Cirque du Soleil arrived at the National Harbor with its newest show ‘Totem’ and we decided not to miss a chance to attend the show. We had tickets for the 4 o’clock performance and an hour earlier we were driving to the National Harbor, where the Cirque’s signature bright blue and yellow top tents had been eracted.The recognizable blue and yellow 2600 seat tent is made from almost six tons of canvas. It was a beautiful sunny and hot (over 90°F) day. The parking lot was fairly empty and everything was well organized. Here is the view of the Cirque’s tents from the parking lot.
Besides the familiar tents, a few Cirque’s colorful trucks were standing there and, of course, its advertisement posters.
The Entrance to the ticket admission.
Cirque du Soleil welcomes it’s visitors right at the entrance of the tent.
There are souvenir shops and a food court with limited selection inside of the tent.
Clowns and cast members were walking around entertaining the spectators and helping them find their seats, or confuse them even more. One of them took a bag with popcorn from somebody in our row and threw some of it on us. 🙂 We had great seats in the middle of the first row. Photography was strictly prohibited, so all pictures pertaining to the show and most of their description, are from about.com. The show was excellent and I want you to take a glimpse at this performance.
The story in TOTEM follows the evolution of humans from the prehistoric amphibian state, through primates, early human civilizations, and finally modern humans and our desire for exploration, discovery, and super-human feats. The show started with the carapace (2700 lb frame) on stage, which signifies the skeletal structure of a huge turtle shell and represents the origins of life on earth. The turtle’s shell is a home to a community of amphibians and fish that live beneath its carapace. They burst into a playful parallel bars number, with artists embodying frogs launching themselves into the air from a power track and leaping from one bar to the next.
According to Robert Lepage, writer and director of Totem, the word Totem suggests that human beings carry in their bodies the full potential of all living species, even the Thunderbird’s desire to fly to the top of the Totem. In the short time during the show we witness the transfiguration of the human being into a world of mythology. The Crystal Man comes from space to spark life on Earth.
One of the most important aspects of the show is its costuming. The Crystal Man’s glimmering costume is among the most fascinating in the collection. Weighing-in at a mere eight pounds, its foundation of stretch velvet is layered with more than 4,000 mirror fragments and 4,500 various brilliants.
A view from backstage. The turtle shell (Carapace) was lifted and the stage was open for the next performers. Inspired by many founding myths, TOTEM illustrates, through visual and acrobatic language, the evolutionary progress of species. Somewhere between science and legend, TOTEM explores the ties that bind Man to other species, to man’s dreams and to man’s infinite potential.
Impressive stage setup. The characters evolve on a stage, which represents an organic world of multiple transformations. The visual environment of TOTEM is an organic world, a marsh lined with reeds near an island (the stage), on which images are projected. Tilted slightly forward, the image marsh acts both as a stage entrance and as a projection surface. Through the magic of moving images it becomes a virtual swamp, a river source, a marsh, a lake, an ocean, a volcanic island, a pond and a starry sky (from Cirque du Soleil website).
An American Indian artist performs a narrative dance, using hoops to create static and dynamic shapes to evoke various animals and images in a ritual that symbolizes the endless circle of life.
The abundance of fall is represented by the harvest colors as five unicyclists juggle metal bowls in an astounding display of agility, balance, synchronized control and physical grace, tossing the bowls with their feet—sometimes over their shoulders—and catching them on their heads without using their hands.
The makeup is amazing!
Bollywood-inspired music accompanies two men as they compete against each other on the rings—until a woman arrives and shows them how it’s done.
The scene below evokes a wedding ceremony, a pair of roller skaters spins and whirls at heart-stopping speeds atop a tiny platform.
Ten artists perform feats of strength, balance and acrobatic movements. The jumpers are launched into the air and fly weightlessly across the sky like cosmonauts, leaping from one bar to the next with astonishing agility in a thrilling evocation of the human desire to escape the Earth’s gravity.
Here is another amazing acrobatic act of Cirque du Soleil: hand and foot juggling act with “speedy” carpets by identical twins from Belarus, Marina & Svetlana Tsodikova. Aptly named “crystal ladies, ” Marina & Svetlana Tsodikova perform in costumes covered in over 4,000 Swarovski crystals.
Cirque du Soleil TOTEM includes a variety of characters including a Darwinesque explorer who visits the different worlds of the show. In his advanced laboratory, aided by his assistants and a monkey, he dazzles the audience with his amazing physics experiments.
Early in the show, we saw the Crystal Man animate the turtle’s skeleton and at the end he closed the show by diving into a lagoon. The costumes in TOTEM are quite amazing!
The show was over. It was impressive!! In our opinion, it was better than ‘OVO’, which we enjoyed a couple years ago as VIP Rouge guests here, at the National Harbor.
The other Cirque du Soleil show, ‘Viva Elvis’, we saw at the Aria hotel in Las Vegas. Photography was not allowed as well, so here is a quick shot of me next to the Elvis Theater.
The crowd is rushing to the next show.
The view from the Cirque du Soleil set up. Almost sunset…
After the show we had a wonderful sushi dinner at the East Moon Asian Bistro.
