Cirque du Soleil's Luzia review: A dazzling celebration of human skill and ingenuity

1/10
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis16 January 2020

Cirque du Soleil’s ability to frame boggling physical feats against images of great beauty proves undimmed in their 30th year visiting London. In Luzia, subtitled A Waking Dream Of Mexico and receiving its European premiere here, the company throttles back on the winsome clowning that used to be so irksome in their shows.

This is a dazzling celebration of human skill and ingenuity, full of lusty colour and music.

The show draws piecemeal inspiration from Mexican myth, history and culture, though the nightmarish insect and fish costumes owe more to Hieronymus Bosch than Frida Kahlo.

A fiercely controlled act by a hand-­balancer with biceps the size of basketballs is cast as a Thirties film set; the aerial strap artist bathes in a rock pool frequented by a giant puppet jaguar. The hyper-limber pole routine, supposedly inspired by Mexico’s Day of the Dead, owes rather more to the film Hustlers, but is no less astonishing for that.

There’s a linking conceit in which the main clown, Fool Koller, tries to fill his water bottle from a digitally controlled cascade, a reference to the water god Tlaloc. It torments him with wilful torrents before dropping a series of extraordinary images imprinted in a sheet of rain. Ruder fun comes from three giggling peyote cactuses, one of whom has a huge erection.

The poor juggler had a bad night and, I’m sorry, contortionists are just weird. It’s the acrobats who truly delight. Two women spin like human gyroscopes in giant hoops — Cyr wheels, an act unknown to me — as a trapeze artist flexes overhead. Another is tossed as gracefully as a cat between the arms of four catchers.

Humans flinging themselves from one chair-swing to another showcase not just physical but extreme mental dexterity. Shelli Epstein, who opens the show running down a travelator with butterfly wings billowing up into the roof, ends it with a series of impeccably precise somersaults that take her almost as high — you’ll believe a woman can fly.

Until March 1

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in