Cirque Du Soleil

This is about Cirque du Soleil. Translation from French: Circus of the Sun.That's the dazzling, kaleidoscopic Canadian troupe making a spectacular debut tomorrow night as a pay-for-view television attraction from TVN Entertainment. Animal-free circus as theater, even on a small screen it makes the conventional, sawdust-as-usual Circus Vargas and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey crowds look like "The Gong Show."But first this prologue:There's a famous song in "Fiddler on the Roof" that celebrates tradition.

Cirque du Soleil opens a one-month run of "Quidam" under a 2,500-seat blue-and-yellow big top at Tysons Galleria in McLean, Va., tonight. The new show marks the French-Canadian theatrical circus' return to the Washington area after a three-year absence."

"Cirque Ingenieux" is: part of the new wave of theatrical circuses, visually lovely and choreographically slick."Cirque Ingenieux" is not: a circus with lions and tigers and bears (there are no animals at all) or thrill-a-minute excitement.The production at the Lyric Opera House through Sunday departs from traditional circuses -- as well as from the best-known "cirque," Cirque du Soleil -- because it tells a story. But like the Singer in "Cirque Ingenieux," who sings compositions by New Age composer Kitaro filled with nonsensical words, the story doesn't make much sense.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect in the amazing growth of Cirque du Soleil is that it began less than a decade ago as the brainchild of a group of long-haired street performers, stilt-walkers and fire-eaters who had the crazy idea that they wanted to start a circus of their own.Today, these graying, balding but still youngish entrepreneurs have become proprietors of a Montreal-based operation that is spreading its engagements, and its influence, on a...

GOING to the circus was never like this -- the glitz, high-tech lighting and vibrant costumes that mark Le Cirque du Soleil's second time around in Washington, D.C.The French-Canadian vaudeville circus that wowed the nation's capital in 1988 is back with a brand new offering, appropriately titled "Nouvelle Experience." The crazy-quilt theatrical show mesmerizes with flying trapeze artists, twisting contortionists and amazing acrobats, amid clouds of fog, jazz and rock music and "Wizard of Oz"-inspired characters.