With theatres opening up again and big productions rolling into town, JJ recently got to see Cirque du Soleil live in the big tent. In hearing about it, Christine remembered a workshop the pair held a few years back, where they described circus performances with the help of tactile action figures. Today, they revisit some of that workshop material, and compare the style and aesthetic of the classic travelling circus to the aesthetic and style of Cirque du Soleil.
With theatres opening up again and big productions rolling into town, JJ recently got to see Cirque du Soleil live in the big tent. In hearing about it, Christine remembered a workshop the pair held a few years back, where they described circus performances with the help of tactile action figures. Today, they revisit some of that workshop material, and compare the style and aesthetic of the classic travelling circus to the aesthetic and style of Cirque du Soleil.
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec:One of the first professional collaborations JJ, that we worked on together, involved circus and contortion. And it was a live event that I was hosting. And you came in and did an unforgettable description of some circus stuff, and then some, some of the mad things people can do with their bodies. And honestly, I was a bit queasy by the end, it was pretty shocking. So we're gonna revisit a bit of that. Partly because you went to Cirque du Soleil on the weekend. So we're going to talk about circus from a few angles, but then we're also going to revisit some of the really detailed descriptions. And, JJ, what was the title, you looked it up in your notes, and it was probably four or five years ago, whatever we call it.
JJ Hunt:We call the event Lights, Camera Action Figures, because we brought in a bunch of like, he man and Batman and Wonder Woman action figures so that while we were describing the actions of the circus performers, people could try and bend the action figures along with because the contortionists, the acrobats, their body movements are so unfamiliar when you describe, and then the woman bends backwards and puts the back of her head on her bum, it intellectually doesn't make a lot of sense. So having an action figure do it can can help you move along with the actions, but also, you know, remind you just how absurd it is when you're holding that tactile, you know, action figure and trying to get it do to do things that people are just not meant to do.
Christine Malec:Well, and then we actually had trouble finding good action figures because most of them don't move. Like they're just limited in ways that circus acrobats are not. Really shocking.
JJ Hunt:That's right. They're not fully articulated. No elbows, no knee joints. Yeah, we had, we had a tough time.
Christine Malec:Most humans can't do what what they do my gosh, it was Yeah. We had tactile diagrams. And honestly, not all of it is going to make sense no matter how hard you try, because it's so improbable that you just can't get your mind around it. So we're going to get to some of that detailed description of the acrobatics involved. But let's start with the idea of circus in general, because this goes way back before Cirque du Soleil.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, absolutely. The classic circus aesthetic has, it's got really deep roots. And then it's got this golden era. And it's still, you know, kind of in play in our modern lives or pop culture lives, but also in the way that Cirque du Soleil which I think is kind of the reigning champ of the circus. A lot of their aesthetic is based on this kind of classic circus aesthetic. So I mean, like I said, you can trace the roots of the circus back to ancient Rome. But the style that we know today, if you ask most people, what is the circus look like? The aesthetic comes from the golden era of the American traveling circus. That's what most of us are familiar with. So like 1800s, early 1900s, Barnum and Bailey Big Top. And the look of those circuses starts with the red and white striped tent. And this would be a great big tent, a one pole, a two pole or a three pole tent in the middle of a field. And these are, you know, big canvas tents with with vertical red and white stripes maybe tapered toward the peaks. And the peaks of these tents are created by the poles. So if it's a one pole tent, you've got one post right in the middle, and the tent is kind of pulled up to that peak and maybe has sides maybe it doesn't. If it's got two polls, then there are kind of two set like Central stages or arenas inside maybe three polls and you get three different staging areas. That's kind of where the aesthetic starts. And then the performers so the performers within that kind of classic circus. They adopted personas according to tropes. So you would have things like the strong man the bearded lady, The Tattooed lady, the sword swallower and cos costumes for those, those personas in those tropes were usually a little bit revealing kind of alluring, but also like, kind of rough and gritty, right? Like this is, this is a circus that rolled into town on a train and set up in a dirt field at the edge of town. So there's gonna be a bit of grit to it, like so the classic strongman for example, classic strongman wore a one piece unit hard with shorts, or maybe even briefs and very narrow shoulder straps to show off the big muscles on top black boots. And then the waxed moustache, a bald head and yeah, of course, like I said, big beefy muscles. Usually a very like you try and go for the narrow waist and the big shoulders, broad shoulders, but sometimes you got the big bellied strong man as well. A lot of the women's costumes in this in this era, were kind of