Cirque Éloize coming to Adrienne Arsht Center

Cirque Eloize iD at Adrienne Arsht Center

From director Jeannot Painchaud: “Sixteen artists on stage, thirteen circus disciplines, and the discovery of a world which is new to us, that of urban dances such as breakdance and hip-hop.”

Cirque Eloize iD

If you go

What: ‘Cirque Éloize iD’

Where: Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, through Sept. 4

Cost: $25-$75

Info: 305-949-6722, www.arshtcenter.org

When he was growing up in Poland, Krzysztof Soroczynski discovered a magical space on his grandmother’s farm. The boy, his brother and cousin turned a large barn into their personal playground, a place where they could build traps and tunnels, hide from each other, then jump out, leap from the tops of haystacks. There, Soroczynski got the first taste of his future life as an acrobat.

“For me, that barn was alive,” he says. “There were small animals and strange noises. The doors were like huge arms, hugging us.”

Decades later, Soroczynski has recreated his barn experience in the most uncommon of places: as the showpiece act in Cirque Éloize iD, this summer’s hoped-for blockbuster at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

Opening Tuesday and running through Sept. 4, the show is a made-for-the-stage urban circus, a blend of traditional circus arts (juggling, contortionists, aerialists, acrobats and the like), hip-hop, break dancing, electronica and other music. This interdisciplinary fusion is displayed in ever-changing combinations on a cityscape set which, at the right moment, reveals itself as Soroczynski’s barn-inspired invention: the trampowall.

“I wanted the wall to be alive, just like my childhood barn,” he says. “The acrobats move, and the trampoline reacts as well; the wall moves. It’s nearly like another show.”

Jeannot Painchaud, one of the artists who launched Cirque Éloize in 1993, is the company’s artistic director as well as creator-director of iD. The trampowall, a kind of vertical multilevel trampoline, came about, he explains, because the show “needed a masterpiece.”

He adds: “It’s eight minutes of people jumping everywhere, like kamikazes. Windows open, doors come out. It really represents when people take possession of a city, when it becomes their territory.”

iD is the seventh show from the Montreal-based Cirque Éloize. Cirque du Soleil, whose Alegría is running at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise through July 31, is the larger, better-known and more prolific Canadian circus company. But both troupes have partnered in presenting iD, and future collaborations are in the works.

Soroczynski observes the companies’ differences:

“Cirque du Soleil does huge shows under the huge top,” he says. “Cirque Éloize was developed for proscenium presentations. We have smaller casts of multi-disciplinary artists. Each cirque excels in its own specialties, and both are unique. But Cirque du Soleil will help us with new possibilities.”

Cirque Éloize iD follows such past summer hits as Slava’s Snowshow and Fuerza Bruta into the Arsht’s Ziff Ballet Opera House. Scott Shiller, the center’s executive vice president, argues that iD has the edginess of Fuerza Bruta and the family friendliness of Slava’s Snowshow.

“It’s engaging. You can bring the family and your abuela,” Shiller says. “At the same time, the sound and imagery are similar to Fuerza Bruta. It’s like Miami’s psyche. I think Jeannot created it for Miami, even if he didn’t know it at the time. It’s contemporary, exciting, nonverbal. I think the audience will feel very much at home.”

To bolster that connection, Shiller dreamed up an interactive media wall that will launch with iD, perhaps becoming part of the show’s future engagements or other shows at the Arsht. The center’s tech wizards are making the wall a reality, but Shiller explains the idea.

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Submited at Sunday, July 24th, 2011 at 3:00 pm on Uncategorized by ethan
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