Cirque du Soleil

Had a wonderful day yesterday with dad and Marilyn. I hit the big three-oh! this coming weekend so we kicked off the celebrations by going to see Cirque du Soleil.

We began with lunch at a Turkish restaurant near Baker Street. It was truly scrummy and the inside was decorated with painted flower patterns, large golden plates and an open fireplace. Very cosy.

Cirque du Soleil themselves were wicked awesome. They define visual art. This year's production was called Totem. Each act told a story, rich in imaginary and imagination. It played on the theme of evolution, from the primordial ooze and the first creatures to emerge, through the growth of ape to man, our spiritual awakening and our modern-day scientific era:

We are the primeval waters from which we have emerged...

As the programme says. I've scoured Google for some pictures:

Stunning opener - a human glitter ball brings first light to the earth.

Life awakens.

Juggling balls of light around the walls of a smoke-filled tube.

Cirque du Soleil go to town on everything, constantly finding new ways of performing classic circus acts including the high wire, trapeze and juggling. Their costumes are stunning, their music atmospheric and their stage is out of this world. The show was performed against projections of water and earth on a spherical platform with a walkway that could disappear, extend and double back on itself. At one point, images were shown of shadows swimming underwater, and as these shadows reached the edge of the stage, they transformed into performers.

We caught the matinee of their last UK performance, I think they're headed to New York now, but keep an eye on the Cirque du Soleil website for tour dates, venues and shows (there's several in different parts of the world).

We ended the day at the champagne bar in Paddington, waiting for the train home. It is a little strange drinking champagne in the middle of a station. Their most expensive bottle is £1,200 - I'm not sure that if you were going to spend that amount of money, you'd choose that particular venue; however they do a wonderful classic champagne cocktail.

1. Take one champagne flute and drop a brown sugar cube into it
2. Add a couple of drops of Angostura Bitters
3. Add a measure of cognac (they used Hennessy)
4. Top up with champagne

Very nice indeed.

I leave you with some music from Totem: