A Whole Different Animal

Cirque du Soleil may have shown most of us how to enjoy circuses without animals, but a few holdouts still like to see four-footed performers too. The Montreal wizards who run the Cirque apparently realized this.

Voila--”Dralion.”

Entrancing as ever in the U.S. debut of its latest extravaganza at Santa Monica Pier, the Canadian circus created its own cage-free, food-free faux animals. By attaching the head of a dragon to the body of a lion--in a style Americans will associate with Chinese New Year parades--and then implanting nimble (human) tumblers inside these “dralions,” the Cirque added a playful new dimension to this year’s show.

The fact that these dralions aren’t actual animals may still disappoint a few picky purists. But for the rest of us, the dralions offer the primary appeal of the big animal acts--seeing supposedly unwieldy beasts performing surprisingly graceful routines--without any morning-after animal-rights regrets of the sort that send celebrities to congressional hearings.

The dralions’ star-making moment is in the second half, when they briefly venture into the audience and then join other tumblers in performing stunts atop rolling balls. In the grand finale, accompanied by incongruous but jaunty music reminiscent of a hoedown, a dralion rides a ball across a teeterboard.

Of course, most of the performers in “Dralion” aren’t wearing animal costumes--this is not “The Dralion King.” As usual with the Cirque, this edition is full of clearly identifiable human beings performing seemingly superhuman feats--many of them involving giant ascending and descending rings poised over center stage. At the back of the stage we sometimes glimpse a massive wall to which acrobats cling, as if they’re in the process of scaling it. A few clowns periodically bring everyone back down to earth.

What’s most unusual about this show, other than the title creatures themselves, is a remarkable bit of self-parody. The Cirque has long been ripe for spoofing. For example, this show is structured around four symbol-laden performers who keep hovering at the periphery of other artists’ acts; we’re told they represent water, earth, fire and air. Or just look at the language with which director Guy Caron begins his program note: “Cyberspace, market globalization and the modernization and acceleration of communications mean that more than ever, our way of life spans the planet.”

Too bad no one in the show makes fun of Caron’s verbiage. But late in the second act, the clowns do perform pointed burlesque versions of some of the acts we’ve just witnessed, including most of the four living symbols. This ability to laugh at oneself is the mark of a truly self-confident organization.

Self-confidence goes with the territory. Peng Rui, the 12-year-old whose hand-balancing begins the featured acts, is exhibit A; her supporting arm never wavers despite a variety of contortions that turn the rest of her body into Silly Putty. Fiery-haired Viktor Kee does a juggling act that is as notable for the display of every contour of his splendid physique as it is for his actual juggling. Juliana Neves and Ivo Guoerguiev perform an aerial pas de deux that is memorably erotic, to the strains of Violaine Corradi’s haunting music.

The clowns include a nerdy fellow who frequently emits amusing gasps and chuckles over a megaphone, when he isn’t balancing on a string bass or ripping into a set of drums; and a young woman with a mop-top hairdo and a short guy who make mischief with a purported audience “volunteer.”

A delegation from the Xinan troupe of China makes up the heart of the acrobatic chorus. Bamboo poles, teeterboards, a double trapeze, hoops and jump ropes are among the favored props. In one number described in press materials as “being presented for the first time in the world,” five young women dance on pointe and form human towers--atop a garden of light bulbs. Each number from the Chinese troupe bursts with animation and energy, and on opening night the precision was impeccable--until the grand finale of the hoop-jumping, when two attempts to leap through the highest hoop yet, without making the hoops fall, were unsuccessful.

This small imperfection was a useful reminder that the spectacle is live, not canned, and that the excitement of the here and now--not cyberspace and market globalization--are why people keep flocking to the Cirque du Soleil.

* “Dralion,” on the parking lot just north of the Santa Monica Pier. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m.; Thursdays-Fridays, 5:30 and 9:30 p.m., except this Thursday, 8 p.m. only; Saturdays, 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 and 5 p.m., dark Oct. 19, Nov. 1. Moves to Irvine Spectrum Center on Dec. 2. $23.75-$38.50 (children); $34-$55 (adults). (800) 678-5440. Running time: 3 hours.

Directed by Guy Caron. Costumes by Francois Barbeau. Sets by Stephane Roy. Music by Violaine Corradi. Choreography by Julie Lachance. Sound by Guy Desrochers. Lighting by Michel Beaulieu, adapted by Luc Lafortune. Clown act codesigned by Michel Daillaire.