At ‘Cirque Orchestra,’ at Least the Spirits Soar

There is nothing in society quite like the symphony orchestra. It asks that musicians spend their youth in intensive training to express themselves through their instruments, then spend the rest of their lives performing in disciplined lockstep, following someone else’s artistic orders. We listen happy for the unanimity, but know full well a toll is taken.

Federico Fellini, who viewed all life as a marvelous circus, once made a hilarious sendup of the situation. In his short film “Orchestra Rehearsal,” the cynicism and latent anarchy that lurks under the surface of any symphonic ensemble erupts into rebellion. “Cirque Orchestra,” a new show from Cirque Eloize given its American premiere at the Irvine Barclay Theatre Thursday, takes a more conventionally romantic view of the situation. A back-stand violinist dreams of freedom. Conveniently, the French Canadian circus has acrobats who can help him, in the words of the company’s program note, to quell his fears, risk the impossible and fly like a bird.

It seems a nice gesture on the part of a circus to think of working with an orchestra, in this case the Pacific Symphony. The style of circus that has swept French-speaking countries has learned much from performance art, enough to make circuses now a part of performing arts festivals.

One had hopes of more genre breaking with “Cirque Orchestra.” But Cirque Eloize looks back, not forward. It asks a chamber-sized orchestra, which sits in the rear of the stage and is clumsily amplified, to perform pops chestnuts as trite accompaniment for wondrous acts of aerial dancing, contortion and other mind-boggling acrobatics. The conceit to art is that there is a feeling of choreography to the acrobatic movement. The conceit to narrative theater is that the rebellious violinist is an endearing, Walter Mitty-ish clown portrayed by Peter James.

And so the violinist’s dreams are awakened by Jano Chiasson flying overhead on hanging tissue to the familiar strains of Barber’s Adagio for Strings. And he takes courage while Andreane Leclerc bends her rubbery limbs this way and that to the Arab Dance from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.” By the time Genevieve Gauthier and Edith Sauve-Letellier are flipping on aerial hoops to Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, and Genevieve Lemay has swung on the aerial rings to Sibelius’ “Valse Triste,” the violinist is ready for a bit of action himself.

He joins Antoine Carabinier Lepine on the German wheel, flopping about during a movement from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol.” He flies a bit himself in a routine from Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre.” He and the rest of us watch riveted as Samuel Tetreault balances on a hand in a climactic moment from the end of Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”

Cirque Eloize, I think, means well with all this. Its performers amaze the audience, James’ slapstick delights the children. At the very best moments, music and movement have a certain grace, even approaching visual poetry. But the overriding sentiment overseen by director Alain Francoeur and the company’s artistic director, Jeannot Painchaud, is cornier than the newest “Fantasia.”

Classical music can serve Cirque Eloize, but it can also get in the acrobats’ way. Their needs, in taking time to prepare for their breathtaking feats, can seem compromised by the music’s discipline. And the slow tempos taken by Mark Mandarano, the Pacific Symphony’s assistant conductor, were undoubtedly dictated by the acrobats’ requirements. As a result, this show--about freeing the spirit and flying--necessarily held back both music and movement.

Perhaps those considerations were also the reason for Johanne Madore’s predictable choreography, which rarely took pleasure in the fact that acrobats are built differently than conventional dancers. Still, fly they do, and that alone is pretty hard to resist, no matter how little thought has gone into why they actually might do so. Maybe that’s even the point, but it can hardly be a comfort to the orchestra players who are so thoroughly grounded by this circus.

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“Cirque Orchestra” repeats today and Sunday at 2 and 8 p.m., $35-$60 (children half price), Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. (949) 854-4646.