Cirque du Soleil presents Luiza
74 Mission Rock Street, San Francisco, CA 94158
8:00 PM, Thursday, December 8, 2016

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2016 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2016 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

We seat ourselves about five minutes before showtime. Onstage, a few robot gardeners (imagine the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, only 2 feet tall) are tending marigolds. Hummingbird girls are playing with the crowd. Also mingling are a few clowns, and a large wrestler in a yellow pin-striped business suit and a Lucha Libre mask. I think I saw the wrestler offering challenges to the crowd, but I didn't see anyone taking him up on the offer.

As the lights dim and the music swells to start the first act, a traveling clown parachutes down out of the big top, he flops comically onto the stage, walks over to the giant skeleton key at front center, and gives it a few creaky turns. With that, the music swells and the stage begins to turn like a music box. A few characters – butterfly girl and a silver robot horse – come out and perambulate, accompanied by a troupe of acrobats in awesome fiery red bird costumes. The acrobats perform a variety of hoop tricks and dances, assisted (or hindered!) by two giant treadmills that span the diameter of the stage.

Eventually, the hoop act winds down and the band comes onstage to provide a musical diversion. The four principals are wearing silver alligator head masks. Other performers are dressed as insects (a stick bug! a scarab beetle (or more likely, La cucaracha!), or wear fish heads, and a few carry hand puppets (a giant python and a giant iguana). While these folks parade around, Naomi Zimmerman, a lithe Asian acrobat enters and begins dancing on the center-stage turntable. Spotters begin to throw her around, and after awhile, this is followed by an Adagio act wherein she proceeds to do a bunch of impressive poses out of various scary and dynamic lifts (such as being thrown up into the air, then stalling into a one-hand to one-hand hand-stand). Good stuff, and the show has hardly even begun!

As the musicians parade offstage, they place a half-dozen or more large agave spikes into holders around the perimeter. Aside from establishing a sort of southwest desert-vibe, I think that the spikes also perform the useful task of a reference barrier for the next act, a trio of women: two spinning here and there about the stage on large Cyr wheels while the third does tricks on a hanging trapeze bar. More cool stuff to watch! There are certainly so many things going on that it would be easy to come back and watch multiple times, just to catch all the bits happening simultaneously. Towards the end of the hoop act, a sheet of water begins to fall, and all three take a bit of time for water play. Must be pretty warm … no one looks cold, but it's not so hot that any vapor is steaming off. Hard to know! And miraculously, the water drains right through the stage to some sort of concealed catchment system. No puddles. Not much splashing (except for the intentional splashes from the dancers).

The lights dim to black and the original clown reappears, riding an invisible bicycle. He circles the stage once or twice, then “parks his bike” against one of the agave spikes in order to investigate a mysterious blue ball that has appeared at front and center. The clown next referees some sort of imaginary game between audience members, communicating via lots of whistling, face-making, and the occasional rude gesture. Larry Baer, CEO of the SF Giants gets involved in the game, just like everyone else in front of the clown. While the clown performs his shtick, a quartet of crew members run huge shop vacs back and forth across the stage, drying things off for the next act.

Which turns out to be a swimming/diving routine with a male gymnast performing amazing strength and balance acts atop wobbly poles precariously arranged into an ever-taller lifeguard tower while acrobats cavort in “row boats” at stage height. It's hard to understand why the stage needed to be dried off for this act, since it involves splashing more water onstage, but maybe the vacuuming was supposed to be a comedic break or time-killer?

Next is a cool soccer ball juggling act, the “football Dance”, featuring Abou Traore & Laura Biondo performing zany feats of ball control.

The are succeeded by the return of the clown traveler, who is thirsty. He tries to fill his canteen from the sheets of water cascading from the roof, but is flummoxed (for comedic effect, of course) until they give him a good dowsing. Ho Ho Ho! It's funny to see someone else get wet, no?

A song begins, and as the robot horse and butterfly girl return for another parade around the stage, the cascading water is used to paint a series of amazing images. It's hard to describe, but very similar to what you might have seen done with smoke and lasers, using the passage of light through material of slightly changing density to “draw” in grey-scale on the air. Very cool.

8:54 PM. The Big paper lantern drops, obscuring most of the stage for set break. Time to run outside for some fresh air!

9:19 PM. A group of ?Moth dancers? sneak into the lantern as the house lights grow dim. Music, lights! And it turns out that the “moths” are acrobats dancing on poles. No fluttering wings. I was fooled by the big eye-spots on their leotards.

A Lucha Libre wrestler rides a kiiking swing back and forth, performing feats of strength and balance, eventually turning loops over the top of the fulcrum. More scary stuff without a net!

the Lantern drops, and the butterfly singer returns to sing another song, this time accompanied by a huge jaguar puppet instead of the robot horse.

A Tarzan-like dude, Benjamin Courtenay as a “rain God”, performs a sash routine in rain that cascades down from the ceiling; he stops now and then to interact with the big jaguar.

After Benjamin and the jaguar leave, the clown returns, looking thirstily at the pool of water. He performs a prissy, family-friendly strip-tease down to his swim-trunks, then dives into the pool of water to discover that it's been replaced by a mirage. Three cactus clowns perform a mopping up dance.

The animal-headed band returns to the stage: four alligator-hat-headed musicians at center stage, playing two large marimbas, others arranged around the periphery. A juggler, Rudolph Janacek, joins them for some pin-tossing tricks. First three, then four, then five, then six silvery flashing pins are whirling about. Wow! He returns to three, then proceeds to juggle while turning back flips. Rain of (note illegible … ?hats? Hard to know unless Ting happened to take pictures at this point, but a sombrero shower seems about as plausible as anything else).

The house lights dim a bit as helpers bring out candles to light the stage. Mahesh Vinayakram sings his long solo piece, and is succeeded by an amazing (if eew-inducing) contortionist act by Alexey Goloborodko. He's definitely part snake!

The clown returns in scuba gear, accompanied by scuba-diving cacti.

Next is a “swinging couch” act, AKA Russian swing – plenty of high-flying, acrobatic danger, performed without a net, naturlich.

Finally, the couches are replaced by a feast table, and the show finishes with a big cast party scene full of comedy, song and dance.

10:12 the show is done, and charmed, we big to wander out to our car.

Care to hear the soundtrack? You can! A somewhat reworked version of the acoustic tunes have been shared on Soundcloud!

My apologies. I didn't buy a program, and I'm too lazy to go find credits online for all of the folks. I've identified a few of the performers above in my skeletal narrative.

You need more to read than my disconnected, spur-of-the-moment notes posted above? Well then, feel free to do some online searching. Should be easy to turn up more reviews, such as the grumpy one posted by Lily Janiak for SFGate, which includes a fine photo gallery too. As for me, sorry! Ain't gonna add anything else, except to conclude that it would be easy to imagine attending this show multiple times, just to try and catch more of what's going on … I'm certain that my description above leaves out plenty!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2016 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2016 event list! ☸ On to the next event!