Aerial Contortion in Silk: 3 Decades of Sorrow | Quidam by Cirque du Soleil

Série Hommage presents Quidam's Aerial Contortion in Silk - 3 Decades of Sorrow

Videos from:
1999: DVD version / Artist: Isabelle Chasse
2008: Big Top Version /Artist: Anna Venizelos
2015: Arena Version / Artist: Tanya Burka
2016: Final Bow Version (Arena Version) / Artist Julie Anne Cameron


Moving with grace and delicacy, the performers becomes one with the columns of red fabric that supports and cradles her. To haunting music, contortionist and cloth intertwine, separate and embrace again.

The act has been personified two different ways: first, as an internal struggle by the Mother, who watches the performance from below. When the performer gives up and descends to the ground, the Mother and two other women dressed similarly carry her away. The second, while still personifying the Mother's anguish, sees the Father watching from below, and then carrying her off once she’s spent. Isabelle Vaudelle, who originated the act in Quidam, ended her performance by giving the poignant illusion of hanging herself in the silk, which not all who have followed her do.