WATCHING ALEGRIA BY CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

That the human body is a marvel cannot be gainsaid. That the acrobats, clowns, gymnasts, aerialists and fire-jugglers in Cirque Du Soleil are marvels is acknowledged worldwide. 

In Alegria the spectator sees them tumble, fly, juggle, contort, gambol, balance and cavort in manners that are alluring and inspiring.

The programme, which costs stg￡15, for the show Alegria includes a section entitled A Global Citizen, in which Cirque Du Soleil locate their modern practice in the tradition of travelling performers seeking to connect with people at street level. 

Cirque Du Soleil now focus on:

the more global issue that is the fight against poverty, using the inspiration and energy of its shows to make another dream come true: that of improving the quality of life for all people, no matter where they live.

Achieving this goal is a high-wire act of stunning danger and risk, combining the marvel of the human body with corporate entities such as luxury high-performance car-makers, Infiniti, IT giants, CGI, and global business-process providers, Xerox, to create spectacles that now require production and financial underpinning, including ticket-pricing, of gargantuan proportions.

The spectator is awestruck as a man balances upside down, and on one hand, on a block no bigger than a cobble stone from the streets his antecedents performed upon, his skin taut over a rib-cage that is arced and tensile as in a grand cathedral of praise to the human form. The spectator admires his strength, his will and his beauty, all held in perfect balance.

A clown brings forth a wondrous snowstorm, full of gale gusts and ice flurries, that curiously warms the spectator .....

.... who then sees the human form contorted into sea creatures. Two women interpose their limbs, their trunks and their heads between and around each other to combine into life forms you would expect to see swimming with multi-coloured clown-fish amidst coral beds garlanded with vermilion fronds of sea-anemone.

Balancing street-cred and arena-savvy; gambolling with people while juggling corporate necessities; contorting the individual human, expressive act and the urge of spectacle to form a new creature: these are major challenges.

The trapeze artist, high above the safety-net, releases the bar. The spectator gasps. The trapeze artist tumbles and glides through the air. The catcher extends his arms. They always meet, the flyer and the catcher. The catcher grips. 

The spectator gasps once more, in admiration. Holding the edge of the safety-net. Absorbing the wonder. And the ticket price.

Is this circus a route to improving the quality of life for all people, no matter where they live?

How else are artists to eat?

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

Alegria; circus: Cirque Du Soleil; Manchester Arena and touring; 2012

The Society of the Spectacle: book; Guy Debord (translated by Donald Nicholson- Smith); Zone Books; New York; 1995

RING TITANIC TILLS

The Titanic Belfast (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West) signature building rises like a sardine tin from a post-industrial wasteland behind an entertainment complex known for, among other things, hard selling alcohol and binge-drinking.

The building, and the hype around it, is a faint, 21st Century echo of the hubris which infused the cruise-liner it celebrates. Or commemorates? Or mourns, perhaps?

In any event, Titanic Belfast is a cash cow and a site of social division, as was the original cruise liner which sank following a collision with an iceberg in 1912.

Already voices have been raised questioning the probity and sensitivity of some of the commercial spin-offs from the remembrance of the tragedy. The most striking has been the production by Tayto, based in Tandragee, (52 degrees North, 6 degrees West) Ireland's finest crisp-makers, of Titanic-themed crisps. 

Let us remember: 1, 500 people died when the ship sank in ice-cold North Atlantic waters. 

What is this building then and all the attendant products and offers? Do they amount to a museum? A replica? A gallery? A mausoleum? A cenotaph? An elegy? An allegory?

A folly?

There is too much political support and public money built into it and considerable pressure to make it work commercially for it to be a folly though estimates of the number of people required to visit it in the coming years are staggering.

The social divisions inherent in the building of the Titanic and the filling of it in three classes, compounded by a vehement sectarianism and an imperial world-view at the time, find yet further faint echoes in the 21st version.

