🗓️ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 | 7:30 PM
đź“ŤBROWNING CENTER AT WSU
Cirque de la Symphonie returns to Ogden with aerialists soaring above the Utah Symphony. Every flip and spiral is choreographed to the live orchestra below. Picture a contortionist bending in ways that defy anatomy while the strings swell through the “Danse Bohème” from Carmen. A juggler keeps impossible patterns aloft as Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” builds to its thundering peak. This is not a circus with background music. This is the orchestra and the acrobats as one performance, each making the other more vivid.
Cirque de la Symphonie is the only cirque company in the world that performs exclusively with live symphony orchestras. Founded by Alexander Streltsov, a veteran of the Moscow Circus and the only aerialist to perform with the Bolshoi Ballet, the company has sold out with more than 100 orchestras worldwide, from the Boston Symphony to the Sydney Symphony in Australia. The performers are Olympic-caliber athletes and gold medalists, and the choreography is built to fit the intimate dimensions of a concert hall, with acts unfolding just feet from the audience.
The Utah Symphony brings the full orchestral weight to a program of classical favorites and popular film scores, including selections from Carmen, Scent of a Woman, and more. Onstage, aerial flyers twist through silk straps, hand-balancers hold impossible poses, and acrobatic duos launch into sequences that pull audible gasps from the crowd. The visual and the musical lock together so tightly that you stop seeing them as separate.
This is a return engagement for Ogden audiences, and Cirque de la Symphonie has a track record of filling seats fast. It also kicks off the 26/27 Pops in Ogden series, making it the first night of a brand-new season. Onstage Ogden presents Cirque de la Symphonie with the Utah Symphony on Thursday, September 10 at 7:30 PM at Austad Auditorium.
