[Dixielandjazz] Delirium was The Music is Visual

[Steve Barbone]

Ginny at Gluetje1 at aol.com wrote:

>Anyone who spends money on "Delirium" and hates it, please let me be first to
>say, "I told you so".  I had seen and heard so much on TV about them and was so
>excited to have a chance to go see (and hear) them.  Boy did I feel gyped,
>bored, and have my ear drums tastelessly beat to death 95% of the time.  And I
>am very capable of enjoying a "drum" concert, consider Baba Olatungi and Taiko
>drummers some of best concerts I ever attended.
> Even the visuals got very boring, Steve.  Hard to describe, but then I don't
>think many people in delirium enjoy it.  Thus I began to feel that the point of
>the production was to make sure I wanted "out of Delirium".  I did.  I'm still
>willing to assume Cirque has produced much better shows, may do so again in the
>future.  Oh, it wasn't just me, 34 year old daughter and her  boyfriend felt
>the same, multi-generational family who took the kids, etc., anyone I talked to
>who saw it.  It did mean I will hesitate to be a future ticket buyer to a
>Cirque production.

Well, different strokes for different folks. Here are 3 reviews on it:

Cheers,
Steve (Who btw, generally gets bored by all Cirque performances) Barbone

 
Review: Music drives Cirque du Soliel's 'Delirium' to great heights
Friday, June 30, 2006 - By Christopher Rawson - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Cirque doesn't stand still. Having crossed boundaries and confounded genres
with its new age apotheosis of ancient skills, it continues to spawn new
variants. The current novelty is Cirque's first ever arena tour, a cross
between a Cirque show and a concert, driven by music but still with an
amorphous, mysterioso narrative thrust.

"Delirium," opened last night at Mellon Arena on a giant traverse stage, 130
feet long and 20 feet wide, running the long way, splitting the arena in
half. Huge fabric panels soar toward the dome slide back and forth, taking
projected (and cleverly augmented) video images of what's on stage, while
giant scrim curtains envelop the stage on both sides, allowing projected
images to interact with the people, set elements and lighting effects.

It's a phantasmagoric vision, constantly mutating, like the dream that it
claims to be in the very slim story it tells. Throughout most of the show a
solo man (played by Karl Baumann like sort of a space age Harold Lloyd)
rides above the action on, under or even within a giant balloon. That's
apparently an emblem of his inability to connect. But it is his dream, we
are told, and the languorous and often sensuous images he conjures up
suggest that he has an imaginative inner life that gives the lie to his
supposed isolation. He takes care to dream himself up a mate, too, in the
pretty singer (one of several), Amanda Stott.

Like a dream, "Delirium" takes us many places, summoning up attractive and
muscular and graceful people who do extraordinary things-- pretty much what
all of us want from our dreams, I suppose.

The 44 performers, are billed as 18 dancers, 11 instrumentalists, eight
acrobats, six singers and two main characters (yes, that adds up to 45). But
no one does just one thing, and what would you call the astonishing Irina
Akimova, who turns her supple body into silly putty and does things with
iridescent hula hoops that are probably illegal in Central Pennsylvania?

The other main character is a playful stilt-walker (Adam Read), who is a
sort of guide through the dream world. But the real engine is the music,
arranged into some 20 numbers gathered from previous Cirque shows and
freshly scored and adapted, played centrally by a house band called Gaia
(Brazilian, based in Montreal, very eclectic). But two Sengalese brothers
provide percussive energy, sometimes enhanced by what looks like competing
armies of percussionists facing off across the wide stage.

The music is many things, ranging from mellifluous new age to pulsating
rock. Adding to the concert feel, the evening starts with an opening act,
Nitza, a singer-songwriter whose music washes over you with that ethereal
sound I associate with Finnish groups, with maybe a touch of Riverdance-like
myth. Call it Cirque Moderne -- new-old music, all pulsating electronic
moodiness, with long-line poetic lyrics sung apparently in Old Norse or
Antique Gaelic or maybe Early Middle Earth.

And now that I think of it, Nitza's music and some of Cirque's (I swear I
saw Galadriel singing plaintively high above the stage) does indeed remind
me of the music of "Lord of the Rings," which I just saw in Toronto (and
which is a lot better than the recent news stories claim, but I digress).
That score is partly by A.R. Rahman, and Cirque's score also shows an Indian
influence. But as I say, that's just one of the many musical styles of
"Delirium."

What is hypnotic can also be monotonous, and there are passages that feel
slo-mo statuesque. But you drift away at your peril, because the stage is
continually morphing into some new visual extravaganza of lights and bodies,
fabric and projections.

By the way, I think "Delirium" is a little long and uneventful -- not to
mention expensive -- for young children.

