Cirque Du

Cirque du Soleil, the international circus troupe noted for eerie live music and spectacular feats of human strength and daring, is making a brief stop at Temple University's Liacouras Center on its national tour. Quidam is one of many Cirque shows, and although it seems diminished from their circus shows I saw five or 10 years ago, including an earlier version of Quidam , there are still some reasons to gasp or murmur, "Amazing!" The show attempts a narrative: A little bored girl at home with her parents is suddenly spirited away to a place of wonder.

It may have the big top, the clowns and the acrobats, but don't expect Cirque du Soleil to look anything like the circus of your childhood. "The only thing we have in common is the word circus," says Sylvie Galarneau, Cirque du Soleil's artistic director. "We have the same roots, but there is not really a link. For a traditional circus, the acts and the animals were enough. . . . For Cirque it is really based on the performance itself. . . . We add a story line and fill it with emotions.

Cirque du Soleil's Varekai is, by the end of the first act, a tribute to the human body. By the end of the second act, Varekai is positively elating, and here's one sure way to tell: At its first U.S. performance, Philadelphians were on their feet minutes before the show ended. And it wasn't to dash to their cars and beat the crowds. This was Thursday night, and people weren't popping from their chairs for a standing ovation, either; that came later, and induced four curtain calls.

The last time Cirque du Soleil made a stop in Philadelphia, with its 2004 show, Alegria, I confess I started to have doubts about the troupe. Though a longtime fan of Cirque's highly theatrical take on circus arts, the surprisingly clunky Alegria made me wonder if success had spoiled the Canadian company. Maybe it just wasn't possible to turn into an international entertainment conglomerate running seven touring shows and six permanent shows (in Las Vegas casinos and Walt Disney World)

In an acrobatics studio with a 60-foot ceiling, eight figures in psychedelic-patterned cat suits swing from tall poles in an airborne ballet. Down the hall, in a workshop lined with giant rabbit ears and Medusa headpieces, a woman crafts a turquoise wig whose ponytail is made of plastic tubes. Next door, surrounded by iridescent green boots and red high-heeled sneakers, a shoemaker fashions a blue slipper as soft as a glove. This is "the Studio," Cirque du Soleil's immense, sleekly modern, custom-built headquarters.

The circus has come to town again! As you approach Cirque du Soleil's big blue and yellow tent on South Broad Street, kite-flying dancers greet you and suddenly the world seems a festive place. Cirque's brand of circus is full of music and exotic costumes and clowns, as well as breathtaking acts of daring and skill. (No animals.) This installment's title comes, my press kit tells me, from the Sanskrit word koza, which means something like "box" or "treasure chest. " And after the usual jolly pre-show pandemonium of clowns chasing clowns and flinging popcorn in audience members' hair, there appears a sweet little person with a kite.

They fly through the air with the greatest of ease. They stand on lightbulbs en pointe while balancing other performers on their shoulders. They dive through hoops with the grace of dolphins, with no water to cushion their landings. And when they are done, the acrobats, dancers, gymnasts, jugglers, contortionists, stilt-walkers, musicians and clowns who perform with Cirque du Soleil are mighty hungry. "Look, he just took a second dessert," teased American-born Amrapali Ambegaokar, 23, who dances the role of an exotic water goddess in the production of Dralion that runs through Nov. 4 under the big top at Broad Street and Washington Avenue.

Eiko Ishioka dressed Jennifer Lopez in a suit of leather armor for the surreal thriller The Cell, put Gary Oldman in a scarlet robe with a 22-foot train in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and sent John Lithgow rolling down an immense circular ramp she designed for the Broadway production of M. Butterfly. For her latest project, the designer makes a creative statement with clown pants. Yellow and egg-shaped, they make performer John Gilkey look like an improbably tall baby bird bursting out of a shell.

During intermission on opening night at Cirque du Soleil's Quidam, a woman who had stepped outside for a breath of soggy air was overheard telling a friend, "I love listening to them sing in French!" Hermann Rorschach would have approved. Like the Swiss psychiatrist who presented inkblots to patients and asked them to interpret what they saw, Cirque's artistic creators write songs with invented language. With lines like "Pristi la dova con ta la dova michti grizzia," the lyrics are a musical cioppino, an almost intelligible linguistic stew: Esperanto with ear-y hints of Turkish, Russian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and almost any other tongue you can imagine.

It performs in a place that looks like a circus. A big tent covers a large ring, and spectators sit in temporary seats munching popcorn and sipping sodas. It's even called a circus. A young woman wearing a ringmaster's top hat and tails steps into the ring and welcomes the audience to the Cirque du Soleil, French for "Circus of the Sun. " But when the show begins, one wonders: "Just what kind of circus is this?" To the sound of eerie, synthesized music, the lights dim and figures wearing tramplike costumes and Brechtian masks emerge slowly from clouds of theatrical mist at the corners of the tent.

