Category Archives: Circus

Still crazy for Cirque’s Koozå

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ABOVE: The astonishing “Wheel of Death” act in Cirque du Soleil’s Koozå features Jimmy Ibarra Zapata and Angelo Lyezkysky Rodriguez. BELOW: Victor Levoshuk balances on a stack of chairs 23 feet high. Photos by Matt Beard & Bernard Letendre; costumes by Marie Chantale Vaillancourt. Cirque du Soleil 2022


Let’s be honest about Cirque du Soleil: sometimes the world’s most popular circus is captivating, enchanting and everything you want a modern (non-animal) circus to be. Other times, the experience can be flat, uninvolving and/or pretentious. Happily, one of their best shows in recent memory, Koozå (written and directed by David Shiner, who has roots in the Bay Area circus scene), is still running and is back under the big top at Oracle Park in San Francisco.

I first reviewed Koozå in November 2007, about six months after its premiere, and everything I loved about the show then is still very much part of the experience. (Read my review here) The Act 2 showstopper, “The Wheel of Death,” is still among the most thrilling acrobatic performances I’ve ever seen. Jimmy Ibarra Zapata and Angelo Lyezkysky Rodriguez ride a giant, suspended contraption that spins like a propeller and has a stationary ring at either end that the acrobats flip inside of and on top of in the most alarming ways.

Another highlight comes in Act 2 with Victor Levoshuk’s balancing act on an ever-growing stack of chairs. He reaches a height of 23 feet, and though he’s tethered for safety, his display of strength and grace is remarkable.

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Director/writer Shiner’s greatest accomplishment with Koozå is how light and charming it feels. The clowns are (mostly) not obnoxious, and at Wednesday’s opening night show, the audience interaction with a game guy named Tim was stellar and quite funny. The live music (by Jean-François Côté) has an epic, cinematic sweep (and a kick-ass horn section) but also isn’t afraid to get funky. It’s especially satisfying that drummer Eden Bahar gets a moment in the spotlight after his stunning work during the “Wheel of Death” routine.

The costumes by Marie Chantale Vaillancourt have the usual bedazzled leotard look, but she gets to have a lot of fun with the “Skeleton Dance” dance number that feels like a mash-up of the Day of the Dead and an old Vegas showgirl revue.

Other enjoyable acts in Koozå include a trio of contortionists (Sunderiya Jargalsaikhan, Ninjin Altankhuyag, Sender Enkhtur) who seem to defy ordinary rules of human biology (like having internal organs or bones); a highwire act that really gets exciting when they pull out the little bicycles; and a hipster hoopster (Aruna Bataa) who could make a case for glittery hula-hoops as couture.

One note about San Francisco’s busy Mission Bay. If you think it’s going to be easy to park down there, think again. Give yourself plenty of time and make a plan (like take Muni or ride share). It seems like new buildings pop up in what used to be parking lots every day. And double check to see if there’s a Warriors game at the Chase Center (like there was on Wednesday night). On such nights, traffic and parking can be their own San Francisco version of the “Wheel of Death.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Cirque du Soleil’s Koozå continues through March 17 under the big top at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Tickets start at $39. Running time is just over two hours (including a 25-minute intermission). Visit www.cirquedusoleil.com/kooza. The show moves to San Jose April 18-May 26.

Dear San Francisco still charms, dazzles

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The human-scale circus acts in Dear San Francisco are as captivating as ever as the show continues to evolve in its second year at Club Fugazi. Photos courtesy of Dear San Francisco and Club Fugazi Experiences


Dear San Francisco, the dazzling acrobatic spectacular that had the audacity to set up shop in Club Fugazi after the historic nearly half-century run of Beach Blanket Babylon’s, is now in its second year. The show will always hold in a place in my heart as only the second in-person show I attended after a year and a half of watching theater on screens. That experience was mind blowing, not least because I was in a crowd of people who seemed to be as happy as I was just to be in the same room.

And then there was the show – co-conceived and co-directed by Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider of the amazing cirque nouveau troupe The 7 Fingers – a thrilling, up-close experience with nine acrobats/dancers/athletes/charmers who wrote a love letter to San Francisco with their bodies and their startling hold on the audience and each other.

I had the pleasure of returning to Dear San Francisco recently to see how the show has evolved since October 2021. I still stand by everything in my original review (read it here), and, if anything, I enjoyed the show even more simply because the performers are are so relentlessly talented and charismatic.

