If you’ve ever seen Cirque du Soleil’s fantastic Las Vegas show O, you no doubt marveled at the complexity of performances taking place in and out of water, and the way the show’s creators managed to make a large tank appear and disappear as needed.
Now imagine incorporating that complexity in one of the famous Montreal circus company’s traveling acts, and you’re ready to take in Luzia, its newest, and perhaps most ambitious road show ever.
Debuting in the United States this week in San Francisco–like many traveling Cirque shows, it opened initially in Montreal and Toronto–Luzia is described as a “waking dream” of Mexico, “a wondrous world that inspires you to explore your senses, enveloped in light and nurtured by rain.”
Founded in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global powerhouse with 21 different shows worldwide, including nine on tour and eight in Las Vegas alone. There’s no doubt that descriptions of its shows are often difficult for the average person to parse–in truth, many people enjoy Cirque performances simply for the terrific acrobatics, soulful music, and even the clowns, and not because of its charming, but often inscrutable backstories.
Although the Cirque’s touring effort, Amaluna, incorporates what is essentially a human-sized bowl of water, Luzia’s creators decided early on that the new production would become Cirque’s largest-ever traveling water show, Marshall Spratt, the show’s assistant technical director, told Fast Company.
Of Luzia’s 12 acts, four–or fully one third–utilize water in one way or another. There’s a 3,000-liter pool built under its stage, and a system that effectively rains on the performers, with images appearing in that water curtain thanks to a computer-controlled system.
Benjamin Courtenay, a 23-year-old Canadian solo artist who performs above and in the water in Luzia, said the show is the first time he’d worked with water, and that learning to do so presented a challenge.