corset style tops, maybe bathing suits, with ribbing, maybe bathing suit bottoms, feathered head pieces. Maybe there's going to be a short crinoline skirt, depending on what trope they're going for, or maybe just strips of fabric that you know from around the waist, the in place of a skirt, little strips of fabric that barely cover the bottom, and again styled to suit the role. So if there was a dark and gothic character, then the costume would be you know, dark and have black lace and things like that are maybe playing on some ethnic stereotypes if you've got a character that's like a fortune teller or something like that. And then there are the acrobats and the trapeze artists, the tumblers these tended to be men who are bare chested and muscular but the a little bit more trim than the then the classic classic strongman not quite as beefy, and they would tend to wear very tight pants, but again, be bare chested on top and the women would wear again one piece bathing suits, maybe sparkly adorned with sequins and stars and things like that. And then you've got the ringleader in the top hat and tails but a little bit garish, right, so the top hat and tails but trimmed in reds and golds. This was like I said, like a little bit gritty a little bit rough and there was real danger in the show itself with you know, trapeze and lion tamers and snake charmers. So this was kind of a little bit lowbrow entertainment and the aesthetic of the time. You know, it folded in to the, to the energy of the piece, and the in the way that it was being presented to the public.
Christine Malec:These sounds like familiar stereotypes. And I'm wondering where a person in 2022 would have seen these kinds of images that they're not like pulling into your local Walmart parking lot or anything. But why are these still familiar?
JJ Hunt:That's a good question. I mean, they're, they're really locked into our understanding of Americana, really, like this is this is an era and this the the aesthetic is still very much. It's popular. If you Google vintage circus, a lot of the images that come up look like they come off of modern tattoo flash sheets. So these are the tattoos displayed in tattoo window shops. And remember in our episode on tattoos, there yeah, there is like a bit of an aesthetic overlap there. It's the vintage the retro there's a cool quality to these in the characters. These tropes are still Halloween costumes, like they're just part of our like a part of our understanding of self of you know of that, that 19th century Americana. And the it's funny, you know, the faded kind of muted colors of some of these characters because a lot of our representations come from old faded illustrated posters or hand colored black and white photos. These are even faded, early color photos. The colors of the circus is faded, muted colors is kind of grainy or hand inked with thin line black with with thick black outline tattoo style of drawings, that aesthetic is so strong and so strongly associated with the circus. I think if most of us, certainly if I went back in time, or I think if your average hipster went back in time, and saw what an actual circus with real people. If we saw what they were really wearing the clothes of the day, the colors, we would think that they were wrong, and that our mental picture of the circus was right because our understanding that those muted colors that slightly faded look the costumes that we've been wearing for Halloween. They're so strongly rooted, we believe have in them that the real version that really existed might now look fake, because because we have such strong belief in our own understanding of what that looked like.
Christine Malec:Wild. So what does Cirque du Soleil do with these tropes?
JJ Hunt:Well, it's interesting Cirque du Soleil builds on not only the classic aesthetic of the circus, but also builds on the performances, the tropes, the skill sets in this particular show, the show that I saw curios which has a curious has a very steampunk aesthetic, right. So steampunk being, you know, trains and rivets and gears and copper and brass colors. It's this kind of 19th century Victorian era. Imagine the world never evolved beyond the steam power that steampunk and so curious, has a steampunk aesthetic. And that kind of works with the circus aesthetic because there's some overlap there. There's there's overlap in the era. In the trains, the canvas tents and hot air balloons, the muted colors again, the parasols, top hats, waxed mustaches, the aesthetic of curios and the aesthetic of circus are very much the same. So when designing shows, Cirque uses our collective understanding of that aesthetic and builds on it and twists it in the same way that they're building on and twisting the performances in the in the skills, right, so, for example, there's a tumbler number at the end of curios where the tumblers are these athletes. This show had mostly men, a few women, where they are throwing each other in the air and doing somersaults and rolls and really, they're kind of using their own bodies as trampolines to hurl each other 20, 30, 40 feet in the air, really athletic and you get big, strong men at the bottom doing the throwing and you get smaller performers, men or women being thrown into the air. And so for curios, their tumbling number was what they went with was big men in striped swimming costume. So old fashioned swimming costumes, right out of like, you know, Coney Island in New York City, early 1900s. So striped shirts in one piece bathing suits with the that are a little bit like the strongman thing where you've got the thins spaghetti straps going over the shoulders leading down to, you know, the shorts on the bottom, red swimming