Cirque Du

The people responsible for Dralion, the Cirque du Soleil's astonishingly inventive and ceaselessly spirited show that had its local premiere in Fells Point last night, chose two mythic beasts - the dragon and the lion - to give their performance a name that would provide audiences a hint of what they're in for. But a more appropriate animal to use as a symbol, the one whose image might have better reflected what Baltimore audiences can expect during the...

You've seen its otherworldly face staring you down from dozens of Baltimore venues for months now. A cacophony of color, fur and feathers, the creature's diamond-encrusted grin effortlessly captures the imagination. You've heard its name on the radio and tried out the smooth, foreign sounding syllables on your own tongue. Finally, Cirque du Soleil's creation, Dralion, has arrived in Baltimore. This dazzling creature that has been decorating posters and city buses exemplifies Dralion perfectly.

That Cirque du Soleil's show Dralion was inspired in part by the quest for harmony between nature and man makes the troupe's scheduled stop at Harbor Point, a former toxic waste site, seem all the more appropriate. "Not since the tall ships came here has there been such a spectacle on our waterfront," said Mayor Martin O'Malley yesterday in announcing the April 11-27 performances by the famed circus of acrobats, contortionists and clowns. O'Malley called the tour stop a perfect opportunity to begin showing off Harbor Point - a peninsula that was home to the former AlliedSignal chromium plant and the site of a $100 million cleanup operation.

In an effort to ease the public onto a formerly polluted industrial site that juts into the Inner Harbor, developers who plan on building offices and shops there will first play host to a popular Canadian troupe of performers. Mayor Martin O'Malley plans to announce Feb. 5 that the Cirque du Soleil will perform on the former AlliedSignal chromium plant site under tents from April 11 to 27. The shows will be the first major attraction held on the site since a lengthy process of burying and capping toxic waste was completed in June 1999.

Celine Dion speaks of her epiphany. Not the recent birth of her first child or the career rocket of the Titanic soundtrack in 1999. The epiphany arrived two years ago as she sat in a Las Vegas casino. "It changed my life and my entire way of thinking about performances on stage." And, it turns out, the moment may also reshape the life of the evolving entertainment scene in the high-rolling desert city. Dion, who stepped away from the public concert stage on New Year's Eve 1999 to begin the role of new mother, has agreed to an unprecedented pact that will see her perform five nights a week for 40 weeks a year over three years at Caesar's Palace.

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."

The artistic director never dreamed of running off and joining the circus. Neither did the playwright he hired to put his vision of a circus on stage.For "Cirque Ingenieux," the show that opens Tuesday at the Lyric Opera House, that's probably a good thing, because this "cirque" is intended to have more in common with the theater than with the circus."It's a little bit of the 'Wizard of Oz,' a little of 'Alice in Wonderland,' a little bit of a lot of fairy tales," says Neil Goldberg, co-producer of "Cirque Ingenieux" and founder and artistic director of its Florida-based parent company, Cirque Inc.And, unlike the story of its creators, "It's the story of a little girl who decides she wants to join the circus, and by the end of the play she does, and her dreams are realized," explains Washington-based playwright Norman Allen, who wrote the libretto for "Cirque Ingenieux."

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...

The first rule of any civilized society, says Linda Ellerbee, should be to "let the people be different." Yet in the last of three news special for young people on cable's Nickelodeon network tonight, she demonstrates how societies collectively conspire against difference."