Cirque du Soleil's 'Dralion' soars, even in the Rose Garden's arena setting ...

On the surface, Cirque du Soleil shows don't seem like they should work in an arena setting. The extravagant touring productions by the French-Canadian circus troupe are known for their big-top settings, where audiences are never very far from the aerial artists and mind-blowing contortionists.

Whenever Cirque pitches its tents along the Willamette waterfront (as it has a whopping six times since 2000 ), Portland audiences line up, expecting to be dazzled. The one time the company tried presenting an arena show here -- 2006's bloated music spectacle "Delirium" -- the performances were swallowed up by the vastness of the Rose Garden.

That's what makes the super-sized adaptation of "Dralion" such a happy surprise. The show is performed only to the south end of the arena, with the top sections of the Rose Garden entirely blocked off. That allows the clowns and acrobats to focus their performances on the smaller audience, creating a surprising sense of intimacy you don't expect in a space that's normally home to NBA stars.

"Dralion" follows the same basic framework of the original tent production, which played six sold-out weeks here in 2002. A quartet of performers representing the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water act as silent ringmasters to a cavalcade of primarily Asian acrobatic acts, interspersed with a trio of avant-garde clowns, who mess with audience members and bring a twisted sensibility to the otherwise regal proceedings. But many of the acts and almost all of the performers are new to Portland audiences, and the show seems more fresh and tight now.

The title character -- a mystical creature that's part dragon, part lion -- suggests the overall theme of East-meets-West, and that's reflected in the range of routines. In the show's first half, Eastern acts dominate. About half of the 52-member company are Chinese acrobats, and they offer plenty of thrills in sequences where they jump through ropes and bamboo hoops, as well as creating gravity-defying human towers. In one of the show's best acts, the acrobats tumble across the stage, vaulting over and under a massive crimson flag wielded by Yi-Shun Chang, who injects plenty of awesome martial arts moves into his portrayal of Fire.

Several of those Dralions get into the acrobatic act, too, balancing atop six-foot-high balls while rolling them across a teetering balance board.

Rose Garden « Ladd Apartments Weblog

The Rose Garden Arena Portland, Oregon serves as the city’s premier indoor sports arena. The Rose Garden Arena Portland is one of few facilities that make up the sports and entertainment district known as the Rose Quarter. The Rose Garden Arena Portland project first started construction in 1993 and cost $262 million to complete. The Rose Garden Arena Portland officially opened on Oct… (rea

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