caps. And this is the aesthetic that they go for, for their tumbling numbers. So it's not it's not at all modern. It's very much in the era of the old fashion circus. But it's got a steampunk twist to it. So their bathing suits are this kind of coppery color. And in other numbers, some of the Kurios costumes are full on steampunk. There's a character in curios called a Mr. Microcosmos. This is... what a wonderful, fantastical character. So just a man in the costume wearing a two foot tall top hat. He's got a painted on monocle and mustache. And he's you know, he's a bit of a pompous industrialist type. So he's got on a three piece suit, except that in front of his body, he's he's got a giant, gigantic steel, brass belly, it's got hatches at the front and at the top, it's got rivets all around. And so he kind of wobbles around that part machine like steampunk machine part man, and inside this belly these hatches open. And inside this belly is his poetic unconscious mind in the form of a performer or a character named Minnie Lilly. And Minnie Lilly is a 1920s Persian madam, who wears red velvet gowns and golden first stalls. And the actor is extraordinarily tiny, she's just over three feet tall, and she lives inside this costume. So there's a bit of clowning in these like these characters or make their way around and it's kind of the old fashioned idea of clowns to engage with the audience and clowns to do sometimes little tricks, but in this case, the clowning is more is more acting like they don't do anything absurd with this particular character. Mr. micro cosmos doesn't do any pratfalls or anything like that. He's just playing a fantastical magical character and mini Lily who lives inside his body as his poetic unconscious, she speaks French into old fashioned telephones and lounges on arm chairs inside this costume. And so as they make their way around the audience, you get to know these characters. It's a huge part of us of a Cirque du Soleil performance is this engagement with the set in the scenery and the vibe and the energy that's so important in these shows.
Christine Malec:Can you kind of walk us through what happens as an audience member? So I know staging and engagement is a big part of what they do. So just what happens when you walk into to a performance space? And how do they get the ball rolling and engage the audience with what they're doing? Yeah, so
JJ Hunt:Cirque du Soleil is classic attended circus. So they set up in a part of town where there's enough room for a big, big, big tent. And the audience starts in the you know, in the outer tent where you can buy your, you know, $40 bag of popcorn and your merchandise, whatever. And then when you get into the theater, which is a tent, it's a big three pole tent, but with one main stage, there are there are these kinds of structural posts that are holding up the tent, but there are also structural posts for lighting that have platforms for the actors and acrobats and you know, trapeze artists and whatnot. And you're sitting in raked seats, and when you arrive in the theater, the stage is are in the tent, the stage is fully set packed with props and an interesting set pieces so props like oh, those big glass balls that spark so that when you touch them there's like like a little electrical storms inside the you know, these glass balls and they had glass domed display cases that had like phonographs inside again, like brassy coppery steel colored devices, there's a very kind of early science, five to curios. And the stage is set with all of these different things. And so as you're making your way to your seat, you're kind of already getting to know the vibe and the aesthetic of the show. And then one performer walks out onto stage and starts moving some of the props around and there's a bicycle and taking the bicycle and plugging the bicycle into a strange device. And this isn't quite the show, the show hasn't started people are still moving to the seats, the the tent lights, the house lights are still up. But they're starting to introduce you to character then another character comes in climbs one of these poles and sits like 40 feet in the air on a little platform, and just playfully starts pulling paper airplanes out of their pockets and folding them up and throwing them into the audience. So the audience is already kind of getting engaged with the show and getting to know these characters. And these characters then come later in the performance where there's a gentle story arc there's a gentle story that's part of this circus performances, this night of circus acts. And these same characters that you kind of already know a little bit from when they were wandering about onstage before the show. They then appear later on in the performance later on in the in the piece. But what's amazing is that the set when we arrived at the in the tent was like I say totally packed, there was even a bridge this kind of rope bridge all the way across the stage that these characters these steampunk robot, costumed characters walk across and these mad scientists are, you know, playing around with all these pieces of equipment and bit by bit they actually dismantle the stage and the setting before the show even begins. So that by the time the first number comes on the stage is completely empty. So all of those props, that whole rope bridge that gets dismantled and collapsed and dragged off stage. All of that was done purely to engage the audience and, and, and give us an understanding of, of the vibe of the tone of the aesthetic and introduce us to characters. None of it was actually part of the show proper. The lights after the stage is basically clear. The lights come down and then the show begins.
