Cirque du Soleil's colouful circus tent has returned to Vancouver's False Creek for a three-month run of Echo, the company's 20th Big Top creation and 51st overall.
The ultra-talented cast features 52 circus artists hailing from 19 countries including Canada, the U.S., Brazil, Ethiopia, France, Italy, Russia, India and others.
A focal point of Echo's stage is giant, seven-metre, 12-ton CUBE that rotates, moves from upstage to downstage, "floats" in and around the performers and acts as a backdrop for projected images.
Future and her dog Ewai stumble upon the enigmatic set piece, launching "a story of connection, intention and the bond between humans and the animal kingdom," with all the flips, spins, leaps, tricks, juggling, contortions and comedic moments that audiences have come to expect from a big-ticket Cirque production like this.
At different points in the show, the CUBE is dismantled, stripped, rebuilt, scaled by animal characters and swung from by the circus artists. This mysterious 3D "world" is where the Cartographer flies into the story on bungee straps, the Double Trouble clowns stack boxes to the ceiling of the Big Top, two Fireflies soar by the hair on their heads and, in the show-closer, high-flying "birds" take to the triple teeterboards.
The choreography is mind-blowing in Echo, which was going to be released in 2020 as Under the Same Sky but was shelved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production and rehearsals resumed in 2022 under the new name, and the first Echo performance was in April 2023 in Montreal.
Definitely worth seeing, the show is performed at Concord Pacific Place until Jan. 5. Tickets are sold on cirquedusoleil.com, where packages include family seats, VIP experience, backstage tours and meet-and-greets with the performers.
