ALEGRIA
Cirque du Soleil show directed and written by Franco Dragone.
Costumes by Dominique Lemieux.
Set by Michel Crete.
Choreography by Debra Brown.
Music composed by René Dupéré.
Lighting by Luc Lafortune.
Sound design by Guy Desrochers.

Review based on a performance at Battery Park City, Manhattan.

Is there another circus on Earth that would end its first act with howling winds and fluttering flakes - simultaneously an exhilarating tribute to theatrical stagecraft and a poignant depiction of a winter of the soul?

This whimsical and wild disturbance can only mean one thing. Cirque du Soleil is back in town, with a new show called "Alegría" (Spanish for joy or jubilation) that's as magical and surreal as devotees of the Montreal-based troupe have come to expect.

Impeccably designed, so that everything - wailing music, dramatic lighting, curlicue costumes, strange images and mystical themes - meshes into a spellbinding whole, Cirque du Soleil's productions are singular entertainments with a charm all their own.

Children, while they'll enjoy the show (if they're not frightened by some of the grotesqueries), may prefer the more kid-friendly Big Apple Circus or Ringling Bros. Cirque du Soleil is an adult indulgence. No elephants. No animals at all, in fact, though a clown wears a zebra costume, another rolls around as a goofy shark and a mechanical bird flaps in now and then.

Another weird image: a clown on stilts who hobbles on one leg and two crutches, trailing a pair of tattered wings. He could be an ancient bird or a damaged angel. He hangs around as a couple of 9-year-old contortionists from Mongolia (Ulziibayar Chimed and Nomin Tseveendorj) arrive wearing white feathered capes - matched wings - which they shed to do their gymnastic act and don again for their exit.

Easily as compelling, if not more so, is the body-bending act by contortionist Elena Lev of Russia (Cirque du Soleil has a penchant for what could be seen as physical extremism, or freakishness), who twirls a batch of silvery Hula-Hoops.

Other acts of jaw-dropping expertise include a dazzling trapeze duo (Xavier Lamoureux and Caroline Therrien, both of Canada); a bare-chested aerialist (Mikhail Matorin) who twirls a giant cube in midair, and Andrei Lev's Flying High Bar Act, seven Russians who do their whizzing flips perilously close to the top of the circus' blue-and-gold tent. The "house troupe" of acrobats executes amazing multiple somersaults on trampolines and later on resilient poles. (A Chinese tightrope act was temporarily out because of illness and a strongman from Missouri had thrown out his back.)

The bittersweet clowns include the red-shoed, yellow-suited mime, Slava Polunin, and his sad-sack pal, Serguei Chachelev (who have appeared at the State University at Stony Brook in Polunin's wonderful Russian clown troupe), and Dmitry Bogatirev of the Ukraine. Other clowns, rather scary and severe-looking, appear throughout the show.

All the acts, however, are subsumed into one seamless reverie by the beguiling visual design, smooth choreography and original score delivered by a clown band and ethereal vocalist, Francesca Gagnon. As you leave, you're reminded of the winged motif: Faintly, you can hear birds chirp.

Aileen Jacobson, Cirque du Soleil Lights Up the City: Montreal's charming entertainers, Newsday, 03-31-1995, pp B03.