Christine Malec:Crazy. No, I really believe that. If you're not sighted, you don't. I didn't have a clue about the acrobatics, and the absolutely unbelievable and, dare I say almost indescribable contortions that the human body is capable of. And I just think that if you're sighted you have some cultural literacy, you've just you've seen stuff and so it's not as shocking as it was, for example, the first time JJ you ran through a A minute description of some of the things that were going on in a YouTube video. That was how that's how we presented it in our live event, and so if you're, if your game, I would like for you to just we don't have, you know, the video itself is not relevant necessarily here. But just to read through your notes of the description of what human bodies actually do so Strap yourselves down because it's honestly, it's a bit nauseating to get to here. But I'd really believe that if you're not sighted, this is going to rock your world and your sense of what the human body is capable of. And if you can't follow it all don't feel bad. And JJ, maybe you can say more about this from a visual point of view. But it's hard to follow, partly because it just does not make sense in what we know about the human body. But if don't don't feel bad if you don't follow every twist and turn. But, JJ, that's sort of true visually as well, right? Yeah, absolutely.
JJ Hunt:I think that's part of it visually. I think with a lot of these numbers with with contortionists with acrobats, you're not necessarily as a viewer, someone who's taking this individual, you're not necessarily supposed to follow every pointed toe or count the number of flips, or that's not how people tend to take these things in visually, you're taking in the experience as a whole, you're taking in the overall shapes of, you know, the contortionists come to your marveling at the fear and the drama of someone flipping through the air and being caught by someone else. You're not necessarily trying to understand what part of the hand grabbed what part of their partner's wrist that's not really it. So when we describe these things, and break them down, kind of piece by piece, which is what we tried to do for that live event, it was kind of going against the idea of the circus, right? It's a little bit like explaining a magic trick. The idea is to be overwhelmed and and to just go with it, as opposed to intellectually break it down. But for the purpose of trying to get a handle on just all the amazing things that these bodies are able to do. That's kind of why we went in and broke these. These circus acts down piece by piece grip, by grip and so forth. So do you want to start with with with with some acrobatics, or do you want to start with contortionists? Which one would tickles your fancy, Chris?
Christine Malec:Let's try acrobatics first.
JJ Hunt:Okay, so I have here are my notes from a video describing two acrobats in the air on a trapeze is a man and a woman. And there's a trapeze bar that is suspended in the air by cables. So that's our starting point.
Christine Malec:So a trapeze that's just a horizontal bar, right?
JJ Hunt:That's right, a horizontal bar and it's got cables that are connected to either end of the bar.
Christine Malec:Got it and how high above the ground.
JJ Hunt:It's hard to see in this video, it was really hard to see because the camera was just focused on the performers. But having been to a live a live event recently, I mean really might be 40 feet in the air.
Christine Malec:A fatal distance!
