Corteo

The magical world of Cirque du Soleil is always stunning. Its gravity-defying acts, amazing costumes and imaginative stories can turn a tent full of skeptical grown-ups into wide-eyed kids. But the latest incarnation of acrobatics and clowns coming from the Canadian circus may be its most lyrical ever. Corteo features a landscape rich with gorgeous strangeness and the earthy, faded hues of old-world beauty.

In the center of this extraordinary world is a simple clown (Jeff Raz) who starts the whole thing off saying, “I dreamt of my funeral.” The show that follows captures that dream, whose fragmented nature is mirrored by what happens onstage. Death has never looked so appealing.

Each act adds another layer to the fantastic collage. From the acrobats who roll across the stage in human-sized hoops to the tightrope walker who crosses above the audience’s heads upside down, this world is full of the sort of bizarre imagery usually reserved for sleep time. There are flying angels dressed in gossamer gowns, little people in love, muscle-bound tumblers, jugglers, giants, huge twirling chandeliers dripping with glass beads and beautiful women wearing nothing but stockings and creamy-colored underthings.

While swooning, Spanish-inflected music plays, a woman in red (Anastasia Bykovskaya) toe-dances over a wire strung high in the circus tent and lovely guardian angels fly in to hand her props. At the end, she climbs all the way up to the top of the tent on a single strand of wire as though she’s making her way up the stairway to Heaven.

In another act, a sweet puppet (Rebecca Jose) floats through the air on her strings, then offers to play a high-flying game with the clown. A simple game of catch becomes an act of imaginative bravado. Angels, horse heads, tutu-ed girls and rubber chickens appear out of nowhere at any given moment.

The clowns add a delicious dimension of the absurd. A gigantic Scottish golfer must contend with a talking ball who simply won’t cooperate. Every time he raises his club to swing, she faints, moves or escapes into the ground. At several moments, pairs of empty shoes march across the stage. One of the loveliest scenes of the evening involves a tiny lady (Valentyna Pahlevanyan) wearing a pair of red slippers. She floats in attached to a contraption held up by enormous helium balloons, descending into the audience; then she’s pushed back into the air by anyone lucky enough to be within reach of her tiny slippered feet.

The acrobats who twist on ribbons and ropes are amazing for their physical power. While swinging in enormous circles, some 30 feet in the air, they flip and twirl and bend their lithe bodies into impossible pretzels of human flesh. It is breathtaking to behold.

But for all the amazing flights of fancy here, there is a tenderness in Corteo that makes it somehow more moving, more real and less of a spectacle than some of Cirque du Soleil’s more extravagant productions. Created and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, with a dreamy score by Philippe Leduc and Maria Bonzanigo, the story shows us that a funeral does not have to be a sour dirge. It can, in fact, be an exuberant celebration of the power of the imaginative life. Joyful and oftentimes very funny, the production works like a living painting.

Dappled with impressionistic colors, Dominique Lemieux’s costumes and Martin Labrecque’s lighting feel like they’ve leaped out of a poster for an event from long ago, as if they’re the memory of a circus rather than the actual event. The fragmented images that appear at unexpected moments — a woman in a horse costume, floating angels, a tiny well-dressed man walking near a giant — add to the feelings of nostalgia and memory rippling throughout this lovely production. At the end, the effect is more than beautiful. Corteo vibrates with a sweet joy for all that has been, the sort of feeling that most of us dream might happen at the end of our lives.