This is my fourth or fifth Cirque du Soleil show I've seen. They're always visually stunning and highly entertaining. But this one, Toruk, based on James Cameron's movie Avatar, simply blew me away.
Cirque du Soleil's Toruk takes live performance to a new level, integrating the brilliant choreography, gymnastics, puppetry, huge structures, overhead rigging and costumery always associated with Cirque du Soleil with a collection of dazzling digital and light technologies.
The show offers a story built upon the blue aboriginal people, the Navi, James Cameron created in Avatar. It's a good story which uses the giant flying creature, the leonopterix-- or, in Navi, the Toruk.
Cirque du Soleil deeply and beautifully taps the rich vein of the characters, culture, nature and world that Cameron created, including the Ewa tree and it's floating seeds, dire wolves, flying banshees and multiple Navi tribes. If you are one of the hundreds of millions of fans of the movie Avatar Cirque's adaptation will satisfy your craving more more of flora and fauna of Pandora and the Navi people and culture.
James Cameron says that Cirque had a role in inspiring him to do the movie Avatar, so bringing Avatar to Cirque was a matter of going full circle. He describes Toruk as "very immersive, spectacular fun."
So far, I've simply described the parts of the show. The whole is so much more. Toruk uses digital projection in a way I've never seen before, taking a set that is continuously shapeshifting and overlaying colors, textures and motion that looks amazingly real, like you are immersed in a CGI movie.
#cirquedusoleil #toruk #avatar #s7 #igers #tissu #aerialsilks
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The scene in the video above is an example of how the show weaves digital, CGI-like visuals with choreographed acrobatic movement.
The video below shows how the props literally soar close to the audience.
The visuals throughout the show are so scintillating there isn't a single moment when there's a lag in your attention.
At the bottom of this article you'll find a video of the entire show, shot by a spectator from a front row seat. There's no comparison with being there, in the stadium, where the show literally comes to you, in your seat.
Performers literally three feet from my seat. Talk about immersive experience
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The Saturday night Philadelphia performance was definitely a family event. I saw many children under five years old.
evoking the scene, early in the movie Avatar, when flowers snap closed.
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One very creative aspect of Cirque's Toruk is the smartphone app they've created in partnership with SAP. It's a very bottom up way to include the audience in literally being a part of the show. When you sign in at the stadium venue you are asked to type in your seat, so the program knows where you are.
Before the show begins, you can use the app to attract lights swarming on the stage in your direction.
Once the show starts, you are prompted, at different times in the show, to hold your phone towards the stage, adding to the lighting effects. Below, you can see a shot of the phone hosting a very bright image of direwolf eyes, while Direwolf puppets-- puppets about eight feet long, operated by people in black-- are on the stage.
Note the puppeteers in black, manning the massive dire wolf puppets
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The Toruk puppet, operated by six puppeteers and at least on rigger, with the 'Toruk Makto' riding the puppet
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If you liked the kind of light display that Longwood Gardens has offered you'll love the experience Toruk provides.
Photos by Noah Kall . (except the closeup of the two blue men)
