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Cirque du Soleil‘s KOOZA™ Visits Miami Miami, FL - August 18, 2010 ---KOOZA
tells the story of The Innocent, a melancholy
According to the article, Guy Laliberté left his home in Montreal, Canada to wander the capitols of Europe. A fire-eating, idealistic, stilt-walking entertainer, Guy got to know the world of circus by performing for spare change and sleeping on park benches. Meanwhile, Gilles Ste-Croix, another stilt-walker, founded Club des Talons Hauts (The High Heels Club) in Baie St. Paul, Quebec as a meeting place for performers. The two met and put on shows all over the city. Laliberté pitched to the Quebec government the idea of funding a street performance festival and in 1984, Cirque du Soleil was born. Matthew’s article goes on to say that with the traditional circus business in decline, Laliberté and his team went in a different direction targeting a more mature audience that was well educated and demanding, producing a product that was more like theater than circus. Offering all the fun and thrills of a circus without the lions, tigers and bears (oh my), they presented their show with “intellectual complexity and artistic intensity”, Cope says. (Cope, Matthew. "25 Years of Cirque du Soleil." M The Vegas Lifestyle Summer 2009: 58-62. Print) With more than 5000 employees worldwide, including more than 1,200 artists,
Cirque du Soleil will present 20 different shows around the world
with close to 15 million people seeing one of these spectacular shows in 2010.
KOOZA™
Inspired by the Sanskrit
word “koza”, which means “box”,
KOOZA was chosen
David Shiner, the show’s writer and director says “KOOZA is about human connection and the
world of duality, good and bad”. The show begins with the Trickster bursting onto the scene
like a jack-in-the-box right in front of the Innocent. Between strength and fragility, laughter and smiles, turmoil
and harmony, KOOZA explores themes of identity, recognition and
power. With more than
175 costumes created by Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt, essences of
Alice in Wonderland, Baron von Munchaüsen and the
Wizard of Oz shine through.
Cirque du Soleil's
KOOZA™ in Miami
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loner in search of his
place in the world.
Combining two circus traditions, acrobatic performance and the art
of clowning, KOOZA returns to the origins of the circus as well as
because one of the underlying concepts of the production is
the idea of a “circus in a box”. 
on Chairs- where artists use them to create a
23-foot tower where they perform their balancing act, Contortion-
where young performers work in harmony and unison to bring a new
approach to the art of contortionism, and High Wire- suspended 25
feet above the stage the four tightroap walkers
will astound you.
These are only a few of the acts you'll see. Others include
the Teeterboard, Solo Trapeze, Unicycle Duo, and
Wheel of Death.
To keep the mood light,
Cirque du Soleil’s
artistry of slapstick clowns will keep you in stitches from laughter.