 - - - AND

KDHX Theatre Review - Delirium - May 15
Cirque du Soleil at the Savvis Center Reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi

Delirium, which was in town for three performances this past weekend , is
described as ³A Cirque du Soleil Live Music Event². The description is
highly accurate, and also a bit of a warning for anyone expecting anything
like a typical Cirque du Soleil show.

Granted, the phrase ³typical Cirque du Soleil show² is a bit of an oxymoron,
but the plain fact is that Delirium resembles a rock concert more than it
does Cirque du Soleil's trademark mix of spectacular circus acts and
theatrical flash. That's not to say that there aren't some stunning
individual performances. There just aren't enough of them, in my view, to
fully justify labeling this as a Cirque event.

That said, Delirium is still an impressive show. Performed on a 20-foot-wide
130-foot-long platform, Delirium makes extensive use of scrims and
projection equipment to display animation and live images - some of which
appear strikingly three-dimensional - to accompany and reinforce the action
on stage. At one point, for example, a singer decked out in a headdress that
Carmen Miranda might have worn had she used major hallucinogens slowly rises
into the air above the stage, her skirt billowing out around her until it
turns into a massive tent on which a rapidly-changing series of patterns are
projected, as though the skirt were a surreal volcano spewing color. At
other times the stage appears to be flooded with water, butterflies, or
stars. It's no wonder that my companion described the effect as something
like an LSD trip without the pharmaceuticals.

The music, which is non-stop, includes twenty of what are described as the
company's ³most memorable musical moments² re-mixed by Quebec producer,
composer and arranger Francis Collard. They're performed by an impressive
array of musicians from around the world. You can see a list of the featured
artists at the show's web site, but for the record they are: percussionist
brothers El Hadji Fall Diouf and Pape Abdou Karim Diouf of Senegal; the
South American group Gaïa; keyboardist and band leader Ric'key Pageot;
Italian percussionist Raffaele Artiglieri; Brazilian Italo-Cuban singer
Dessy Di Lauro and Jacynthe from Canada. They hold forth on a variety of
instruments, most of which appear to belong to the percussion family. Aside
from a wide array of stationary and portable drums, there's also a ³planet
drum² (a 16-foot-wide dome that contains sixteen percussion instruments and
which doubles as a launching platform for the acrobats) and something that
sounded like the Mother of All Bass Drums.

That action is continuous and, as I noted in my review of Cirque's Dralion
back in 2003, there's often so much going on at once - all of it fascinating
- that there's a danger of sensory overload. There was certainly a danger of
auditory overload as far as I was concerned. In the final analysis, I felt
that Delirium's creators had rather overestimated the entertainment value of
the purely musical aspects of the show. Your mileage may vary, but I would
have preferred more solo circus acts and fewer solo singers.

The bottom line on Delirium, in my view, is that while it may be Cirque du
Soleil ³lite² it's better than no Cirque du Soleil at all. If you're out
here where the company's appearances are rare, Delirium is worth seeing for
that reason alone.

Besides, there hasn't been any good acid around for years.

- - - And

Cirque's 'Delirium' breathtaking By TARA MERRIN -- Calgary Sun

CALGARY - Taking in Cirque du Soleil's Delirium is like witnessing a
spectacular rock concert.

The massive show, which opened for three nights at the Saddledome yesterday,
is sensory overload at its best, featuring a frenzy of musicians, singers,
dancers, acrobats and electronic elements.

Before starting, it should be noted what separates Delirium from the rest of
Cirque du Soleil's many shows is its music. For the first time in its
history, the Montreal-based company has put its musical catalogue, spanning
16 previous works, front and centre.

It is focusing on a soundtrack of urban tribal beat tracks as much as it did
its circus magic. 

Throughout the night, more than a dozen musicians appeared on stage,
including Gaia, an energetic group with Brazilian and Peruvian roots, the
Diouf brothers of Senegal and Canada's rising star, Jacynthe.

Together they treated the near capacity crowd to 20 of Cirque's newly
reworked tunes (with titles such as Walk on Water, Bridge of Sorrow and Let
Me Fall) as a the visual show exploded around them.

While not exactly cutting edge, the music did add to the show's feel-good
vibe and made the simple plot easy to follow.

The huge projections (the equivalent of four IMAX screens) on either side of
the double-sided, 130-ft.-stage, helped tell the story by incorporating
video of people floating through space, opening and closing doors and other
visual distractions.

More than anything, what made Delirium a sight worth seeing, was its
acrobatic performances -- a staple of all Cirque du Soleil shows.

While there may not have been enough for everyone's liking, there were
plenty of high-flying, death-defying stunts, hand-to-hand balancing acts,
gymnastics and acrobatics. But the loudest oos and ahhs early on came
courtesy of the hoola-hooping Irina Akaimova.

While Cirque can be pretty corny at times, the talents of all the performers
in Delirium were breathtaking and astounding, making it a worthwhile show.