This weekend brought me to the circus, Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai, to be exact. I have seen three prior shows – Saltimbanco, Alegría and Quidam. All were really different in their moods and they had different artists, but what combined them all were the wonderful costumes, which are already enough to get my head spinning. Add to that the fantastic show and you have a wonderful experience.

Varekai doesn’t disappoint. It tells a sweet story [far from Quidam’s more horror-like tones, although there are elements]. It starts with a wonderful Icarus Flight Net Trapeze thing, which almost made me cry, because it was so beautiful.

And that was only the beginning. It was just beautiful and wonderful and so worth it. And I want to see it again. [Thanks to the amazing marketing machinery attached to the whole thing, I’m now proud owner of the DVD. And a couple of notebooks (the paper kind).]

My little nephew (he’s four years old) was with us – and watching him was almost as nice as watching the acrobats. He’s constantly someone, usually the scariest thing available. This time, he was really torn. “I’m the lizard. No, I’m the eagle! No, I’m …” [I think he finally settled on his first choice, the lizard.]

And there was this one clown act, where the clown was a really bad magician and finally blew off his assistant’s head. My nephew was all indignant. “He’s not allowed to do that!”

But maybe the cutest thing was how he was completely absorbed into this dream world. He wasn’t sure whether the costumes really were costumes [did I mention how wonderful they were?]. I actually envied him a little bit. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, but at some point in time, while growing up, I lost the ability to see only the fantasy. I know that the costumes are costumes and that their fireflies actually are glowing balls on sticks and ropes. I always see the reality behind the fantasy.

Although the Cirque du Soleil makes it easy to forget that the lizard people aren’t really lizard people.

[Fascinating tidbit: This guy actually suffered from polio and really needs the crutches.]