Absolute clusterfuck trying to get to La Nouba tonight. Between a time change in Central Florida that we weren’t expecting, and a misreading of the ticket times (I thought it was a civilised 7:30pm time like every other show, but it was at 6pm!), and the damn GPS taking us to the wrong end of Buena Vista Drive, we literally rocked up to collect our tickets at 5:57pm and I was panicking that we were going to get locked out! Well, we made it in by the skin of our teeth and discovered that our tickets were front row, which is weird because I don’t want to be pulled up onto the stage during the show and I usually book a few rows back, but oh well, front and centre it was – I must have booked ‘best available’ rather than chosen my own seats.
The building itself is quite beautiful, and as expected the place sets an entirely different atmosphere to what we experienced a few nights earlier at the Ford Arena when we saw Varekai. Gorgeous building, liveried staff, fancy decor in the lobby and a fantastical space created for the performance which leads to an air of excitement in the air for patrons so completely different to that of wandering into the Arena in sombre lines.
Most of the acts at La Nouba are obviously designed to cater for their younger patrons. Given the theatre is in Downtown Disney, there is a strong family atmosphere and far more children present than you normally see at a Cirque du Soleil show. As such, there were many apparatus incorporated into the show that would be very accessible to the younger audience. They had an act comprising of some very fancy people jumping rope in a wonderful display of coordination and skill, there was another with some guys doing tricks on bicycles, and another that was tightrope walking and a very accomplished juggler – all acts that children can appreciate how difficult they are to execute as they may have tried similar challenges themselves. Ditto for the guys on the trampoline, kids all familiar with trampolines would know how hard it is to do what these acrobats can do having played on trampolines themselves.
In addition to these seemingly commonplace items of skipping ropes, pushbikes and balance and juggling acts were a wonderful trapeze act and an amazing group of four girls using Diablos. Now if you’ve ever used a Diablo, you know they can be a little tricky to get hang of using them, they can be fun, but they get knotted up and it’s hard to get the rotation going well, but these girls were experts, they danced and ran about and used their Diablos expertly, tossing and throwing them to themselves and each other in an amazing display of coordination, gymnastics, dance and most of all dedication to practice! They were great, and definitely my favourite act of this show.
After La Nouba, we went for a stroll around Downtown Disney and took in the sights and did a little shopping. DisneyWorld is HUGE… and I am so glad we are not going to be visiting DisneyWorld this trip – I think I’m a bit Disney’d out after last years three days in Disneyland and California Park with The Small Child. 🙂