a surreal dreamscape. Underpinning the performances and art direction is the beating heart of Mexico’s legends, making the show rich in symbolism and meaning. Each impression unfolds as one dramatically realised tableau after another, using puppetry and projection, elaborate costumes and the power and agility of the human body.
Astonishing visual sequences take audiences soaring between dreams and reality.
Luzia’s use of water gives a visual surprise, and presents a spectacular challenge for the acrobats. As a first for a Cirque du Soleil touring production, water is introduced in a Cyr wheels and trapeze act that was first thought impossible. After a lot of research and development, impossible was made possible by highly skilled acrobats.
Also for the first time, the hoop diving act is performed on enormous treadmills on which acrobats dressed as hummingbirds flip, dive and tumble. This act is significantly difficult, with the hoops only 75cm wide. The perpetual motion makes the performers’ synchronicity a nailbiting triumph to witness.
Vadez explains the symbolism of the hummingbird costumes: “Hummingbirds are souls of warriors, who in this case, start the audience on their journey through our imaginary Mexico.”
We meet a running woman emerging into the light and expanding her speckled amber wings. She tells an extraordinary migratory tale. Every year the monarch butterflies travel almost 5,000km from Canada to the southern warmth of Mexico for the winter to congregate in their millions. Monarchs are the only two-way migratory butterflies, and their flight is one of the great natural phenomena not only of Mexico, but the planet. This tribute bursts with colour and movement, the bold and the fragile hovering in celebration of the natural world.
From such heights we journey to the edge of an underground cenote, a natural sinkhole that the Maya believed to be a gateway to Xibalba, the underworld. In an electrifying display of strength and flexibility, an artist on aerial straps brings to life the story of these watery places.
We enter the cave of the cenote, a place of darkness and light and revered as the magical birthplace of rain and clouds. Suspended in mid-air, the artist representing Chaac, the rain deity, meets the sacred jaguar in the form of a life-sized puppet that prowls the stage. This lyrical scene is testament to the resilience of Maya cosmology and the power of myth.
After 25 years of touring Australia Cirque du Soleil has established a special relationship with our audiences. The company keeps returning and we keep being drawn. Valdez puts it down to “the Australian passion for arts and culture”. But this passion is so easily ignited by a show that swings, slides, and suspends with the warmth and wonder of Mexico.
Inspiring the waking dreams of new and loyal audiences, Luzia is an unmissable journey into a kaleidoscopic world.
Luzia is touring across Australia, with shows still to come in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. Book your tickets now.