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As with any circus-type venture, the acts may change as performers come in and out of the show. I missed the unicycle and teeter-board acts that blew the top off my head the first time around, but the 90-minute show (which seems to have trimmed its subtitle, A High-Flying Love Story) is still bursting with thrills and heart and humor.

A shout out to the entire cast – Sereno “Reno” Aguilar Izzo, Dominic Cruz, Devin Henderson, Maya Kesselman, Oliver Layher, Shengan Pan, Chloe Somers Waller, Enmeng Song and Kyran Walton – for their stunning virtuosity and their extraordinary teamwork. Though the performers have their specialties, it also seems like everyone does a little bit of everything, including playing instruments, reciting beat poetry and creating gorgeous stage pictures in tandem with the projections by Alexander V. Nichols.

Dear San Francisco has beauty, power, excitement, laughs and abundant reminders of San Francisco’s pleasures (and occasional pains). It’s hard to imagine a more worthy successor to Beach Blanket or a show that deserves to have just as long a theatrical life.

Here’s a lovely segment from the show:

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Dear San Francisco is selling tickets through July 30 at Club Fugazi, 678 Green St., San Francisco. Running time is 90 minutes (no intermission). Tickets are $49-$99. Call 415-273-0600 or visit clubfugazisf.com

Climb aboard ACT’s dazzling Passengers

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ABOVE: Andrew Sumner and Beto Freitas in Passengers , from The 7 Fingers, at American Conservatory Theater’s newly christened Toni Rembe Theater, through Oct. 9. BELOW: Santiago Rivera (center) and the ensemble. Photo credit: Kevin Berne


Going along for the ride in Passengers, the season opener for American Conservatory Theater, is one of the most thrilling experiences of the year.

This shouldn’t be surprising given that the show, a glorious blend of dance, theater and circus, comes from the ever-inspiring troupe The 7 Fingers and is directed ,written and choreographed by one of that group’s founders, Shana Carroll.

For the few weeks while Passengers is running on the stage of ACT’s newly re-christened Toni Rembe Theater (named for an extraordinary patron of the Bay Area arts), we have the great honor of having two 7 Fingers shows in town. The other is the long-running Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi. And what these two shows have in common is the marvelous, entertaining and often thrilling showcase of the human body in motion. There is poetry and drama and humor and sexiness in that movement, and a whole lot more. There are circus acts you may recognize, but there’s always a theatrical spin, a novel approach and/or a delicious charge to the choreography that gives it all a unique charm.

Passengers is all about train travel. In the opening moments, the troupe of nine begins breathing together as if in a meditation class. Then those breaths turn into the rhythmic sound of a train rolling down the tracks, and there’s no looking back.

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We are in stations, on bridges, in tunnels, inside the passenger cars exploring relationships among lovers, friends and strangers. The (mostly) pre-recorded musical score by Colin Gagné and the stunning visual designs by Johnny Ranger on Ana Cappelluto’s set conjure cinematic impressions of travel, with even the shadows of Éric Champoux’s lighting design adding to the beauty of the performances.

Once this whole enterprise gets moving, there is no let-up in the onslaught of gorgeous stage pictures. Just the movement and the detail in Carroll’s choreography is enough to keep your eyes finding fascinating places to land. But then there are the acts themselves, performed with such panache and gobsmacking skill. You’ve seen people juggle, walk the tightrope and swing on a trapeze before. But never quite like this.

Gravity is defied on ribbons and poles, and the finale, a sort of trapeze act that only involves human bodies and no actual trapeze, is filled with such power and grace that you may forget to breathe.

Rarely do you experience such high art that provides such thorough entertainment. There’s no pretension here – just the aim of creating something beautiful and amazing and even occasionally emotional. There’s spoken word, some live singing and some live ukulele playing. It doesn’t have the cold machine feel of some other modern circuses – this is warm and human and exciting.

At 100 minutes, Passengers flies by, even though the show never feels rushed. It’s a testament to Carroll and The 7 Fingers that this is one journey you just don’t want to end.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Passengers by Shana Carroll and The 7 Fingers continues through Oct. 9. Length: 100 minutes. Tickets range from $25-$110 (subject to change). Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Call 415-749-2228 or visit www.act-sf.org.

