Cirque du Soleil Hits Buffalo

This isn’t new news, but I thought it fitting with the closure of this year’s Infringement Festival to mention an upcoming “fringey” event in our Queen City.  Cirque du Soleil’s landmark show, Saltimbanco, comes to HSBC Arena September 10-14.  The Canadian performance troupe which has broadened the scope and definition of “circus arts” was reborn in 1992 with Saltimbanco, the first show to travel the world under Cirque’s signature yellow and blue tent.  (Previous shows were on a large scale like this one, but none had taken off globally the way this show had.) The show has toured the world’s most cosmopolitan cities many times over since 1992 in the signature tent but is now touring smaller markets in a redesigned arena show.

This is not the first time Cirque has touched down in Buffalo.  The company’s arena-based music spectacular, “Delirium,” which adapts the greatest hits of Cirque’s many touring shows’ music and blows it up on a much larger stage, has come to HSBC Arena twice in the last few years.  But “Saltimbanco” is different, for it is one of the company’s signature shows that still tours the globe.  Six tent shows, two arena shows, seven permanent shows (five of them in Las Vegas), and many other seasonal and occasional presentations make up Cirque’s many stages.

The magic of Cirque du Soleil and “Saltimbanco” is its ability to marry surreal landscapes of sound and vision with the very human experience of character, emotion and movement.  It is part theater, part circus, part concert, and completely captivating.  The troupe was founded on the concept of street performers and the circus philosophy of being “of the people,” taking the known and framing it as the unknown, making the real surreal and so forth.  It’s a very European way of thinking of art, one that is not so common these days in these parts of the Atlantic, except in cities like Buffalo which support an artistic community of innovators and visionaries.  Read the history of the company here and here.See this trailer for “Saltimbanco” and take a peek at some photos…

The show’s signature ”grand chapiteau,” the blue and yellow tent which previously housed “Saltimbanco” and is currently home to six different touring productions around the world:

Artwork for “Saltimbanco” of the famous Chinese pole act:

A scene from another Cirque show in Las Vegas, “Love.” The show is based on the music of The Beatles and features a 360-degree permanent theater with incredible surround sound:

If you have the chance, see Cirque when it comes through town this September.  It is unlike any other visual presentation you’ll ever attend.  I wish Buffalo were a big enough to support a traveling tent show (which usually sits down for at least four weeks at a time in each city), but we’re not there yet.  This arena adaptation will suffice for now, and boy will it astound.  Get your tickets today!

Posted by on 07/31 at 10:56 AM