Question: I need some help. My friend and her husband have been extremely good to me this last year. It has been a difficult year for me personally and they have opened their home to me and their friendship has been unlimited. As a token of my appreciation, I recently purchased two tickets to Cirque du Soleil La Nouba in Orlando for them. They booked a hotel and planned on making it a fun-filled weekend. The tickets state on them to arrive at least 30 minutes early.

Cirque du Soleil, the international circus troupe noted for eerie live music and spectacular feats of human strength and daring, is making a brief stop at Temple University's Liacouras Center on its national tour. Quidam is one of many Cirque shows, and although it seems diminished from their circus shows I saw five or 10 years ago, including an earlier version of Quidam , there are still some reasons to gasp or murmur, "Amazing!" The show attempts a narrative: A little bored girl at home with her parents is suddenly spirited away to a place of wonder.

It's getting downright batty trying to keep all these vampires straight. You have your traditional vampires (Nosferatu), your blond slayer foils (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), your sexy vamps ( True Blood ), your Euro children vampires ( Let the Right One In ), and your melancholy teenage variety ( Twilight ). The latest entry to this overcrowded field is Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant , which arrives with quixotic dreams of a franchise of its own. The source material this time is a series of young adult books known as Cirque du Freak or The Saga of Darren Shan , written by Darren O'Shaughnessy - who writes under his protagonist's name, Darren Shan.

Cirque du Soleil is back in town, although not under its usual blue-and-yellow big top on South Broad Street. Its new, temporary venue is the cavernous Liacouras Center, Temple's basketball arena, with too many unfilled seats and an atmosphere entirely lacking in festivity and whimsy. Alegria has been touring since 1994, and it's looking a little tired, a little shopworn. The show's title is a Spanish word meaning "happiness, joy, and jubilation," but although I've been a Cirque fan for years - having seen Mystere, Dralion, Varekai, and Quidam - this show seemed oddly joyless and distinctly thin on material.

HAS THERE EVER been a female stand-up comic with the career of Joan Rivers? Put aside the red-carpet interviews, the QVC appearances and the guest-star parts on "Nip/Tuck," after 50+ years of punchlines, Rivers, at age 75, is still funny, still sharp, still updating her references and topics. While some aging comics simply become their schtick, catch Rivers on "The View" and she's as laughably bitchy in conversation as she is in her act. That's why it's not hard to believe Joan got kicked off the live daytime British chat show, aptly titled "Loose Women.

In Kooza, Cirque du Soleil's newest touring show to arrive in Philadelphia, a slip of a girl leans backward, folding herself in half and touching her toes. Another performer stands on stilts perched atop one end of a teeterboard. He flies into the air, stilts and all, turning several somersaults and landing with perfect poise, still firmly on his stilts. Acrobatics are Cirque's particular hallmark, but in each new show the troupe creates, performers weave a dramatic tale while making extraordinary feats of movement seem effortless.

The circus has come to town again! As you approach Cirque du Soleil's big blue and yellow tent on South Broad Street, kite-flying dancers greet you and suddenly the world seems a festive place. Cirque's brand of circus is full of music and exotic costumes and clowns, as well as breathtaking acts of daring and skill. (No animals.) This installment's title comes, my press kit tells me, from the Sanskrit word koza, which means something like "box" or "treasure chest. " And after the usual jolly pre-show pandemonium of clowns chasing clowns and flinging popcorn in audience members' hair, there appears a sweet little person with a kite.

Two years ago, Jay-Z - for all intents and purposes, hip-hop's Sinatra - put the vocal tracks from his Black Album on the Internet and invited friends and foes alike to make something new out of them. As a result, adventurous listeners got to hear something remarkable when DJ Dangermouse dipped Jay-Z's chocolate in the Beatles' White Album peanut butter and produced the Internet-only phenomenon known as the The Grey Album. Apple, the company started by the Fab Four and the corporate entity responsible for administering their legacy, was not amused - but not so much over the flagrant copyright violation, something Apple is known to guard against jealously and litigiously.

During intermission on opening night at Cirque du Soleil's Quidam, a woman who had stepped outside for a breath of soggy air was overheard telling a friend, "I love listening to them sing in French!" Hermann Rorschach would have approved. Like the Swiss psychiatrist who presented inkblots to patients and asked them to interpret what they saw, Cirque's artistic creators write songs with invented language. With lines like "Pristi la dova con ta la dova michti grizzia," the lyrics are a musical cioppino, an almost intelligible linguistic stew: Esperanto with ear-y hints of Turkish, Russian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and almost any other tongue you can imagine.

The last time Cirque du Soleil made a stop in Philadelphia, with its 2004 show, Alegria, I confess I started to have doubts about the troupe. Though a longtime fan of Cirque's highly theatrical take on circus arts, the surprisingly clunky Alegria made me wonder if success had spoiled the Canadian company. Maybe it just wasn't possible to turn into an international entertainment conglomerate running seven touring shows and six permanent shows (in Las Vegas casinos and Walt Disney World)