The 'Flexible Dragonfly' performing a hand balancing act at Cirque du Soleil's OVO show at the Peavey Mart Centrium on July 7, 2022. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

By Alessia Proietti

review

Cirque du Soleil’s OVO shocks Red Deer audience with superhuman feats

Jul 8, 2022 | 1:35 PM

To disappoint is simply not in the vocabulary of Cirque du Soleil, delivering yet another electrifying, hair-raising and whimsical performance, obliterating the boundaries of the human body with their revamped classic show OVO in Red Deer.

Directly translating from French as “Circus of the Sun,” OVO is the production’s first arena tour since the pandemic put a pause on the arts scene, touring a new city each week and performing at Red Deer’s Westerner Park from July 7-10.

“It’s an immersive experience that anybody can really take away from. I hope people come in and kind of forget about their lives and worries for a couple of hours and just really be mesmerized and come into the ecosystem of OVO,” said Janie Mallet, senior publicist for the show.

It began with a 22 foot tall inflatable “OVO”, the Portuguese word for egg, that disintegrated into a cloud of smoke, the stage quickly replaced by a flood of the 52 artists each exemplifying a unique insect with acrobatic movements to accentuate the species and test the human imagination.

This new biodiversity blurs the audience’s perception of reality with 1,000 handmade Brazilian-inspired costume pieces and a Parisian-influenced soundtrack.

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The main character, an awkward blue insect with long spikes and pointy feet, carries an OVO on his back until he can walk no longer, resting in a new ecosystem. Met by the colony, they are skeptical of his intentions, but one catches his eye and heart: a beautiful ladybug.

The colony taking his OVO, the audience is pulled into their world, catching a glimpse of how the insects joyfully play, tenderly love, chaotically fight and simultaneously work together speaking in their own language.

A caterpillar grows its way out of its ivory cocoon and into a butterfly on aerial silk, ‘amazing ants’ crawl out from the staged ground and dance up grass-like poles.

A firefly juggles his lights with circus diabolos and silky spiders thread a human web.

A ‘flexible dragonfly’ balances on the twisted branches of a plant using just its hands and a multi-legged slinky ‘creatura’ slithers across the stage.

Losing track of species, others walk on stilts and form a flying trapeze 45 feet in the air.

Flying trapeze using 22,000 lbs of equipment, 45 feet in the air at the Cirque du Soleil OVO show at the Peavey Mart Centrium on July 7. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

Before this superhuman performance, rdnewsNOW toured the behind the scenes, where 100 people from 25 different countries gathered as a team of sound and light technicians, musical composers and artists, transporting everything from food to makeup in 20 semi-trucks across western Canada, employing roughly 100 locals for set-up, according to Mallet.

Watching the night butterflies in aerial duo strap training, the partners practice, alongside their peers, eight hours a day, reviewing their act to improve minor details.

“Sometimes we really forget that the straps are there so we’re really feeling and we are seeing that we are flying as butterflies. Flying every night is something that is not getting old,” said Catherine Audy, who has been with the Cirque for eight years.

In an emotional piece, one couldn’t help but look at their loved one. The duo show passion and trust, taking turns on the straps as the other grips onto their lover, flying around the audience.

Backstage, the crazy crickets were doing Pilates to condition their bodies in preparation for the closing act. The wall used as a backdrop for the light show displaying the ecosystem of each insect performance, was finally transformed into a rock wall, a prop for the crickets to crawl across.

Using two trampolines, the crickets plummeted off the 45-foot tall wall, bouncing back in one swoop while the others flipped and back-flipped in between, over each other, and onto sections of the wall.

A whirlwind of crickets performing the same movements across the stage, not one audience member could possibly be looking at the same sight, a loudly overwhelming, suspenseful and insatiable ending.

The OVO finally cracks and a beam of light shines through.

Having to cancel two years of shows leading the Cirque to file for bankruptcy protection in June 2020, this performance closed with a standing OVO.

Tickets for remaining shows are at cirquedusoleil.com.

Finale of Cirque du Soleil OVO show at the Peavey Mart Centrium on July 7. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

Headquartered in Montreal, Cirque du Soleil has performed for more than 215 million people, in over 70 different countries.