JJ Hunt:It is high in the sometimes they drop low, like if one performer is hanging over the bar and holding on to the arms of someone else who was dangling from their arms. That's you know, that's a good 10 feet there so they might get a little closer to the ground, but still high enough in the air that it's frightening. So my notes here are again, I'll just pick up right in the middle. The woman stands on the trapeze bar holding the cables. The man hangs upside down beneath her with his legs open and knees bent. He's actually not hanging by the bar. He has his legs hooked around the cables where they attach to the bar. The woman steps back off the bar and drops but the man grabs her hands and catches her she dangles for a moment. Then the man pulls her up, flips her upside down and dangles her by bent knee. She arches her back poses and twists back and forth. Still dangling by her bent knee she slowly pulls up into a tuck position, then gracefully arching her back in a slow motion pose. She reaches up and takes the man's hands then slowly lowers herself toward the crash pad until their arms are fully extended. She begins to jerk and sway then the man flips her backwards over and over grabbing her passing limbs to maintain her momentum. This is one of those moments where I remember being in the in our live event with people holding their like Wonder Woman. Action Figures being like What the What this idea Have one person hanging upside down holding on to their partner's limbs. And then so this is the man holding on to the woman's limbs as she's, you know, dangling, and he somersaults her, flips her, grabs her wrists and then grabs her ankles, grabs her wrists, grabs her ankles, so she's flipping over and over and over. And then in the middle of that one of the things that I didn't even describe because it's just too much in real time, you can't get through it, she actually twists she does a half backflip and a one and a half twist. And like they're all sorts of not just as she going back and forth. She twists and turns and sometimes lifts one arm to be caught and sometimes a need to be caught. It's madness. Then I moved on another part later in the video from the superhero pose, the woman twists and corkscrews until she's dangling from his hands with fully extended arms. She then pulls herself up scissoring her legs back and forth up his body, she grabs the bar, strikes a pose, then wraps her arms around his waist, and hangs from his torso, the man grabs the bar with both hands, unhooks his legs, and slowly changes the angle of their tilt until he's right side up, and her legs hook over the bar. And at this point, even I'm lost. I don't know what I'm even, like, there's so much going on, which was why we had these, these action figures so that we and we had a team of friends and volunteers who are there to be able to like, okay, you've, you've almost got your action figure in the right pace, move this arm here, move this leg here. And you know, we did a lot of Imagine your body doing this too. So like picture your body where you are hanging in this, it's it's very difficult to wrap your head around. And so certainly, any describer at a Cirque performance who's trying to do this live, there's only so much that they can convey and there's only so much as an audience member that you can take in it is a lot of activity often happening in in flashes in seconds.
Christine Malec:Shall we try for contortionists?
JJ Hunt:So The Contortionists in Kurios, are wonderful. So their costumes are kind of how do I describe them, they're, they're kind of aquatic. They're kind of like... fish ladies. So all four limbs, so they're not like mermaids with their with their feet pulled together, their legs pulled together, they're they have all four limbs. But they have these kind of like feathery looking fins that go all the way up the sides of their legs and along the sides of their arms. Their body suits are, of course, super, super tight. And they're orange with blue dots and blue stripes. So they kind of have the, the visual of a fish swimming underwater, there's a bit of a glimmery quality to these costumes. And again, the face makeup that goes along with it. So as they're moving their bodies and bending their bodies and twisting and stacking their bodies. They're pointing toes and, and bending arms and lifting heads. And they look kind of eel like or they they bend in the same way that fish bend, not the way human bodies bend. And so in this performance, from curious, actually, so this was a performance that I saw live but also one that we the same performance that we described at the Lights, Camera Action Figures. It's these four women, you know, on a small platform, doing an organized contortion act together very much in sync with each other's bodies. So the women do backbend handstands, kick their feet, then arch back and stand upright. They wriggle and dance and prepare to create a pyramid. Two women at the bottom do bridges bending backwards at the ribcage with their chests flat on the ground. Woman number three, does a back bend bridge on top of them. And the fourth woman does a backbend hand stand off of her shoulders. Then the bottom three women each raise a leg balancing on one foot a piece. They unfold from the pyramid and dance in a slithering style abruptly stopping to strike poses. Then they start to form another pyramid to have the women create a knot with their bodies forming a tight ball. contortionist number three keeps her feet on the floor bends forward at the waist and tucks her hands into the knot. Keeping her back flat like a tabletop. Woman number four climbs on top and does a graceful arching back bend Hands stand off of the tabletops shoulders. And then Woman number three, lifts her legs, bends them back over her head and balances on her hands, which are still tucked into the knot of bodies below. Yeah, again, these are these are actions, it's, it's hard when you describe these things and you say she, you know, bends her back at the ribcage until her feet are beside her head. It's just it's so hard to absorb that because it's you have to get past the fact that that's not what our bodies do. And so you have to move past the intellect and just live in the fantasy. And that's what that's what watching these performances is, is like, you're not trying to intellectually break this down. You just have to live in the fantasy of these amazing athletes performing amazing skills and feats using their bodies.
