I am going through my “to do” list as methodically as I have never done before in my life. Is that a new mature more tamed me? Or is that just one of my “do it at least once” obsessions, only time will tell. I do sincerely hope that it is not there to last for long :D.
I have heard of the “Cirque Shanghai GOLD” performance in lot of ads and reviews. But never was able to watch it as I could not convince anybody to come along with me. I find it such a bore (sounds quite British…: D) to watch a show alone, maybe because there is so much time to talk before, during intermission (if any) and after. Of course the whole experience is much more pleasurable if accompanied by a girl, but then again almost everything in life is ;). So after not much of cajoling I got Miss B (names not mentioned to protect the identity, but I know most of the people who are (if ever i.e.) going to read it will know it instantly, and if you know it please don't ask me why that particular alphabet or alphabets have been selected, because I promise to take that secret to my grave....hehehehe) to accompany me for the show.
I always thought that buying stuff over internet will be cheaper, but found out that in case of show tickets it’s not actually the case. Ticketmaster (may God bring bankruptcy to their doorsteps!!!!) charges at least $7 extra per ticket for "convenience fee" and other kind of miscellaneous fees. So I decided that we will go and buy the tickets right there before the show. Plus I found an ad saying that on Fridays they have a special offer of $5 off the Front Balcony tickets if we drink a Chinese lager named "HARBIN" and bring back the caps to the ticket counter. It sounded like a good deal, we get a better seat and a beer, and it was, but it took us some time to track down the bar that was serving that beer. To top it all, the bartender at the "beer gardens" have not heard of it at all, luckily for us her boss came by and suddenly remembered that he did have some Chinese beer stashed up in his storage. Seemed like we were the very few to avail of that particular offer. But it was not a bad lager for a Chinese beer even though $6 was a little steep for the taste. I am not complaining, it got us the $5 off the tickets. We walked back to the Pepsi Skyline Stage to get our tickets and luckily we got it right bang in the center of the Front Balcony. Initially I thought that there would not be too many people, judging by the fact that we got the center front row seats so easily just an hour before but I was proven wrong when I looked around and saw it almost full just before the show.
Miss B was quite enthusiastic about getting one of those Chinese fold able fans as she thought they were being handed out free. Even though I insisted that it was highly unlikely, we kept a sharp lookout for money exchanging hands. As predicted they were for sale only, keeping on with the American tradition that "nothing is for free" or in another POV "everything is for sale". Both of them meaning quite different while being equally true. But the City of Chicago proves me wrong every summer with its free events/concerts/festivals.
So we chit chatted along before the show started, which was mainly me yapping about my visit to the Art Institute of Chicago Museum the day before, with Miss B humming along "hmm's" in regular intervals with an occasional "yes" and "no" thrown in to keep it interesting :D (nothing bad in it Miss B, that's waht i prefer in my listeners anyway).
The show started on time and was quite colorful and thrilling. The performers were nimble on their feet as you would expect from a Chinese performance group (very stereotypical I know: D). There were couple of mistakes but nothing catastrophic. I expected them to be perfect as they have been doing it for a long time and supposedly were quite good at it. I do understand that you can't get all these delicate balancing things right all the time, but they did mistakes in the smaller, easier acts probably suggesting a bit of complacency. I must say though that they have mastered the art of presentation with colorful costumes and lightning.
My only complaint of the night was the lack of respect or maybe showing too much of it by the audience by clapping numerous times in between the acts. In the eastern part of the world its actually considered rude to clap or cheer before the performance is finished at least in the art forms I have been involved in India and as far as I know about the other Asian countries. Pundit Ravi Shankar once sarcastically said before one of his performances in Chicago Symphony Center that "after 25 years of playing sitar in the western world , people are finally becoming aware of our tradition, they don't clap while the artist are tuning their instruments". This kind of cheering is also looked down upon by the theater/symphony/opera goers here in America. Then what prompts people to do it so often? I personally find it very vulgar (sounding British again...) and blame it mainly on the pop culture. The mind of the people are programmed to clap /cheer/shout after every small thing done by the idiots on the stage and they lack the knowledge of antiquates for a particular kind of performance.
The act with the “rotating dishes on top of a stick”(don’t know what else to call it) was one of the most fascinating one. In one of the pictures above one can see that they even stood on their heads while still keeping the dishes revolving, Amazing! The final part of the act was the chain formation. The way they did it was that, each girl climbed on top of the head of another girl thus forming 4 doubles. Then all these doubles came closer to each other in a line and the top girl moved her footing to shoulders of her front the back girls below. Then they ever so slightly moved away from each other to make the stretched double chain formation shown in the picture above. They kept their plates revolving while all these acts were done. It was definitely the best of their acts. It reminded me of the symmetrical designs done by folding a piece of paper, cutting a few holes in it, and then opening it up to see the pattern generated.
I still think that Navy Pier is more of a family place i.e after you have kids and all :D. But it sure does give a glimpse of the carnival spirit after the bedtime hours before fading into the night.
Copyrights @ 2008 Rahuljit Pal.
For More Pictures please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/rahuljitpal
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