THEATER REVIEWS : For Cirque Eloize, Small Is Fantastic : Using a bare minimum of props, these seven performers juggle, dance, leap and flip in an intimate yet world-class show.

Some might say that bigger is better, but in the case of Cirque Eloize a miniature spinoff of the Cirque du Soleil, small has its own unique appeal.

In its American debut performance Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Cirque Eloize presented a rich program in a portable package. There was no big top, no legions of acrobats. The music was recorded, the costumes modest and everything happened on the floor: There were no aerial acts.

What Cirque Eloize delivered was an hourlong, world-class program of acrobatics and juggling using only seven performers, a bicycle and a ladder, and so little else that the rest of the props probably could have been packed into the valises that clowns Roch Jutras and Annette Devick dragged through the audience at the top of the show.

Jutras and Devick, known as Boris and Freeda onstage, were charming as the comic glue of the production. The advertised concept of Cirque Eloize--as a more intimate, personal kind of circus in which the audience really gets to know the performers--worked best with these beguiling clowns. By the time they’d pulled a volunteer onstage to pose for a silly photograph not more than 10 minutes into the performance, Boris and Freeda were old friends.

It took longer to recognize the acrobats, but after an hour of seeing the same five people dance, juggle, leap, flip and balance, you don’t soon forget them.

The particularly striking Daniel Cyr did a balancing act with a ladder that required the grace of a ballroom dancer, the strength of a Samson and the inner focus of a Zen master. Gyrating over, under and around the ladder, which seemed to stand up of its own accord, Cyr wove transcendent moments of truly awesome magic.

In “Trio des Iles,” three men seemed to find handholds in the air as they climbed and balanced upon one another. Conceived by brothers Damien and Alain Boudreau and executed with Sylvain Drolet, this gymnastic display had the fluid power of a python and a sense of fun that called to mind boys at recess--except that the Boudreaus and Drolet became their own playground equipment.

Jeannot Painchaud did a pas de deux with a bicycle to Flamenco music that partnered cycle and cyclist in more positions than the Kama Sutra. And from where I sat, the finale of the juggling act created a surrealistic visual effect: As they whizzed by the face of the fellow standing in the middle, the batons seemed to stand still in the air.

Not everyone, however, enjoyed my view. Massive Segerstrom Hall is hardly the ideal venue for “personal, intimate” entertainment. To the audience in the back of the house, Cirque Eloize must have looked more like an ambitious sparkler than the searing, luminous flash of lightning from which its Canadian name derives.

Cirque Eloize is designed to play anywhere, but in the matter of its performance space, smaller is definitely better. To see these wonderful circus artists up close, as the street performers they traditionally are . . . now that would truly be electrifying.

A Cirque Eloize production with Annette Devick, Alain Boudreau, Damien Boudreau, Daniel Cyr, Roch Jutras, Sylvain Drolet and Jeannot Painchaud. Stage director: Pierrette Venne. Choreographer: Danielle Lecourtois. Lights: Serge Poupart. Music: Claude St. Jean, Benoit Jutras, Gerard Cyr.