Feb 20. Darkness falls over the audience of the opening night of the Fukuoka leg of Cirque du Soleil\u2019s Ovo Tour. All eyes face the one illuminated object in the room, the giant egg from which the performance gets its Portugese name. Before it, a cricket is perched on the stem of a dandelion, silhouetted so completely that egg becomes moon, with night stretching to each corner of the tent. Strobes flash to the crescendoing string motif of Beethoven\u2019s 5th and in a flash of darkness and silence the egg is gone.<\/p>\n
The rising stage lights reveal an early dawn, and we are introduced to the community of insects about which the show\u2019s fifteen acts are based as well as the enigmatic and sexually charged \u2018Foreigner’, played by Hironi Taniguchi, the first Japanese to land the role of principal clown in Cirque Du Soleil\u2019s thirty year history. His introduction comes in the form a long and drawn out “Ko-Ni-Chi-Wa”, bringing out a wave of laughter from his home audience. <\/p>\n
From here, the show moves into its acts, which combine many of the traditional feats of the circus with a stunning level of artistry to create the hybrid of performance art and circus that has made Cirque Du Soleil so successful. The aerial silk act, for example, in which a performer performs on hanging lengths of silk, becomes a chrysalis from which a butterfly emerges, the silk drapes transforming into extended wings, an act of extraordinary talent and beauty. <\/p>\n