Special Times with Lesley and Cirque de Soleil!!

One of the adventures I forgot to highlight was the extraordinary opportunity to see Cirque de Soleil: Alegria with Lesley! She got tickets to see them through her internship. Her supervisor approached her and a few others and said, "You may not be getting paid, but there are some perks" and slapped down the $70/person tickets! THANK YOU LESLEY FOR CHOOSING ME TO COME WITH! It was a night of entertainment and wonder that I will never forget! :)


The seats were in just the right spot: above the main floor, but not in the upper balcony. We sat next to one of her fellow interns and her mom. As it turns out, all the people in the floor seats were able to interact with the clowns. Yes, clowns! *I'll go into that later* I had never been to the Target Center before, so it was fun to explore. To get there, we chose to park at the Mall of America and take the Lightrail to the station which let us off a few blocks away from the Target Center. With plenty of time to spare, we were able to get some snacks (popcorn and nachos yumm!) and settle in to our seats. The stage was interesting to look at with all the ropes hanging from the ceiling and the patterns on the floor. It was a forest like theme with cool greens, blues and some yellow for highlights. You can check out the photo! We were a lot closer than the picture makes it seem.

Overall, I would describe Cirque de Soleil as a modern circus complete with live music, singers, clowns and acrobats. The costumes were mostly fairy-like to go with the forest theme. But they varied depending on the type of talent they had. The show started out with the clowns and the band came in playing instruments like the sax and accordion. The role of the clowns were to be the comic relief (by mocking the acrobats) and fill in the gaps between acts so the other performers had time get ready for the next act. They were quite amusing! Sometimes they interacted with the audience in the floor seats. Once, they brought a guy up on stage and he did everything they asked! Including tumbling, jumping and speaking in their weird little non-language. It was really funny!

The performers were all incredibly talented! While the band played/sang original (beautiful!) music, we enjoyed:
1. A trapeze artist on a high swing (very lovely, but a little nerve racking cuz she was swinging above us!)
2. A group called the Power Track who bounded through the air with help from trampolines built into the stage floor!
3. An incredibly buff hand balancer who rotated himself on little pedestals(Jacob Black has nothing on this guy's abs! haha),
4. Male fire dancers with leather outfits (keehee)
5. A ribbon dancer who could hoola hoop on every part of her body (including her knee! still can't figure that one out...)
6. A "flying man" who swung himself from a centralized rope. Kinda like they did in Billy Elliot.
7. Russian Bars: basically, human spring boards! There were two guys holding each board and a guy in the middle flipping again and again, higher and higher!
8. Two contortionists (twins, I think) who formed shapes together on a rotating platform. They creeped us out a bit...
9. The grand finale: Aerial High Bar routine (most of the second act, mostly because the nets below them took up the entire stage). These guys were so graceful and fearless! It was incredible!

Ultimately, I can die happy after seeing this! I would recommend it to anyone who can get decent priced tickets. The quality is so high, the feats so unbelievable, that it's a must see!

Thanks again, Lesley, for choosing me to share this special performance with. Love you!

Next Time:

Matt Kroll comes to Visit!

The Movie Review Special! *maybe I'll see Inception! :)

Take care everyone! 

All my love,

~Jess