Cirque du Soleil will explode in southeast Alberta
Cirque du Soleil is excited to bring one of their highacrobatic shows back to Southern Alberta, hoping to thrill audiences both new and old. Provided they aren’t afraid of insects, of course.
Now that public health measures have eased, Cirque du Soleil returns to Lethbridge May 27–29th, and then makes its way to Medicine Hat’s own Co-op Place for June 1–5th with OVO, a look into the colourful lives of various insect species.
Medicine Hat hasn’t hosted one of the shows since 2018, when arena show Crystal came through as a part of their tour. While there was another show planned to visit in 2020, it unfortunately had to be cancelled due to COVID-19, said Jamie Mallet, Senior Publicist and part of the tour management team for OVO.
“We’re actually quite excited to come back. It was a great experience in 2018. Crystal was really well received by everybody in the audience, they were very present and enthusiastic,” said Mallet. “So we’re very excited actually to come back after, you know, quite a few years of break, it’s going to be almost almost four years without stopping in Medicine Hat. So I’m very excited to make that stop.”
OVO was originally one of Cirque du Soleil’s big top shows that stayed in larger centres for several months, said Mallet, during its initial conception in 2009. It has since been revamped into an arena show, which allows for the act to reach different audiences.
“It really allows us to get back to the core of Cirque du Soleil, as you know, that started as street performers. We’re not small, we’re 100 people on tour. But it still allows us to visit a lot more places, and to have to reach out to audiences across Canada like that, and across the world,” said Mallet. She adds that she prefers travelling with the arena shows, as it allows her to see more communities over the course of a year, where the big top shows may only see four or five.
OVO itself is a vibrant show with strong Brazilian inspiration, seen in the colours and music showcased in what Mallet calls a “feast for the senses.”
“We’ve been touring with this. So for many years now, it has been such a beautiful, vibrant, colourful show. Definitely a family friendly show. It’s a show that can reach everybody. So officially, it’s very well received,” said
Mallet. “It is so colourful, so vibrant. The show is inspired by insects. Because you know the theme of it, ovo actually means egg in Portuguese. So that’s probably the other inspiration that’s probably interesting for you also to know that the show was also very much inspired by Brazil. The show director, the creator, if you will, is Brazilian and the show composer is also Brazilian, so you’ll definitely have that warm, you know, you’ll hear that the Brazilian notes in the music in the colours, in the warmth of the show.”
The show features 52 artists, including some of the top athletes in the world, performing various acrobatics, contortion, hand balancing and trapeze, and various other disciplines.
“And as far as like, what can you expect? It is like there’s a storyline. So basically, we follow this insect that comes into this new colony. So we call him the Voyager, our blue fly,” said Mallet. “And he comes into this colony of bugs, of different species of insects, and kind of disrupts everything. And so we basically go through the journey of how, how do we react to change? It’s got different levels, which is why I think it works. Like it works well for kids. It’s so fun to see, like, you’ll see young kids come to the show and laugh and love it and then their grandparents. And we’ll see couples and we’ll see friends. You know, it really is like there’s something for everybody.”
Mallet expressed Cirque du Soleil’s enthusiasm to be coming back to the stage after these past two years, and to bring something unique to Albertans/
“It’s always special to put up a show and to see the audience and, you know, to see their reaction. And that’s why we do it at the end of the day, really it’s to relive that, again, with the audience, whether we’re working backstage or on stage,” said Mallet. “But I can tell you that after, after the past couple years, after everything that’s been going on around the world, and the pandemic, and selfing and all that. There’s definitely, like a renewed sense of appreciation for this sense that we have to, you know, to come in and to visit Medicine Hat and set up our part of the world in your Co-op Place, and hopefully, we can’t wait to basically share it with the audience out there.”