Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Volta’ electrifies
Daredevil spirit of street sports inspires supercharged adventure
The narrative of Cirque du Soleil’s “Volta” isn’t complicated. It plays out in wisps and snippets.
Ballet dancer Waz ( Joe Arrigo), rotating as fluidly as if he were suspended by an invisible Cyr wheel, suddenly has his hair exposed: a Mohawk made of icy blue feathers. As taunting laughter peals forth, he crouches in the fetal position, ashamed.
Later, in his bedroom, Waz projects a flickering home movie, and a tiny bicycle pedals out, circling the perimeter of the stage as if powered by a ghost. A shorter blue-Mohawked performer (Nao Yoshida) — the Waz of yesteryear — appears with a BMX bike, commencing a pas de deux with a ballerina (Rosina Gil), his mother.
Each has his or her own physical vocabulary for spins and swivels, but the two are as united as a pair of figure skaters, one’s turn echoing, then prompting, another from the other. That shared language, translated from bike to dance and back, becomes a kind of love, espe-
cially as bolstered by the ethereal singing of Camilla Bäckman, whose voice sounds as if it pierced through a molten crack in the earth.
These images don’t fully cohere into a fleshed-out story, but that’s not the point. Written and directed by Bastien Alexandre, they’re more like propulsive moods — mere feelings, yes, but feelings so assiduously defined they give each acrobatic sequence a motive for existing beyond “Here’s an amazing feat!” and a reason to push forward into the next one.
That’s not all that distinguishes “Volta,” which opened Thursday, Nov. 15, at the Big Top at AT&T Park before a run at Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in February.
The personalities of individual performers shine through, complementing the show’s theme of street sports, where part of the point is to show off. Accordingly, unicyclist Philippe Bélanger doesn’t merely hoist partner MarieLee Guilbert to stand on his bare head; afterward, he shrugs, humblebrag-style, just to make sure we know that for him, his heroic balance is no big deal. When a shape diver, swooping headfirst through manhole-size rings hoisted midair, misses a particular sequence, he arises from the ground as if he’d planned it that way. He lifts a single finger — “One more time” — except he’s not asking for our permission; he’s daring us to come along as he tries again.
A near-miss only heightens the achievement of all that goes right. Otaku double Dutchers skip rope at such a high speed that the rope’s motion seems to form a corporeal bulb, like a vase taking shape on a pottery wheel. When performers on the Swiss rings plunge toward and away from you in giant, 180-degree arcs, as if they’re on a stadium-engirding swing set, you can trace the motion of their shoulder and back muscles as if they’re telling a story, complete with beginning, middle and end.
When the lights come up on performer Danila Bim, you might feel your posture automatically elongate and your eyebrows involuntarily crane for your hairline. Attached to the bun of hair mushrooming from her crown is a ceiling-to-floor cord. You know it’s going to lift her, yet you bristle at the thought (especially if memories of countless childhood ponytail yanks still prickle your scalp). Yet hoist her it does, as she uncoils from a cross-legged, meditative sit.
If you’re a seasoned circus attendee, you know that gymnastic feats can make you see the human form and its world anew. Every surface, no matter its height or angle, looks like a playground. Appendages become as expressive as paintbrushes, able to sketch impossible lines and shapes on a boundless canvas, one lit by designer Martin Labrecque to defy physical laws; light seems to emanate from the floor, even when your brain tells you it comes from the ceiling, or condense into a tangible geometric shape that performers poke through, like airplanes puncturing clouds.
Yet there was something still more liberating, more expansive, about Bim’s soaring. She wasn’t holding on to anything. She was upright, the way the rest of us experience the world most of the time. Unencumbered, her arms and legs searched and mastered the air. It’s the most universal of dreams, and she realized it for all of us.