Ridiculous, Thy Name is Kooza

Cirque du Soleil always comes to Vancouver every other year or so, and I've never really paid attention to it because the circus never really appealed to me. But my mom got an insider deal for tickets a couple months ago and I figured I might as well go and check it out. I brought Hannah out to go see Kooza on the weekend, and I'm not sure what I expected but the stuff I saw just blew my mind. I knew some people who had seen Cirque shows in Las Vegas and they all said the shows were really good, but I guess I didn't believe them and as a result, I looked like an idiot trying to keep my mouth closed throughout the show because it was just that ridiculous. It was extremely uncool of me. So to keep you guys nice and prepared for your Kooza experience, I'll go over a few things.

According to their website, Kooza goes back to the roots of Cirque du Soleil through two long-standing circus traditions of acrobatics and the art of clowning. Seeing as how this was my first Cirque show, this meant nothing to me, but I suppose I can appreciate a solid tradition. I definitely saw how that was true in the show. Kooza is a story about a loner (the Innocent) who is pleasantly surprised (to put it mildly) when a mysterious package arrives for him and is taken away into the world of the Trickster. What happens after is a result of the Innocent's subconscious as he tries to find his place in the world. I couldn't do an analysis of the narrative even if I tried, so I'll spare you that and go straight into the awesome stuff. I'm not sure if this is what other Cirque shows are like, but Kooza intersperses the crazy acrobatic acts with comedic interludes that help keep the jaws of the audience from unhinging like a snake. The comic relief parts were really great and really funny and some of the stuff they did was really unexpected, but it was the acrobatic stuff that was really ridiculous. All of the acrobatic stuff inspired some degree of wtf-ness, from the contortionist at the beginning right through to the teeterboarding at the very end.

There's a common trait of people to leave the best for last whether it be for a TV show finale (although sometimes not true), or for the set of a performing band, or even just finishing your vegetables before getting on to the good part of dinner. Even though we expected the performers to save the best for last, the stuff they did was just plain fucking ridiculous. The Charivari act, for instance, consisted of people balancing on balls and other people doing jumps and stuff that boggled the mind. For their last act, they had a guy balancing on a ball, hold another ball above his head, which then had another person balancing on top of that. And the Death Wheel thing, which looks like a ride at Playland minus the seat harness and the safety enclosure...I don't even know where to start to describe the utter ridiculousness of it all. For starters, you have a guy running on one end, making the Death Wheel go around and around very fast, and then you have the other performer jump onto the other end of the Death Wheel, not when it is at its slowest, but when the Wheel is spinning very fast, and then to top it all off, he goes outside his ring and plays with a fucking skipping rope while the Wheel is spinning. Like I said, ridiculous.

I've been lucky enough to go see a few live performances of things like concerts and musicals and plays and stuff, but I can't say I've seen anything else quite like Kooza. I've certainly never offended the lady I was sitting beside so much - I must've dropped the f-bomb more times in those three hours than she probably hears in a year. You can ask her, she can vouch for my amazement.