At: United Center, 1901 W. Madison,
Parking Lot K ( Kooza ) ;
Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand,
Skyline Stage ( Gold )
Phone: 800-678-5440 ( Kooza ) ;
312-902-1500 ( Gold )
Runs through: Aug. 10 ( Kooza ) ;
Sept. 1 ( Gold )
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
We could watch contortionists all day. Nay, we could watch at them all week, bending their bodies like overcooked Angel Hair pasta and displaying the sort of freakazoid agility only possible if one has Jell-O water where one's ribs should be. So with the arrival of Cirque du Soleil's Kooza and China's Cirque Shanghai Gold, our summer took a decided turn for the fan-fucking-tastic.
Sure, there are O'Neill and Shakespeare available on plenty of area stages, not to mention the erudite deconstructionist nihilism of righteously bullying Dadaists devoted to Heavy, Deep and Relevant Art that prides itself on being wholly inaccessible to the philistines who compose the hoi polloi. Snore. What we really want come July is a gluttonously large bucket of extra-buttered popcorn, a tooth-rotting jumbotron-sized non-diet Mountain Dew and a front row view of boneless wonders in Ice Capades outfits. Boo-yah!
Both Kooza and Gold deliver that and more. The former is more elegant, featuring far superior costumes and sets as well as an ambiance of overwhelming magic. But the latter is also a winning extravaganza—The Mysterious Orient as interpreted by Liberace on steroids crossed with the opening Olympic Ceremonies via the Vegas Strip at midnight An ADD-friendly, 90-minute blowout of plate spinning, acrobatics and women in spangly unitards riding 12 to a bicycle, Cirque Shanghai is perfect for the tourist-astic frenzy that is Navy Pier. With tickets running from $15.50 to $29.50, Shanghai's populist portrait of shiny, happy Chinese artists and athletes is also way more affordable than Kooza, where adult tickets start at $55 and go all the way up to a whopping $215 ( which, to be fair, includes free popcorn and priority access to restrooms at intermission ) .
Both shows are worth every dang penny. Kooza is jaw-dropping from start to finish. Writer/director David Shiner has created a story ( of sorts ) that very loosely threads together a truly astonishing roster of aerial dancers, wheel-of-death-defying daredevils, teeterboard athletes and heart-stopping trapeze artists. It opens as a lonely, lovely kite-flying clown stumbles upon a massive, half-foreboding, half-enchanting castle that's unveiled as a whirl of billowing silk flies up to reveal a gorgeous, unknowable universe of hypnotic music and eye-poppingingly costumed alien creatures.
The little clown's adventures begin with a trio of seemingly spine-free contortionists: Julie Bergez, 12; Natasha Patterson, 16; and Dasha Sovik, 17. When they enter, limbs twined together like rubber bands, it's impossible to tell where one body ends and the next begins. The spectacle, like all of Kooza, is more than a bit disturbing. In all, Kooza is a kinetic panorama that's part shivering nightmare and part over-the-rainbow wonderland. One moment, the stage is overrun by scythe-bearing black skeletons and scurrying rats, the next by an adorable, gigantic shaggy dog that pees on the audience and woofs alongside a wild and crazy pickpocket who'll abscond with your nose ring, your wallet and your necktie in an undetectable twinkling. The upshot is a show that's both glorious and unsettling, an exquisite merger of beauty and danger.
Shanghai Gold, by contrast, is all sunny spun-sugar garishness, pure pop candy and cheerleading for China. The uber-talented performers twirl dazzling hula hoops by the dozens, stand on their heads—hands free—atop chairs stacked three stories high, and hurl themselves between, up and down poles with the agility of rain forest spider monkeys.
The sheer, in-your-face glitter gulch ambiance of the show is a perfect fit for Navy Pier: Gigantic lotuses bloom in neon, Technicolor riots, parasols spin with dizzying frenzy and China's bold, red-circle national flag flies with outspoken pride that ( almost ) banishes any thoughts of the country's treatment of Tibet or the human-rights abuses that have plagued its post-Cultural Revolution history.