The general public are not able to view the iconic Grand Staircase, much featured in the Hollywood film blockbuster, Titanic and in the advertising of the new building. Corporate and special arrangements apply. It is like everything Titanic these days; available for hire.

What do we make, then, of the hundreds of people who sat in a modern departure lounge at Southampton (50 degrees North, 1 degree West) port, for a memorial service? Many of them held artefacts belonging to relatives lost in the sea tragedy. What human emotions do such events, and the building of Titanic Belfast,  resonate with?

The desire for spectacle and awe of course. The notion that a hint of  celebrity may attach to us if we associate ourselves with such a glorious and televised project. But also genuine desires to connect. With our ancestors and with each other.

Will this building help us do this, even if we have no direct connection with the tragic events of Titanic's failure? Do we gaze at the building in amazement? Do we traipse to it and through it to experience 'thrall', a sense of servitude and subjugation? Or are we in thrall – under some powerful influence? 

For glorious though it may be, a sinking sense that it is a glorious failure persists. That pity and woe are the pertinent responses. That humility rather than bravura should set the tone.

But it is hard to sell humility, pity and woe.

In Arthur Miller's great play, Death of a Salesman, enjoying a production in New York (40 degrees North, 74 degrees West), the destination of the Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage, Willie Loman returns from a failed sales mission and tells his sons:

.... And they know me boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there'll be open sesame for all of us, 'cause one thing boys: I have friends.

We are the aching aspirant, Willie Loman. Us and our cities. Aching and aspiring for association with the grand and the central. Following a dream, all the way into the icy, fathomless waters of our own hubris.

We are Jack and Fabrizio, sailing off into tragedy.

Jack : [waving to people as the Titanic sets off] Goodbye! 

Fabrizio: You know somebody? 

Jack: Of course not! That's not the point! Goodbye, I'll miss you! 

Fabrizio: Goodbye! I'm gonna never forget you! 

We paraphrase singer-songwriter Christy Moore:

Anyone for the last few Titanic Choc Ices there now?'

http://titanicbelfast.com/

Death of a Salesman; play; Arthur Miller; 1949

Titanic; film; James Cameron; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; 1997

Lisdoonvarna; song; Christy Moore; 1982

PETROL EMOTIONS

A woman is engulfed in flames when fumes from petrol she decants between containers in her kitchen are ignited by the gas cooker.  The woman, at home in York (53 degrees North, 1 degree West), suffers 40% burns.

Political panic infuses political rhetoric coming out of London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West) in recent weeks in the face of a prospective strike by oil tanker drivers. 

Negotiations between unions and employers are set in a conflagration of media hype and attempts to add fuel to the fire by government ministers, referencing jerry cans and queues at garage forecourts. Fear sells papers. Panic feeds profits and further entrenchments by the powerful. They also burn, (40% and more), of the civil order.

In Rossport, Erris (54 degrees North, 9 degrees West), Ireland's very own Niger Delta, the struggle by local people against oil company exploitation and central government collusion, with a toxic whiff of corruption and police brutality thrown in, plays out in a rural/urban, community/corporation, people/profit drama more frequently seen in countries in the South of the world.

An oil exploration platform in the North Sea burns off the precious black crude for days now. A flare goes out, leading to hopes that the dreadful conflagration will end. 

Is it true that some Bedouin people say we would be better off if we left the black gold in the ground? 

Panic buying in garages in England eases on foot of news that the oil tanker drivers' strike will not occur over Easter. A temporary relief, with a ratcheting of price and profits to follow?

And what are citizens to do with all the emotions this petrol business throws up? Big decisions. Even today, let us not be fooled.

That Petrol Emotion sing

What you've got to do in this day and age

You gotta agitate, educate, organise

Take the time to live, take the time to give

You gotta agitate, educate, organise.

Big Decision; song; That Petrol Emotion; 1987

You Tube..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3KL9IrcxJA

Video on Rossport/Erris: http://vimeo.com/39469375