Under the Big Top • Round Top, TX
On The Crush List because…
This is a circus town, after all.
Like most of you, I’ve long been mesmerized by the extravagantly imaginative theatrics of Cirque du Soleil. I love it all. The fabulous get-all-under-your-skin music… The inflatable-climbable-disappearable-swimable sets… The way-beyond-that Jillian woman levels of superhuman physical fitness.
Lucky for those of us in Central Texas, Cirque’s traveling show, Kooza, is on its way to the grounds of Austin’s Circuit of the Americas. The humongous swirly blue and yellow tents start setting up in August and the shows start September 3. Don’t you think we should splurge on a set of VIP Rouge or Backstage Access tickets this time?
I realized while looking through the show’s website that, hey, I can write a new post about the wonders of my other favorite traveling circus, the Round Top Antiques Show, without actually writing anything. Love that. So, without further ado, I present to you an imaginative, mesmerizing, get-under-your-skin, practically inflatable look at the Antiques Show accompanied by copy stolen straight from the Kooza web pages!
The show is set in an electrifying and exotic visual world full of surprises, thrills, chills, audacity and total involvement.
It highlights the physical demands of human performance in all its splendor and fragility, presented in a colorful mélange that emphasizes bold slapstick humor.
Between strength and fragility, laughter and smiles, turmoil and harmony, the show explores themes of fear, identity, recognition and power.
Charming and sophisticated, The Trickster is a sublimely quick and agile being, a genius who knows all about the world because he created it. He appears and disappears at will and there’s electricity in the air each time he arrives on stage.
The Innocent is a naïve and melancholy loner carried off into The Trickster’s world. Outwardly childlike, ingenuous and simple, he is eager to get to know the new world he’s in, but as soon as he uses The Trickster’s powers he discovers an unexpected and jarring environment, a reflection of his soul.
And then there are the acts themselves, titled:
BALANCING ON CHAIRS
CONTORTION
HAND TO HAND
TEETERBOARD
WHEEL OF DEATH
HIGH WIRE
and HOOPS MANIPULATION
– dip to black –
