New Vision Cirque's 'White' teeter-totters on razor-thin plot
"Art" is not a narrow term. An acrobat may achieve artistry forged of strength, technique and form, with or without the trappings of an opera performance.
Yet one can add to the other, as the proliferation of popular Cirque du Soleil shows have shown. Skillful amalgamations of music, special effects and awe-inspiring acrobatics have carved out a niche that is part art, part spectacle.
Now comes New Vision Cirque and Dance Company, an Orlando group with experience fielding shows to the meeting, convention and party circuit. Many of its members are ex-Cirque du Soleil performers.
New Vision made its debut as a theatrical company Friday night, with accompaniment from the musical combo Nova Era, at the Plaza Theatre in Orlando. It aspires to something artsy by combining modern dance with its acrobatic acts.
But the two coexisted uneasily on Friday's program, balancing teeter-totter like on the fulcrum of a razor-thin plot, the dance component held helplessly in the air while the acrobatics had the gravity.
The problem is: Many of the cirque performers are very, very good. Even trapped in the prosaic setting of the Plaza's wide, flat stage, they achieve magic. They climb and fly on wings of chiffon; balance upside down and one-handed atop one another's heads; spin, climb and contort themselves on ropes; juggle; and one balances a spinning five-foot diameter cube on his forehead. And they look spectacular doing it. That's artistry, if you ask me.
The dancers, on the other hand, perform the seemingly joyless task of providing thematic glue between these spectacle acts. Except the glue doesn't stick. And the dancing, in contrast to the acts they are uniting, isn't spectacular. The women do a sort of Bob Fosse-meets-robotics style wearing platinum wigs and white face. Supposed to be angels, they look more like zombie Stepford wives.
Men who are supposed to be guardians of darkness claw around on the floor and at the angels. Eventually ? hallalujah! ? some of them get up and do high-flying flips in the air, and we wonder why they were wasted so long.
And speaking of wasted, the more-or-less star of this show is Christine Van Loo, a seven-time national champion in sports acrobatics. She spends most of the show sitting on the side of the stage watching ? like Clara in Nutcracker's Land of the Sweets.
But make no mistake, when she does her aerial chiffon act at the end, you will be glad you waited. She climbs and tumbles, climbs again, does splits and arabesques and hangs like a bat, all with the strength of an athlete and the grace of a ballerina. Eventually she builds herself a cocoon 10 or 12 feet off the ground and waits for Mr. Right to come to the rescue. Then she and Alexander Streltsov have a beautiful aerial duet.
There may yet be a way to wed modern dance and acrobatics into a story-like ballet, but it's going to take some doing. And some dancers and dance choreography that shine as bright as these athletes.
Meanwhile, give me the straight cirque. I'll call it artsy enough
