Cirque du Soleil

Ever since I was a little girl I loved the circus. Who doesn’t love the circus?! All the magic and make believe and costumes, it’s a little girl’s dream come true. As I got older my tastes matured a bit. I no longer found animals performing in shows cute and clowns down right freaked me out. But I still loved the circus. I think it was probably 11 years ago when I discovered Cirque du Soleil. For one reason or another I was never able to see a show. But my parents are avid Cirque goers. I’m not sure how many shows they’ve been to but my mom likes to tell me
(rub it in, lol)  about them and it always gets me excited and wanting to go.

Last week I was in a group on Facebook and I saw a post about the show Varekai coming to Baltimore and photographers and bloggers were being requested. The post was 48 minutes old and had zero replies. I sat there for a few minutes before I decided to email the contact. The post was 48 minutes old and surely they already had their amount of photographers and bloggers so why waste my time. The post was 48 minutes old and I just went ahead and sent the email anyway. Nicole responded almost immediately that they were still interested in photographers and sent me all the information. Two public events and a behind the scenes tour and I could come and photograph them all. I was over the moon happy. I photographed the events which were awesome by the way and will receive their own blog post.  But it gets better… The day of the show Nicole emailed me again before I was getting ready to photograph the backstage events and asked me if I was going to photograph the show or would I just be watching it. WHAT?!  Photograph the show? I could photograph the show? Are you serious? I didn’t want to come across all fan girl because I was fangirling it out at my desk and told her I would love to do it. She got back to me to let me know that I would be photographing the show on opening night.  I just sat in my car and felt happy and blessed. A show that I have loved for so long and wanted to see for so long I was now going to photograph. That type of luck just doesn’t happen every day.

I was allowed to photograph the first half of the show and it was amazing. I was a little familiar with the Varekai story and everything moved so fast.  If you aren’t familiar with it the story is about a boy who flies too close to the sun and his wings burn. He falls into a forest and it comes alive. He meets a creature and they fall in love.  There were trapeze, and acrobats, and contortionists, and jugglers, and a baton twirler. Synchronized dancers and tumblers and the Russian swings. There were also two guys in straps. I don’t even know how to explain it. There was so much going on and I left the show wanting to return the next night to see it again. It was a beautiful story and the entire cast was just amazing. Julie, their PR I could never thank enough. And Nicole. Thank you both for giving me an amazing experience.

Enjoy my photographs!  But don’t steal them!