Cirque Du Soliel - Kooza
If you are reading this, you probably don’t know it, but I graduated from high school last Thursday (June 
12th). It was a hot ceremony, that was held for the first time in my school’s history (4 or so years) outdoors. The shenanigans ended at around 8pm and we arrived to dinner at the Seven Stars Inn at approximately 8:30. While there, my parents gave me two gifts, tickets to see Cirque Du Soliel on June 15th at 5pm, the last showing in Philadelphia and an Amazon Kindle(more on this in coming weeks).
Cirque is something that I have wanted to see for a very long time. I think my first sighting of it was when they use to show some of their acts on cable.
We arrived in Philly around 12 and spent about an hour at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, another thing I had wanted to do. Although we really decided on going because Sundays are “Pay What You Want”. No one really cared for it, so we only saw the first floor which was American and Modern/Contemporary Art, the part that I was most interested in.
After that we headed to the Reading Terminal Market in search of some good eats and they were found. I ate a delicious cheesesteak and the rest of the family enjoyed hot dogs, subs, and some sort of Greek creation.
We then left in search of the Grand Chapiteau or “Big Top” along the Avenue of the Arts, a short distant from the Reading Terminal. This is something that really suprised me, Cirque Du Soliel still uses actual tents for all of thier traveling shows. But once you step inside, you would have no idea it’s a tent because of the modern imenaties such as air conditioning, stadium style seating, and an uncountable number of lights. Attached to the main “tent” were smaller open-air tents that sold merchandise and various concessions. (Although these were here, I still ended up buying my merchandise from the Cirque website.)
The show eased to a start, with various clowns/characters roaming the audience and of course screwing with some people here and there, my brothers were suprised at the number of popcorns that were thrown from audience members hands. Kooza, the specific Cirque show we saw, is centered around a man named “Mr. Innocent”, who recieves a package which seemingly opens a portal to wacky and sometimes scary world. Unlike most of the other Cirque shows, Kooza, is very much like your typical Circus except it wrapped with a little bit of story. There multiple acts, from contourtionists and tight rope walkers to jugglers and acrobats.
By far the best act of the night, were two men who used these two wheels attached to one another, hanging from the cieling. They balanced each other, so they were able to keep the contraption moving at a good pace. At one point, they gave the audience quite a scare. One of the two guys jumped inside of his wheel when it was near his peak and nearly fell out of it. This is what I believe seperates Cirque from your run of the mill circus, they are quick witted.
Although he did nearly kill himself, he recovered and kept on with his performance not batting an eyelash. The same sort of thing also happenend when the tight rope artists were performing. Two of the artists were about a quarter of the way from the end of the rope and one kneeled down while keeping himself steady and the other, who was behind him, attempted to jump over and land balanced back on the rope. Well, that didn’t really happen, although he proved he could do it a little further into his act. Instead of just falling to the ground, he grabbed hold of the rope as he fell and pulled himself back up, acrobatics at it’s finest.
Needless to say, I had an incredible time at the show and I am looking forward to the possiblity of seeing La Nouba, the Cirque Du Soliel show permanetely located in Disney World, where we are vacationing in the coming weeks.
