Let me explain. In this picture I am the “person” on the right. Pointing at the zillion-dollar Lexus sedan which is just out of camera shot, as they tell me I might win it. Yes, welcome to Fantasyland? Oh and the nice lady on the left, in gray, completely in gray, is employed by the Cirque du Soleil to entertain and charm the audience before we are ushered into the Grand Chapiteau. That’s “tent” to the rest of us.
My friends and I are making a day of it at the beach in Santa Monica. It’s a postcard-perfect afternoon as we walk the half-mile from the parking lot past the pier, the bustle of families, strollers, oddballs, roller-bladers, bikini-clad California girls, all savoring the warm sunshine on this first weekend in March. Maybe it IS Fantasyland after all…
Of course the Cirque du Soleil is a wonder of sights and sounds and bodies that bend and fly. The flying part I get, thanks to the cadre of black-garbed tech guys who work the pulleys, but all that body bending? As one act follows another I hear a familiar mantra ringing in my head “how the hell do they do that?” This particular show, OVO, embraces the world of bugs, so there are a lot of insect-like movements on stage, but one in particular grabs my attention because I’ve actually tried to do it myself!
No, not bite my toenails… let’s back up a little. I do yoga. My poses are half-baked, my technique is pitiful, but I do it anyway and am flexible enough to bend forward and touch my palms to the floor. To the right is a picture of another pose, the “bridge pose.” I wish I could tell you that is ME doing it, but…
in real life, this what MY bridge pose looks like.
Enough said.
So back to the Cirque…
Midway through the show this lithe young lady appears on stage, dressed elegantly as a red crawly bug. I’m not sure if she has bones in her spine because now she is bending backwards into the bridge pose as if it is normal. As if this is how she gets her money at the ATM. And then she crawls, she crawls across the stage, all spider-like in that damned bridge pose. Can you picture this? I mean a little baby learns how to crawl across the floor and we go “ooo, look at that” and clap our hands. But if that same baby flips over and clunks upside-down over to grandma, the parents will freak out and throw all their DVD’s of “Alien” into the trash.
So back to the Cirque…
When you see an extraordinary demonstration like this, of the marvel and majesty of the human body in motion, it is art. You get it at a gut level. Analyzing the parts can wash the color out of the whole and leave it as gray as the Infiniti Lady. And badgering myself that “I can’t do that, I never will do that, I never could do that” like that, puts a little damper on things too.
So I’m glad to report that the next morning I do my 25 minutes of yoga in our little living room with a cup of steaming oolong tea nearby and revel in this miracle of having a body that still moves and bends and feels. Something.
Ukulele players from near and far settle into the sky-hugging Nugget Hotel for a weekend of “everything ukulele” and then some. This includes two big evening concerts in the historical Celebrity Showroom. Saturday’s opening extravaganza features “The Ukulele All-Stars.”
