More expected from Cirque’s Kooza
By Mae Velasco [arts and design bureau chief]
I found Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza to be extremely annoying.
Clowns were everywhere in the audience popping up in random places. The audience wasn’t even paying attention in the beginning especially when the crowd was just beginningto settle down. There was an alarm that kept on saying “Get off the stage.” It was ridiculous and these clowns kept on running around perhaps spilling popcorn on a random stranger out of the audience.
Kooza tells a story about a clown who is trying to find a placein his own world. As the story progresses, he goes through his emotions and one by one acts come out to play.
The acts weren’t what I expected. They were obvious. There’s a guy who could balance chairs, awoman who could spin in the air on the trapeze. I wanted to see fire and something real extreme. Maybe something that was interesting was a woman who could balance a bunch of hoola hoops on her body and the Wheel of Death.
The Wheel of Death is much like the Revelation at Playland, but with hoops. Two men were running in circles while they go up and down the air. They were doing flips like crazy both in and out of the circle! It seemed like some of the performers had the jitters.
Most of the acts needed polishing since some felt like they were going to fall from the air and lose balance. Other than that it was an okay sort of show. It wasn’t something that I would seriously go “Oooh and Ahh” for.
