Cirque du Soleil’s “Volta” – a review

Razzle-dazzle under the Big Top

Cirque du Soleil’s “Volta” – a review

Cirque du Soleil is testing the waters with “Volta,” amping up the intensity and the spectacle, hoping to cash in on a younger audience and perhaps looking to fill the void left by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, now that those traveling shows of yore, with their live animals and daredevil stunts, are no more. Not that “Volta” has been influenced by mind-numbing superhero movies, but it could be moving with some risk in that direction while jettisoning the sublime and the gently awe-inspiring that has marked its finest work.

This may in part be why “Volta” (at Dodger Stadium through March 8, then on to Costa Mesa) has stirred up some controversy among both critics and public. Perhaps in the future there will be two completely different kinds of Cirque shows, one for the younger, hip crowd, and another for the older, hip replacement crowd. Maybe we’ll look back and realize that “Volta” was the show that straddled the two genres.

But let’s look at “Volta.” Most Cirque du Soleil shows have a loosely-woven narrative, and that’s here as well with a blue-haired boy named Waz who’s kind of a misfit, the loner you might see in a park or a parking lot doing bunny hops, tailwhips, or barspins. At first, his peers seem to dismiss him, but he finds his niche, his ride buddies, because he’s stayed true to his passions and followed his own path, et cetera.

However, it’s a hard story to follow, and there’s little reason to stay glued to it with so much ever-changing excitement going on. However, the first act doesn’t have a lot going for it: There’s double dutch rope skipping, a solo diabolo act, some juggling and roller skating. All very pretty but run-of-the-mill by Cirque standards. Then there’s the Trampowall, with acrobats who dive or somersault off a house-like structure onto a trampoline and then bounce back up to the top. Circus Vargas has been doing it lately during their tours of the South Bay, which my companion preferred, but it’s an impressive act in this incarnation as well.

Generally, I prefer that one send out rather than send in the clowns, yet I feel an exception should be made for Andrey Kislitsin, as Mr. Wow, who struggles with washing machines in the first act and has a day at the beach in the second. Balancing gestures, facial expressions, and bodily movement is no less an art than walking a tightrope 50 feet in the air.

After intermission, “Volta” picks up steam. A flexible ladder spins as performers cling to it and do their gymnastic routines. This is followed by the oddly-named “Urban Jungle,” in which three or four gymnasts run and leap through hexagon-shaped hoops, often at the same time. Precision/timing is everything, and it’s nothing that can be faked. On the evening I attended, one performer needed three or four tries before he pulled off an astonishing feat. And it must be said that those initial failed attempts actually heightened the tension. What if he’d tried and tried and didn’t end up succeeding? Would we be seeing him the next morning at the bus depot with his suitcase?

Perhaps the most talked-about act is the one referred to as “Mirage,” in which a young woman, a veritable Indian goddess, ascends from a lotus position into the air, her hair in a bun and secured by it to a rope that suddenly is pulling her up and whisking her about in ever-widening circles while she remains calm. One would think this must be painful, and we may wince just imagining what might happen if suddenly her scalp is torn from her head and she plummets to the ground! Fortunately that hasn’t and presumably won’t happen: At any rate, this is the sort of offering that makes Cirque du Soleil shows memorable.

The penultimate act returns us to the blue-haired boy, now having achieved his dream or goal and happy to celebrate it by cavorting across the stage, doing flips and breakdancing moves and all of that, while calling to mind the feathered male dancers in Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake.”

Now, the grand finale. The stage is converted into a BMX park with its various jump boxes and ramps, and numerous bike riders pedal hard up the inclines, do their spins and flips, at times crisscrossing one another in mid-flight, while keeping the audience riveted.

What I’m unable to convey are the lighting effects and the score that accompanies this act and the others. It’s cinematic music, to be sure, composed by Anthony Gonzalez (M83), and, while I’m at it, to a show written and directed by Bastien Alexandre, with Jean Guibert the director of creation. Zaldy Goco designed the costumes, which in places reminded me of “Tron” and “Blade Runner” and other futuristic yet dystopian films.

With “Volta,” Cirque du Soleil has ventured into the realm of X-treme sports, although as noted earlier it could be a risky move, especially in that these kinds of acts (which we don’t associate with the Montreal-based company and which we see in local skate parks) may not be embraced by their core audience. X-treme sports may seem a little, hmm, pedestrian to them. Besides, the BMX sequence actually lacks the real sense of danger that the “Globe of Death” motorcyclists of Circus Vargas create, not to mention watching six or eight cycles zooming around one another when Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey presented their version of it. I’m not so sure that Cirque du Soleil would want to go in that direction since it would lose the Old World circus flavor it has cultivated for so long and so successfully. But, again, maybe they’re thinking of branching out. If so, why not?

Some may grumble, but “Volta” does have its moments, and it’s in those moments that the magic surges through the audience.

Volta is parked in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium through March 8, after which it will be in Costa Mesa from March 18 through April 19. Tickets begin at $49 and go up and up after that. (877) 924-7783 or go to cirquedusoleil.com/volta. ER