By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Amarillo Symphony will offer a treat for the eyes as well as the ears at its next concert.
The orchestra will be joined by Cirque de la Symphonie, a Georgia-based troupe of aerialists and other circus-style performers, for its performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Buchanan St. Tickets are $31 to $55, plus fees.
"You're going to see lots of acrobats, aerial flyers and even some comedy with mimes on the stage," said Alexander Streltsov, Cirque de la Symphonie's president and managing director. "But it's one of those shows that's better to see it once than to hear about it 100 times. It's a very unique concept."
While the orchestra is in its regular stage position performing such pieces as Georges Bizet's "Dance Boheme" and "Les Toreadors" from Carmen and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's "Valse" from Sleeping Beauty and "Dance des Cynnes" from Swan Lake , several Cirque de la Symphonie performers will be flying above the raised orchestra pit and even over the first couple of rows of the audience, Symphony executive director Corey Cowart said.
"It looks lke they're right above (the orchestra) from out in the house," Cowart said. "It's a good effect."
Others will be performing contortionist and acrobatic acts on stage in front of the orchestra.
The performance "is all very carefully programmed before we put it on stage," Streltsov said. "This concept is more of a theatrical production than a traditional circus.
"Some people think it's an under-the-big-top with the symphony, but that's not what we're trying to deliver," he continued. "The goal is to bring cirque artistry to the higher arts' level. We think of the symphony as very artsy, and we want to bring the circus to the same field."
Aerialist Vitalii Buza, a native of Moldavia who immigrated to the United States in 2000, has been with the company for seven years.
Performing with an orchestra is "definitely very much different from anything else," Buza said. "Everything is live. There's no track playing the music; it's a live orchestra, live people behind you with all of these amazing sounds."
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
