As it turns out, Cirque du Soleil's founder, Guy Laiberté, is also the founder of a non-profit organization called
One Drop, the manifesto of which is "to ensure that water is accessible to all, today and forever." In honor of World Water Day (March 22nd, 2013), Cirque du Soleil put together a one-night show where all proceeds go to One Drop. But, seeing as how not very many people can get to Vegas to see an exclusive one-shot at the O stage in the Bellagio, they also built a website,
One Night for One Drop, where potential viewers can access the content for a minimum donation of five dollars. Unluckily for any of you who are just finding out about this, I procrastinated and waited until the last night that content is available (oops!).
The show itself was spectacular. As I mentioned, it borrowed the stage of
O in the Bellagio, which is one of the best shows I've had the honor of attending. It was an appropriate choice, as O is a water-based production, and they utilized it in some of the more spectacular ways that O does: namely, synchronized swimmers and extreme high-dive. In addition there were dancers of all sorts, two of the best solo aerialists I've ever seen, and several guest appearances, including
Jackie Evancho singing Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" (alongside a familiar face from O!), David Garibaldi, a spoken word performance by In-Q, and an original quartet by Danny Elfman entitled "Fragility."
Overall the music was stunning. The performances were stunning; one of my favorites featured a swimmer in a mermaid tail and a contortion artist who was "born" out of a seedpod-like structure, like the mythic/folkloric
barnacle goose.
The cast incorporated a grand total of two hundred and thirty seven Cirque du Soleil artists and guest performers from twenty countries and ranging from ages two to eighty. The cause is important and deserves to create the ripple effect Guy Laiberté described, what those of us who live on the internet might call signalboosting. However, there was one thing that threw me off guard about this show, and it was some of the costumes.
There were several acts which seemed to serve as a reminder that not everyone in the world is blessed with plumbing, or with access to any clean water (or with the financial flexibility to acquire tickets to a nice, plush seat in the Bellagio, or internet access at home, for that matter). That is all well and good, but the performers in these acts were marked as participating in a non-western culture in one way or another.
The first of these was a dance number which was clearly supposed to represent Indian women searching for water: they were clothed in garments reminiscent of Saris and carried pots, exiting the stage with them full and on their heads.
The modifications to the Sari-like costume (because they were definitely costumes) have arguable, functional purposes. The masks that the performers wore do not. They serve a unifying purpose, yes, in much the same way that an ancient Greek chorus was meant to be a mode of storytelling, not individuals with personalities, and the same way that members of a chorus line are dressed identically. But in the context of the message "these people are less fortunate than you," covering the faces, arguably the most expressive part of the human body, and replacing them with identical caricatures came off as oppressive to me as a viewer. It seemed to emphasize the otherness involved in the situation in a negative way, which was perhaps worsened by the inherent voyeurism in the act of watching a production.
There was a very similar feeling to the 'African' act, where the performers were dressed almost exclusively in animal print. The act, strangely, contained a sort of fashion-show runway walk, which also seemed preoccupied with emphasizing (and in this case exoticizing and sexualizing) the otherness of the people involved.
There was also a 'South American' act, which featured dancing reminiscent of flamenco and Capoiera, a Brazillain martial art, and women dressed in Carnivale attire (lots of feathers).
This is not to say that all of the choices, or even most of them, were bad - that would be impossible - but several of them gave me pause. One that didn't was an act in which all of the performers were clearly supposed to be penguins and, regardless of phenotype or gender, they were all dressed in black and white vintage punk (items like a bowler hat, vest and tie, spats, and leather tailcoat appeared beside hoodies, striped and skintight dresses, and boots).
The moments that gave me pause were not the dominant strain of the show, and I recognize that One Night for One Drop has made a project of trying to incorporate the global community; these performances were meant to be a celebration of culture. As it was, the execution sometimes felt like parody, not homage. I wonder what the designers had in mind, but I wonder more what people of these cultures would have to say about the show's representation of them.
