!VAR HAGENDOORN

The Show Must Go On

Watch this excerpt from Kooza, the latest travelling show by the Cirque du Soleil. You may want to go straight to 3:00 or watch the entire clip.

This is what it means to be a professional. There is a slight hesitation in the landing on his second try, because he is now no longer relying on automatic posture control, but is unconsciously or rather unwillingly more conscious of what he is doing. Because of the many variables involved you can only perform this after many hours of rehearsal to the extent that all variables are controlled unconsciously. But wow.

This is also what I love about live performance, to see people in the act of performing.

It's nice to compare the above excerpt with this clip. At about 5:00 one of the performers trips, but this is pure showmanship, he (apparently) does it in every show, but what a showman!

By the way, from watching some of the clips, Kooza looks like one of Cirque du Soleil's best shows in recent years. Just plain acrobatics and clown acts. Their production designs continue to fill me with awe. I still don't like the music though.

As to walking on tightropes, there should be no difference between walking a tightrope suspended 1, 10 or 100 foot above the ground. Just walk. But there is, because the consequence of falling from a greater height due to whatever cause, makes you more aware of your body and this conscious awareness interferes with the motor control system in the brain.

The last act in the tightrope section, which starts at around 7:00 in the clip, is pretty awesome in this respect, because it involves a doubling of the tightrope: an acrobat balancing on a tightrope suspended between two acrobats balancing on a tightrope. Seeing is believing.

PS: I've updated the YouTube links as of December 2009.

PS2: According to a commenter on YouTube the first "incident" is also intentional and part of every show. Even so, it works. They even got me!