**** Recommended If you and your family like holiday music, colorful costumes and awesome circus acts, Twas the Night Before by Cirque du Soleil is the show for you. Constantly changing lights illuminated the huge snowy shelf/slide on the Chicago Theatre stage as cast members leapt up and slid down! Cirque du Soleil performers never fail to amaze audiences with their strength and grace.
Six dancers wearing cute pink short outfits, Brooks Camei-Li (Canada), Yannick Fahey (Canada), Stéphanie Hébert (Canada), Isabel Rose Lacon (Miamisburg, OH), Kyana Lygitsakos (Canada), and Paul Kevin Ross (San Diego, CA) danced together and apart as they provided segues between the acts.
The story centered around a girl named Isabella, played by Alexane Leclerc (France) – who also performed on a bicycle – and her father, played by Theodore Adisson Spencer (Burlington, VT) – who performed while suspended from an Acrobatic Lamp – who were searching for Santa.
Roberto Carbajal (Mexico) juggled and Clowned and later as a Jolly Santa wearing a sparkly red coat with fringe.
The most unique act of the show involved, of all things, a hotel baggage cart – one of those gold carts you see in every hotel! After removing a stack of presents, Leah Simone Wolff (Canada) climbed on and started doing tricks using the various bars. If that wasn’t enough, when the whole cart was lifted high above the stage, she used it as a trapeze. Awesome!
Other fabulous acts:
- Two men, Maxine Piché – Luneau (Spain) and Tim Kriegler (Spain) performing on Duo Straps together and apart high above the stage.
- Chieh-Chu Chen (Taiwan), Tsung-ying Lin (Taiwan), Ioi Hei Long (Portugal), and Han-Yen Shen (Taiwan) performing Diabolo – moving an object (an illuminated Diabolo) rapidly along a rope. At one point, they brought two guys from the audience, wrapped them in rope and ran the Diabolo around them!
- Holler Zavatta (Spain) and Carmen Ribas Segura (Spain) performed tricks while Roller Skating on a small round platform
- Priscila Teixeira Santos (Brazil) performed an aerial routine suspended by her hair.
- Wearing gaily striped pajamas, Roberto Alvarez Serrano (Spain), Christian Bazan Jaime (Spain), Eduardo Bermejo Galera (Spain), Josue Chavez (Columbia), Nicolas Nieto Teusa (Colombia), Richard Anderson Sanchez (Colombia), and Felipe Zuluaga Giraldo (Colombia) did an awesome tumbling act on and off a table. Later they returned wearing reindeer costumes to perform Hoop Diving, moving the hoops higher and higher.
Twas the Night Before by Cirque du Soleil ran through December 28th at the Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State Street, Chicago. Running time is about one hour, 20 minutes, no intermission. Tickets starting at $45 are available at www.chicagotheatre.com/cirque or at the box office.