Christine Malec:When you're watching that, can you relax into it? Or are you preoccupied with the inhuman weirdness of
JJ Hunt:So sometimes, depending on the act, and depending on the it? drama and the danger involved, there are different reactions. So the contortionists, for example, there's not a lot of danger. But there are amazing bodies. So it's hard not to be in love with these performers and just be in awe jaw dropped. And every once in a while, it looks like the action is done, they've created their pyramid, it looks amazing. And you're ready to erupt into applause. And then they'll lift up three of their limbs, point right toes, and suddenly the entire pyramid is being held up by two hands. And it's extraordinary, and you just explode in glee. But that's a different feeling than when you're watching, say, tumblers, or acrobats who are on a trapeze, where there is a danger involved. And so not only are you marveling at these bodies, because again, these are fantastic bodies, often the tumblers Are you know, big beefy men and, and there's one woman and curios who did an aerial act on a bicycle. So the bicycle was on a cable being swung in the air, and she was riding the bicycle hanging off the wheels. I mean, it was just extraordinary. And so that, yes, you're you're amazed by the bodies and what they are able to do. But there is an element of fear. And so part of when you're watching them, part of the thrill is that there's genuine danger involved. So emotionally, you're connected with the with the performer, you're imagining that skill that it takes the athleticism athleticism that it takes, but also like Oh, catch the bar, please catch the bar, like all of those things are folded in. And again, the costuming, the music, all of these things are coming together to create a unified, fantastical experience. And that's what Cirque does so well, kind of better than anybody.
Christine Malec:I'm curious about the women's bodies because I'm assuming they have to be they are extremely spelled lean and flexible. But even a healthy woman's normal healthy woman's body is pretty curvy. Like if you've got too much real estate on top or your hips are too wide, so are their bodies of a particular type the women's bodies.
JJ Hunt:So I would suggest that there's more variation in the men's bodies than the women's. You know, if you get if you get a tumbler catcher, then that catcher, man might be six feet tall, in you know, 250 pounds with a very narrow waist and really broad shoulders and beefy, but not not ripped, and then you could get the tumbler that they're catching might be five foot two and really live muscular but needs to be lighter so that they can be thrown higher. And the same kind of range that you would see in women's bodies like a contortionist where the obviously these are these are extremely fit women. They tend to be quite small so they can bend and fold into very tight small packages. And then on the on the other end of the bodies. And it's not that these bodies are not muscular by the way they absolutely are, but they're muscular and quite lean. Whereas you might get a trapeze artist who is you know, she might have much more, much more definition, but probably not going to be bulky. And so I would, I would suggest there's more variation in in the men's bodies than in the women's bodies. That's of course not counting the other performers, the kind of clowning performers, where you get everything from the woman who played mini Lily, who's just an extraordinary actor only three feet tall, and you get a very, very tall and lean man or you know, a, you know, big round belly guy in the clouds, you get all kinds of different body types, but in the kind of athletes the skill, the other kind of hard skill performers. Yeah, I think it's true. The women's bodies do tend to be more of a single type than the men's I think that's accurate. And
Christine Malec:Do they play up sexy? Or is it just irrelevant or not necessary?
JJ Hunt:They definitely do. I mean, in a show like this, it's hard to deny that the bodies are beautiful. All of the bodies are extraordinary. And the costumes
Christine Malec:Yeah. are often very tight, very revealing, or only half there, right? Like the the men... what is it, the strap act? So two, two aerial acrobats, two men. And they're wearing they were wearing basically like, tight capris, like, you know, tights that go from the waist halfway down the calf. And I think they were sparkly and red, like very classic circus. And they're bare chested, two men with, you know, hairless, smooth skin. In this case, the two performers were white, and very, very handsome. And in the old days, those would have been called brothers. They were always brother acts, right?"The amazing so and so brothers!" Ohhh!
JJ Hunt:Interestingly, in this in this show, and my family
Christine Malec:Hmmm!
JJ Hunt:So their actions with each other, were just a little bit more tender than you would expect from brothers. And the talked about this afterwards, they weren't explicit about them way they would come apart and then come back together, swinging in the air near misses and holding each other. There was, I would suggest, and maybe that's just my read, but maybe a little bit more of a lover vibe than a brother vibe. And so in a show like this one curious, which is presented to general not being brothers, but they were maybe in their dynamics public's all over the place. It's a traveling show, it goes all over. There's definitely a hint of the sexuality. But Cirque also has a saucy show that they do in Las Vegas, where they are...
Christine Malec:Oh!
JJ Hunt:They play up that sexuality. I haven't seen it, but I would like to! Because it's inherent in the pieces, going a little bit more toward lovers. inherent in the actions. Its inherent in the costumes. And so I don't think it would take too much to kind of turn that dial up to 11, as it were.
Christine Malec:Got it, ya.
JJ Hunt:You know, yeah, make'er happen.
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