Cirque Du Soleil’s LUZIA

In an effort to keep our family time fresh and interesting, I am constantly racking my brain to come up with different excursions and activities, and last Sunday was no exception. The weather started off sluggish, so I made plans to head over to Citi Field, where Cirque Du Soleil set up camp for its newest show, LUZIA. The kids had never been to a performance, and my last show was ages ago at Randall’s Island! LUZIA, the 38^th production since Cirque du Soleil first exploded onto the cultural landscape in a bid to recreate the meaning of circus, and inventing a performance genre of their own. LUZIA carries a theme from Mexico, and having just come back from there on a trip in early May, I was psyched to carry over my vacay vibe to New York City!

LUZIA takes you to an imaginary Mexico, like in a waking dream, where light (“luz” in Spanish) quenches the spirit and rain (“alluvia”) soothes the soul. With a surrealistic series of grand visual surprises and breathtaking acrobatic performances, LUZIA cleverly brings to the stage multiple places, faces and sounds of Mexico taken from both tradition and modernity. It’s a world filled with animalitos and fantastical incarnations of emblematic figures, like a woman dressed in the vain of Frieda Kahlo we know from history and paintings, who herself seemed always to be inventing a kind of iconic Mexican woman.

Integrating the element of water adds a level of acrobatic complexity never-before-seen under the Big Top at Cirque du Soleil. Cyr Wheel artists perform the unprecedented feat of rolling and spinning under the rain, while an aerialist suspended from a Trapeze flies and twirls through pouring showers. With computer synchronize water falling from above, the water scenes were artwork in their own right. In fact, Ryder claimed the water art as his favorite part of the show!

LUZIA catapults audiences from an old movie set, to the ocean to the semi-desert, to an undersea world, to a cent to the jungle, to a city alleyway, to a dance salon. The fascination of the Mexican people for the animal world is as evident in the country’s traditions and mythology as it is in its traditional arts and crafts. The world of LUZIA is populated by surrealistic animals of all sizes.

Cirque has acrobats, jugglers, contortionists, and comedy, but the superior level of talent and production value puts these performances in a category all alone. The talent, the story, the colors, the theme of LUZIA was simply spectacular. You definitely need to see if for yourself, and there is still plenty of time left. Performances run until June 9th, with tickets starting at $54!

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