CIRCUSINTOWN

WHAT: Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria

WHEN: Eight performances Sept. 1-5

WHERE: Interior Savings Centre

TICKETS: Ranging from $54.75 to $104.75

Don’t let travellers tell you that Cirque du Soleil in a hockey arena is not equal to the big-top Cirque shows that dot the planet.

Expect to be dazzled when Alegria comes to town for five days of performances, Sept. 1-5.

“It’s the best way to experience a live show,” said Carmen Ruest, director of creation for Alegria, from Montreal. “This is closest to the soul and mind of Cirque du Soleil. It embodies the real spirit and flavour that has made the Cirque what it is.”

Ruest ought to know. As a dancer and stiltwalker, she was involved with Cirque from its earliest origins of Quebec street performance in the 1970s. Guy Laliberté, the fire-breathing, space-travelling co-founder of Cirque — he became Canada’s first space tourist last year — calls her one of the pioneers.

“It was a great opportunity, playing in the street with some of the first street performers in Montreal.”

The performances expanded from drama to include acrobats and aerial artists.

“Montreal was opened to the world in 1967. Then, in the 1970s, it was a big-group creative collaboration in the arts. Nineteen eighty-four was the big year. That year saw many crazy things happening.”

Funding that provided the genesis for Cirque came as a result of celebrations tied to the 450th anniversary of Jacques Cartier’s voyage, which landed in present-day Quebec. Organizers wanted a touring act to travel around the province.

“That’s when Guy Laliberté came in.”

Ultimately, in collaboration with National Circus School people, Laliberté did more than create a show. In essence he reinvented the circus, synthesizing a variety of performance arts into a form of entertainment in a class all its own.

“It was inspired by (filmmaker Federico) Fellini,” she explained. “We’d all seen his movies in college at the time, and a circus school was starting in Montreal. It had started before Cirque.

“Two hundred and seventy people performed in 11 cities in the first year. Twenty-six years later there are 18 shows in cities all over the world.”

Saltimbanco, performed here two years ago, was the first Cirque show with an overarching theme and the first arena-style adaptation. This latest arena adaptation premiered last year.

Alegria is a Spanish word meaning joy, elation and jubiliation, but Spanish speakers will know it has a distinct nuance. It also connotes pain and suffering. The word is uttered repetitively in defiance of pain, a mantra declaring that life will go on. This duality is expressed through the narrative.

“Any show we create, we need an idea that becomes a theme that changes to inspiration and finally unravels tableaus.”

Billed as a “baroque ode to the energy, grace and power of youth,” Alegria features 55 performers and musicians from 15 countries. The story revolves around a family of birds — resplendent in lavish costumes — and the relationship between the Old Order and the New Order. A giant dome, representing powerful institutions, tops the set. Spiral ramps lead downwards, symbolizing the unknown.

“They got their inspiration from what’s going on on the planet right now. We’re starting to hear about globalization, meaning changes of power, dualities.”

Aerial, acrobatic and dance acts include the synchronized trapeze, the fire-knife dance and the power track in which an ethereal group of performers soar in the air, moving in unison and counterpoint as they reach spectacular heights and speeds on a giant trampoline that appears as if by magic from within the stage.

The score of the show — moving between jazz, pop, tango and klezmer — has proven to be the most popular of any Cirque creation, resulting in a best-selling soundtrack.

More than 10 million people have seen the production since it premiered in 1994.