Do You Know the Way…

to Cirque du Soleil?

My week of amazing-ness was brought to a fantastic close with a performance of Quidam (translated as, an anonymous passer-by living lost in the crowd) by French-Canadian troop, Cirque du Soleil. The show took place at Dublin’s new O2 arena, which is such a lovely venue! I had never been to the Point, but the O2 is a brilliant place to see a performance – the amphitheatre seating means that wherever you are, you have a great view of the action and no one is blocking your way! There were also ample toilet facilities, and I wasn’t in a queue for more than 5 minutes (which in female standards is teensy!).

The show itself left me in complete and utter awe. The story followed a little girl on a boring rainy day – who slips into this fantasy world of acrobats, clowns and a mysterious headless man with an umbrella! The choreography was such that although your eyes were drawn to a piece of circus performance in the centre of the stage, there were no shortage of other acts appearing in other parts of the set. The characters reminded me of something from Pan’s Labyrinth, except not quite so scary!

When you go to a circus, what do you expect to see? Why clowns, of course! And boy did Cirque deliver! It’s two main clown pieces involved bringing audience members onto the stage and placing them in physically awkward situations. It was side-splitting kind of funny – and what a rush for those people on stage to have the entire venue applauding their efforts!

There were no shortage of amazing feats. My favourites included a troupe of Asian girls with Diablos – they were able to do things with them that I’d never seen (and I did a thesis on Irish circuses last June!). I also loved the acrobats that came out suspended on large rings – it was both beautiful and exciting to watch. The entire show was so graceful and daring! I loved every minute.

I also have to give a mention to the wonderful live band and vocalists that provided the sometimes eerie backdrop to the performance! They were so polished that you’d never have known the music was live.

If you missed Cirque du Soleil this time around – make sure you catch them whenever they come back! I for one will be first in line for the next show!

Bit of Xposé

Last week, while on work placement with TV3, I was lucky enough to get to see the Dublin Fashion Week Collective Salon Show! I spent the day with some of the girls of Xposé and got to see first hand what goes into making a piece for the programme. The show itself was at the Westbury Hotel and saw the models zig zagging in and out of  a tea party-esque set up as they struck a pose in some gorgeous threads!

Designers featured in the show included Sinead Doyle, Joanne Hynes and Rachel Mackey. Perhaps the most exciting addition to the line-up was Dublin born Paul Costelloe, who has opened up London Fashion Week for the last six years and hasn’t shown a collection in Ireland for over ten years! His autumn/winter collection is filled with glittering dresses and beautiful cuts – all of which provided the perfect opening for the show. Joanne Hynes’ collection was another of my favourites, and included a quilted leather jacket that was to die for! If there’s one thing I’ll say about the collections, they were definitely all wearable!

Rather than post pics of the event, here’s the Xposé coverage of the show!

We found it especially funny that after the show – all of the cakes, muffins and biscuits put out for the spectators were left relatively untouched – that’s fashion for ya!

I have to admit, I never thought much of Xposé as a production – that is until I got to work with the girls! It may look like fluffy television, but the Xposé team aren’t just a bunch of pretty (prettier in real life) faces – the presenters do a lot of their own research, do the interviews and even edit the packages themselves. So much hard work goes into each show – and they make it look easy!