Tag Archives: Circus

Cooking Confessions – Tohu Scores Again


I adore the Tohu – it’s a specially built building for Circus arts built on the campus of the Cirque du Soleil here in Montreal. It houses – along with a variety of circus performances throughout the year – a school for Circus arts. So it’s a multipurpose building – with very cool seating options, super high ceilings to allow for the kinds of high performances we expect from acrobats and the like, plus great sight lines. Not a bad seat in a very big house.

We have season tickets – which means that we picked out 3 of their 6 different performances to see this year. For us – this is a minimum – normally we opt for 5 or even 6 of their offerings, but our travel plans this year cut out a lot of the options.

But on to the review of Cooking Confessions – or in French – Cuisine & confessions

Clearly the theme of the night was going to be food – but since the performers are the highly talented, multi-lingual Sept Doigt a la main – 7 fingers on a hand – one can expect that food isn’t going to be the only thing being tossed around. And the set – a multi-level kitchen with a working stove, a sink,  a fridge, and of course rolling tables, hidden furniture, and hooks descending from the ceiling was quite the sight.

We sat down – and were immediately approached by one of the performers – a young lady from Argentina who invited me up on stage to visit her kitchen and help fold wash clothes. Victor was invited up by a young man with rasta hair – who confided in him that Basket Ball was his favorite sport. Other members of the audience were also invited to visit the stage – with its surprisingly springy floor. Despite the paint job that made it look like hardwood – in fact it was padded to give the performers extra spring! Very neat – and quite surprising.

Our guides escorted us back to our seats – and went on to find other members of the audience willing to walk up on stage.

Cool part – since we’d ‘chatted’ with the performers – we felt more part of the action – and this lent an added layer of personal interest to the later tossing and jumping around that was bound to happen.

The party begins when the audience is assembled – and starts with food confessions – performer after performer talking about their food memories – or listing their favorite foods – from the sublime to the desert! One incredibly thin gal, who one can guess never actually swallows anything, listed nothing but deserts – each with more love in her voice than the last.

While the confessions are going on – each performer takes center stage in their turn. There is a remarkable juggler – juggling kitchen tools of course. He does a wonderful turn with stainless steel bowls – and ends his act juggling over-sized wire whips – 7 at a time. Stunning.

The pole dancer/climber/acrobat was probably my personal favorite. He’d come over to chat with us in the lead-up section – so we knew that he’d been injured and has a wrap on one hand. To say he worked thru the pain would be obvious. He ran up and down the 50 foot pole with a grace and a style that the squirrels in my back yard would envy. Several times he climbed to the top – and then apparently let go – dropping down to inches from the ground before grabbing hold to stop. Once he even did it head first. Man – that guy was outstanding.

My husbands favorite performer was the young man with rastas. His specialty – jumping thru hoops. But this is a ‘cooking’ show – so he starts off jumping thru the kitchen cabinets – and graduates to jumping thru people posing with legs and arms forming the hoops. My top favorite jump – hands and feet first – bum in back – thru the looped leg of one of the other female performers. How does he do that.

During the cooking demonstration – they toss eggs – the ones that got thrown to the audience were fake – the ones that got thrown around the stage were real, and got cracked into the stainless bowls for future cooking. They even made banana bread – and had everyone in the massive audience set their iphone alarms for 36 minutes. When they went off – the bread was baked to be sliced and served to lucky members of the audience.

Standing ovation – of course.

On until November 6th at Tohu. But not to worry. If you miss this one – these ober-talented performers will be back next year with a new show – and there is still an entire Tohu season to enjoy.

Tohu – one of the Great places in Montreal – don’t miss it.

 

Mi Otro Yo – Kinda weird – some liked it – but not for kids


We were split on this recent offering at Tohu (see my Tohu blog a few days ago – or check out the Tohu website – http://tohu.ca/en/home.html)

For the kids in the audience – the results were rather mixed. And since there were some fairly disturbing parts of the performance – I’m not surprised.

One really neat piece that confused and upset the kids had the two very talented performers moving along a red wall – leaving their hands in place as they went. Cool effect. For a moment you’d have one head – 4 hands – and then a 5th hand would appear holding a sign. Very neat. What upset the kids was that after they were done with this piece – 3 of the ‘hands’ stayed behind. One little kid kept asking her father – but he left his hands…

In another brilliant sketch – the two actors put on a suit of clothes – creating a visual third person composed of the right hand and right leg (acting like a left leg) of one fellow  and the left hand and left leg (acting like a right leg) of the other. I think you’d have to have seen it.

Two people in our group thought the entire piece was awesome – I personally thought that there were brilliant bits – and much less brilliant bits.

Parts I didn’t care for – the tumbling with a book – yes it’s hard to do – but visually boring. And the piece I really found pointless – and way over the top disturbing – the part that involved pretending to kill a chicken – and then having the chicken come to life and ‘eat’ the guy. I guess it might have been good theatre – but I found it upsetting – and very kid-inappropriate.

Wouldn’t go to see them again – bottom line. But it wouldn’t discourage me from going to Tohu later this year when the student’s perform.