Run Away With The Cirque! Kooza Opens Tonight

Cirque du Soleil returns to San Diego with its critically-acclaimed big top production Kooza. The newest Cirque show opens today for a limited engagement under the trademark blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau (big top) at Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego.

Kooza tells the story of The Innocent, a melancholy loner in search of his place in the world. Kooza is a return to the origins of Cirque du Soleil: It combines two circus traditions – acrobatic performance and the art of clowning. The show highlights the physical demands of human performance in all its splendor and fragility, presented in a colorful mélange that emphasizes bold slapstick humor.

“Kooza is about human connection and the world of duality, good and bad,” says the show’s writer and director David Shiner. “The tone is fun and funny, light and open. The show doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s very much about ideas, too.”

The Innocent’s journey brings him into contact with a panoply of comic characters such as the King, the Trickster, the Pickpocket, and the Obnoxious Tourist and his Bad Dog. Between strength and fragility, laughter and smiles, turmoil and harmony, Kooza explores themes of fear, identity, recognition and power. The show is set in an electrifying and exotic visual world full of surprises, thrills, chills, audacity and total involvement.

FUN FACTS ABOUT KOOZA

• Since Kooza left Montreal in 2007, the 59 trailer truck traveled more than 10,000 miles.
• 125 artists and employees plus 25 family members travel with Kooza.
• There is 19 different nationalities represented in the cast and crew.
• Kooza cooks serve more than 300 meals a day, six days a week.
• The Kooza mobile village includes the Grand Chapiteau (Big Top), Artistic Tent, entrance tent, VIP tent, box office, kitchen, school, office trailers, warehouses and more.
• 180,000 square feet are needed to house the entire site including the tents and trailers.
• It takes 10 days for about 150 workers, including 75 hired locally to complete a city to city transfer of the infrastructures.
• 59 tractor trailers are needed to carry the 771 metric tons of equipment from city to city.
• Just like a village the site is completely self-sufficient for electrical power and relies only on a local water supply and telecommunication facilities to support its infrastructure.
• The Grand Chapiteau measures 165 feet in diameter and is supported by four 82-foot-high steel masts.
• The cupola is 52 feet above the ground.
• The climate-controlled Grand Chapiteau seats 2,500 people.

Ticket prices vary from $36 to $125, depending on the seating section of your choice. Tickets for Kooza are available at 1-800-450-1480 or online at www.cirquedusoleil.com/kooza.