Alegría means joy

[dolorosa_12]

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to do something I would never have expected possible: to see a revived version of a Cirque du Soleil show I first fell in love with as a child. You may recall that Matthias and I see Cirque annually whenever they're in London with whatever their touring show is that year — this is always in January/February in the Royal Albert Hall, which is perfect timing: a bright spot amid the post-Christmas, wintry grey of the new year.

This year, their touring show is a revival of Alegría, which I first saw as a teenager twenty-five years ago in Sydney. It wasn't my favourite Cirque show of that period, but I still loved it a lot, and had strong memories of the staging, music, costumes and acts. The revival sticks fairly close to the original — everything is tweaked and modified rather than made new, but to be honest, that suited me fine.

The story (such as it is when it comes to Cirque) is one of a decaying, corrupt Renaissance Italian city-state court; the 'joy' in the show's name is ironic — the kind of temporary, bittersweet freedom one finds in snatched, hoarded moments in difficult times. There are some fantastic acts — standouts for me include the 'fast track' X-shaped trampoline, across which acrobats launch themselves in tumbling rows, passing over and under one another, an act whose starting point is adagio but instead of involving pairs or groups of acrobats balancing on each other's arms, shoulders and bodies involves the fliers being hurled into the air from springy, narrow beams of wood set on the shoulders of pairs of human bases, with further balancing and acrobatics in groups standing/tumbling from and between the beams, and quite honestly one of the best group trapeze acts I've ever seen. (This last one was best enjoyed — at least from my perspective — right from our seats in the heights of the venue, because that gave the best vantage point for the logistics of it all: not just the technicians with their wires and pulleys, but also the various artists calling and signalling to each other in order to ensure they got the timing exactly right, which was essential in this act, and which they performed without a single problem. When I saw the same act in 1999, there were several failed catches in which performers fell into the net below, but not so this time around.)

In any case, it was a delight, and a huge improvement on several of the more recent Cirque shows I've seen (which have been ... fine, but not incredible).

As always when we go to concerts and performances in London, we stayed overnight and made a weekend of it, eating at several old favourites (ogniskorestaurant, mriya_neo_bistro) as well as a new-to-us Taiwanese bao place near Kings Cross Station. On Sunday we were able to see the British Library exhibition on fantasy fiction (which has an expansive definition of the genre and covers books, film, TV, comics, games, and fan culture, and groups all these things thematically — portal fantasy, fairytales, cosmic horror and so on). This was crowded, with slow moving people, but we made the sensible decision to move through the exhibition in reverse order — since we were there at opening time, we therefore saw the first half of the exhibition in entirely empty rooms before catching up with the crowd, but since it grouped the exhibits thematically rather than chronologically the order in which we saw things didn't really matter.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend, made even more pleasing by the fact that we somehow managed to get a hotel room in an incredibly nice (like, 4-star nice) hotel in central London on a Saturday night at a ridiculously cheap price, which was nothing short of miraculous!

Comments

[raven]

Is the bao place just called Bao? I'm a big fan, if so!

[dolorosa_12]

Yes, it is! (I had to double check Google Maps to be sure.)

Because of where we live, we end up going in and out of King's Cross Station a fair bit (either for London weekends like this, or en route from elsewhere in the UK or overseas), and often it makes sense to eat lunch/breakfast/dinner nearby. We always tend to end up in the same handful of quite expensive restaurants (I'm not really a 'grab a premade supermarket sandwich for the train' kind of person unless there's no time or no other option), so I wanted to try something new, and Bao was the (excellent) result. I'll definitely be back!

[raven]

I was very familiar with every KX restaurant when I lived in Cambridge! Less so now, but the Pancras Square ones are always good. There's a Korean place which I like, and a Japanese patisserie place up towards the canal. We also end up at Coqfighter a lot, which is fabulous if you're in the mood for fried and sticky.

[dolorosa_12]

The Korean place is also on our list to try, and I will definitely bear your other two recommendations in mind!

[kiestan]

That sounds amazing. The way you described Cirque du Soleil's performance made me yearn?? for something nostalgic?? It -- and the places you guys ate at -- sounds really magical and I'm glad you guys had a good time!

[dolorosa_12]

It really was fantastic — and nostalgic, but not in a melancholy way. I love doing these sorts of London weekend trips.

[vialethe]

What a great trip! That exhibit sounds fascinating, I wish I could see it.

[dolorosa_12]

The whole trip was really excellent, and the exhibit was great. They've been doing so many livestreamed events around it (there was a whole day-long convention in late December with panel discussions, plus loads of one-off panels on various topics from the exhibition, with authors, artists and so on), and we managed to see most of them as well. It was a really well thought out exhibition.

[chestnut_pod]

Oh wow! I remember a post from you a long time ago about this show; how wonderful that it has come back -- possibly even better than before! That's something I love about ballet, that there are classics one can see again and again, slightly different each time.

[dolorosa_12]

With ballet you must be even more spoilt in this regard in terms of classics returning (and I have friends who have had similar experiences with e.g. opera or Shakespeare performances) — but yes, I was very fortunate to be able to see Alegría again. I just hope they revive Quidam, which is close to one of my favourite live performances of anything, ever.

I surprised myself when I realised I already had a Dreamwidth tag for this show — I knew I had a Cirque du Soleil tag, but I didn't know I'd been specific enough as to create tags for individual shows! The first time I posted about this was in 2012, apparently...

[superborb]

Huh! I hadn't realized that Cirque had... storylines, just different sets of costumes/acts. I guess in my area they seem to perform in the summer though; I wonder if they go somewhere warmer in the winter.

[dolorosa_12]

They all have storylines, but some of the storylines are more detailed than others.

I suspect part of the reason why they do London in the winter is that they use an indoor venue (i.e. the Royal Albert Hall) rather than their usual massive outdoor temporary tent — which would be miserable for the audience in a London winter (obviously the tent is warm inside, but you have to queue up outside it, and food/merchandise stalls are open to the air).

[lirazel]

That sounds lovely! I've never gotten to see Cirque du Soleil but maybe one day I'll be able to! I'm glad you had such a nice time.

[dolorosa_12]

It was fabulous — I feel really lucky to be able to go so regularly every year!

[svgurl]

I haven't been to a Cirque show and I didn't know that they had storylines! Both the show and the exhibit sound awesome though. Glad to hear that you had such a great weekend. :D

[dolorosa_12]

They all have storylines, but some are more detailed than others.

It was a great weekend, and I feel lucky to have such nice things right on my doorstep.