The Symphony...and the Circus?!

Last night James surprised me with tickets to the Utah Symphony. He never told me what was playing though. Once we got there he told me that the performance was "Cirque de la Symphonie". The Utah Symphony teamed up with a few performers from Cirque de Soleil. James had excellent seats! Middle of the 4th row! It was perfect. They played some fun music and had performers at the same time. They played music from Carmen and Swan Lake and Harry Potter. It was so fun.

The performers were excellent!! It was absolutely stunning! They had Vladimir a mime clown who juggled. Elena who was a dancer/contortionist. There was Alexander who spun a huge steel cube above his head, and he also did "Aerial Artistry on Silk Fabrics". His work on the silk fabrics was amazing!!! He would climb up the fabric and do all sorts of twists and turns. Then at one point he ran across the stage and flew out over the audience. He was right over our heads! I thought, if this man fell, he would crush me and James and we'd die because this man was so ripped. There was a woman who did a similar thing but with a rope. James and I could not figure out how she could hold certain position just by being on a rope. Crazy! There was also a women how performed on an aerial hoop. Wow! That's pretty much all I can say.

The finale was the best part. It was the strongmen Jarek and Darek. W-O-W! Pretty much all I could say during their act was "What the heck..." or "Shut up!" (I was watching Mean Girls earlier) These men were...there are no words to explain my reaction. They were painted all gold. They stood on a platform and they would balance on each other. Literally. One of the most amazing things was when the smaller of the two (and by smaller I just mean shorter, not weaker) he would stand on the other guy's shoulder (who was sitting), put a hand on top of his head and then lift his body up and totally balance on this guy's head by one hand! And that's not the most amazing part. The guy that had him on his head would then stand up straight, not holding on to the other guy at all! So there are these two gold guys with one guy balancing on the other guy's head! Crazy! They would do this type of stuff throughout the song. Whoa. These guys had the strongest core I think I've ever seen in my life. It was mind boggling. It was great!!! My hands and arms hurt from clapping so much.

We had an amazing time. It was so nice. We loved it. And the best part about it was that James was able to get student tickets for us which meant that it cost $10 each. It was fantastic. Now we've decided that we have to see a full blown Cirque de Soleil show when we have a chance.