One expects excellence from a Cirque du Soleil show. It’s as high as one can get in the world of acrobatics and performance. It’s a brand unto itself, all you have to do is say you’re going to a Cirque show and you have an idea of what to expect. That fact is completely put in its head in Volta. It starts out similar to other shows, where a loosely constructed story is laid out. However, even as you’re watching the first act, which was a team of people jumping rope; it’s obvious that Volta has an energy that you haven’t seen in a Cirque du Soleil show in a while. For me it was evident that the performers were having fun. Sure they were jumping rope and doing Double Dutch, moving as quickly as touching the ground seven times in one second. They were doing that; but the performers were grinning from ear to ear, high-fiving one another and utterly enjoying themselves.
It’s not that the performers in other shows were dour or joyless. It’s just the sense of spontaneous abandon that was in most of the acts featured in Volta. The inspiration for Volta came from natural play. As the production travels the world they noticed how children play. It’s because of those observations that Volta has more of a free-form, casual and adventuresome spirit than any of the other shows we’ve seen.
It captures this without watering down the danger, skill or uniqueness that people have come to love and expect from a Cirque du Soleil show. For example, there’s an act that features a woman sitting in the middle of the stage. She has her hair tightly wound up with a metal loop exposed. A carabineer of sort is then lowered from above where she’s latched in. The cable picks her up-by the hair as she continues to sit in yoga positions, contort and bend, all while being swung about the stage by her hair.
There must be a metal support beam that goes down her back towards her spine. It’s an almost invisible head band, something like Wonder Woman would wear was another thought that I had. No, it’s just that she is a trained professional and that human hair is much stronger than I thought it was.
Cirque always has acts that make the ordinary extraordinary. What happens in Volta is still that, but they’ve made the acts approachable too. In our show there were three slight mistakes that happened. While swinging across the stage, about 30 feet up, one of the right artists missed the right ring and had to make another approach. Yikes. That show of strength might not have been seen by everyone in attendance, but those who saw it certainly marveled at the artist’s strength even more.
The other two mistakes were played for laughs by the performers on stage. One of them politely mimed to the other person they were working with if they could attempt the yo-yo juggling stunt again. Of course they agreed and the stunt was done in a seemingly effortless manner. Granted they’ve practiced for thousands of hours and are doing something that most people could never even hope to duplicate.
Volta also incorporates some stunning BMX stunts. The stage is blown out, just a little bit, so that the cycle professionals can navigate the jumps and ramps without running into the other three. The trampoline artists also upped their game by bringing a faux apartment building on stage for them to jump through, on or along the side of.
When we saw the introductory video at home, before seeing Volta I thought it was Cirque, with just a hint of X-Games. Having now seen the show I’m more of the mind that it’s a Cirque du Soleil show, but one that is spontaneous, alive and never the same. In speaking with a couple of the performers after the show they agreed with the assessment that Volta allows for more ‘play’ between the professionals. It’s the same caliber Cirque du Soleil, just with a bit more a grin and a wink. For us, the result was much more fun that we’d highly recommend to anyone who is looking for a fun night out.
We were provided with passes to review the show. Volta is showing in Atlanta at Atlantic Station through January 5, 2020.
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