A joyful circus bounces into Club Fugazi

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Ruben Ingwersen (left) and Jérémi Levesque hit remarkable heights in Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story, the exuberant new show at Club Fugazi. Below: Devin Henderson jumps through the hoop. Photo credit: Kevin Berne


If it were possible to actually see the heart of San Francisco, it might look like the beautifully diverse group of awe-inspiring acrobats bouncing around the stage in Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story. And this is not just any stage: this is Club Fugazi, the storied North Beach theater built in 1913 where Beach Blanket Babylon ran for most of its nearly five-decade run.

That’s a tough act to follow, but you know what? COVID is even tougher. And the glorious artists behind this enterprise rise to the challenge and then some. As Bay Area theater slowly begins to wake up from its 18-month imposed nap, it’s positively bracing to be in the presence of not only the wonderful performers of Dear San Francisco but also the loving, funny, thrilling show itself.

Co-conceived, created and directed by Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider for their company, The 7 Fingers, this is a circus show that aims to share what’s lovable, what’s quirky and what’s annoying about San Francisco. Such a show could run for six hours at least, but this one runs around 90 minutes, and, happily, it doesn’t get hung up on SF stereotypes or get too sappy or silly about what makes this place unique. It takes an open-hearted approach and embraces these 7×7 miles by creating a portrait of a city that feels as wonderful and exciting as it feels unknowable. This isn’t a schmaltzy show built for tourists, but any living, breathing human (tourist or not) would be inclined to enjoy it and its robust portrait of the City by the Bay.

Carroll and Snider come to the world of the modern circus through San Francisco’s own chapter of circus renown, specifically through the Pickle Family Circus (Carroll was a trapeze artist and Snider’s parents founded the Pickles when she was 4). We tend to think of modern circus in terms of Cirque de Soleil, but I have to admit a certain weariness for that empty corporate spectacle. Give me a pulsing, human troupe like The 7 Fingers any day, and in addition to reveling in the performers’ skills, I’ll also enjoy their camaraderie, the light in their eyes and the magic they can create with their bodies and very little else.

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The nine-person cast is charming, sexy, funny and gobsmacking. If you’ve ever been to Fugazi, you know it’s not a very big theater. How Beach Blanket managed to get those giant props and hats onto that small stage is one of the wonders of the world. And 7 Fingers goes even further toward making this an intimate experience by putting audience members on the stage. Those folks almost end up with acrobats in their laps several times, but it’s hard to imagine anyone complaining.

There’s a poetic fluidity to the sequence of events, and the acrobatic acts themselves are woven into captivating vignettes about, for instance, falling in love in Golden Gate Park (which involves a trapeze and, apparently, a deal with gravity to take some time off). Or there’s the unicyclist who seems to be dancing and taking over the city on one wheel. It’s aggressive and beautiful at the same time (and the effect often appears more like rollerskating than unicycle riding).

Diving through a twirling hoop is set against recitations from the Beat poets, and the magnitude of an earthquake is measured by two men on a teeterboard (and it is seismic). Even Sam Spade and an enigmatic, truth-challenged client get in on the act with white balls (sort of like smaller volleyballs) that allow for a startling blend of film noir and juggling.

Tech folks get a mild skewering in a bit called “Privatize This,” and a hand balancing act becomes poetry in motion involving the beauty of redemption. My favorite act – the one that literally made me hold my breath – takes place on the stage-to-ceiling poles with a level of strength and control that is mind boggling.

Dear San Francisco really is a high-flying love story. There are people in love mixed into its portrait of a beautiful city, but it’s really a love story between us and the city itself. At one point, performers read postcards written by audience members (and some famous folk), and at Tuesday’s opening-night performance, one postcard said something to the effect of, “San Francisco, you have broken my heart and filled it over and over again,” which makes this place almost impossible to quit. How do you capture a historic city in flux? With a pile of irresistible acrobat performers, that’s how. This living, breathing love letter of a show finds joy in every leap, razzle-dazzle in every flip and absolute joy in every moment.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Tickets for Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story are on sale through Dec. 30. Tickets are $35-$89. Call 415-273-0600 or visit clubfugazisf.com. Club Fugazi is at 678 Green Street., San Francisco.

COVID Protocol
Club Fugazi requires proof of full vaccination with valid ID upon entry for all guests 12 years and up. Acceptable forms of proof include your physical vaccination card, a photo of your vaccination card, or a digital vaccination record. (California residents can request a digital vaccination record at https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/). Masks will be required for all patrons (including children) at all times. Unvaccinated children between the ages of 5 – 11 will be able to attend with vaccinated adult(s).