For 25 years, Cirque du Soleil has captivated Australian audiences with gravity-defying performances and enchanting stories. The Canadian supertroupe first conjured its unique performative magic on these shores in 1999, and it’s a spell that has never been broken.To celebrate this anniversary, Cirque du Soleil has returned with Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico, a vibrant production that immerses audiences in a Mexican dreamscape filled with myth and sounds.
Luzia follows a parachuted traveller, dropped into an imaginary Mexico in which time and space have become a surreal dreamscape. Underpinning the performances and art direction is the beating heart of Mexico’s legends, making the show rich in symbolism and meaning. Each impression unfolds as one dramatically realised tableau after another, using puppetry and projection, elaborate costumes and the power and agility of the human body.
We meet a running woman emerging into the light and expanding her speckled amber wings. She tells an extraordinary migratory tale. Every year the monarch butterflies travel almost 5,000km from Canada to the southern warmth of Mexico for the winter to congregate in their millions. Monarchs are the only two-way migratory butterflies, and their flight is one of the great natural phenomena not only of Mexico, but the planet.
We enter the cave of the cenote, a place of darkness and light and revered as the magical birthplace of rain and clouds. Suspended in mid-air, the artist representing Chaac, the rain deity, meets the sacred jaguar in the form of a life-sized puppet that prowls the stage. This lyrical scene is testament to the resilience of Maya cosmology and the power of myth.