Birthdays are usually celebrated with bottles of champagne, but what about clown noses and a giant Styrofoam cake? Well, that’s how Cirque du Soleil brought in its 25th year in the theatre biz on June 16, honouring its anniversary in Cirque theatres across the globe – including Macau’s permanent, one-year-old ZAIA show at the Venetian.

Complimentary champagne flowed in the concession halls for all audience members, a fake white-and-turquoise birthday cake made its way into the beginning of the show and clown noses were distributed to all the patrons. The night was to celebrate the 25-year evolution of Cirque du Soleil – an idea that sprung from street performers in Quebec yearning to show the rest of the world what they’ve got to a massive production that is now one of the leading acrobatic performances of the world, filled with death-defying stunts, bouncing high kicks and a flamboyant energy incomparable to other shows.

Like all things Cirque, the quarter-century anniversary is meant to evoke the most fantastical of emotions with its one-of-a-kind, silly-natured quirks – the most obvious being the bright-red clown noses that audience members were given to sport throughout the show. “All across the planet today, people will be wearing clown noses and celebrating with us,” artistic director for ZAIA, Joel Bergeron said gleefully. “And that is one of the dreams of Guy Laliberte [founder of Cirque du Soleil]: that everyone will be wearing clown noses one day.”

With brightly lit circus gear in tow, audience members sat back to watch the action-packed ZAIA performance, a tale of a young girl journeying off into space that’s told through the lens of countless acts, ranging from high-rising X-board artists jumping effortlessly in the sky to a performer balancing horizontally in the air with only her feet held in place by her partner.

Since ZAIA’s official debut last August, the permanent show has evolved, making minor changes throughout the performance and incorporating new acts into the agenda.

The most recent addition is a juggling act performed by three Russian brothers and a sister, who were incorporated into the show in February because it was need of “an uplifting moment.”

Although ZAIA has been fine-tuned throughout the past year, aiming to be more acrobatic and aerial in its stunts, the unique characteristics that make the show a quintessential Cirque du Soleil experience remain the same. Telling the story only through the physical acts and body language of performers, along with a made-up language understood by none, gives the show a universal appeal and summons patrons to invoke their own experience.

And to Mr. Bergeron, that’s exactly the point. “It’s not as important if people understand the story,” says Bergeron. “What’s important is whether the patrons were touched or not.”

Cirque du Soleil knows no words. It only speaks the language of theatre, filled with unrestricted emotion and a few thousand clown noses distributed to patrons across the world, a dream come true for Laliberte.

www.cirquedusoleil.com.

By Adriana Dermenjian