Impro Cirque for the Win!

Where do I start? How do I distill two nights of bursting, toe tingling, belly laugh joy, into words?

Easy.

I cheat and post a video.

ROLL TAPE!



What you just saw includes: straps in the style of a feathered animal, handstands in the style of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, really bad birthday clown, blind-folded hand to hand, and many other classic improv league themes with a circus twist.

And that was only the first night. The second night saw tissu under the sea, romantic handstand dinner, clown stopped at the border, and more!

Points are awarded at the end of each round as decided by the public's vote.

Don't like the referee's call?

Huck a clown nose at him.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself...

Impro Cirque is based on the Ligue nationale d'improvisation, a competitive, and hilarious, form of improvised theatre. The circus version borrows from the LNI in its format and style but stands on its own as a new kind of circus event. How fitting that both the LNI and Impro Cirque were born in Montreal.

I have never felt so overwhelmingly happy at a show. I was beaming. I was giddy. I was nothing short of euphoric. I think that if you do circus, there's a greater appreciation of the event. The fact that everything is improvised means you're not going to see the kind of death defying feats you normally would expect at a circus show. Not that there aren't spectacular moments. Also, I knew half of the players, so my heart was really quite open to them.

But more than anything, my heart was open to something new, something wildly creative, and something that is nothing short of brilliant. My friend Phil is the mastermind behind the whole event and I cannot begin to explain how proud I am. Not only of him but of the fact that this entire concept has been hatched and nurtured in my city, by so many of my friends, and that I was among the first witnesses... there is no doubt in my mind that this is going to be huge, that it will be copied and that it will spread. It has to. Something this extraordinary simply can't be contained!

Nor should it.

Montreal reinvented circus once with Cirque du Soleil. I think it just got reinvented again.

To cap off the evening, I bought a t-shirt. Only they weren't allowed to sell them as part of the festival so I had sneak out back, under a bridge, and buy it out of a cardboard box in the back if my friends car.

If that doesn't add to the atmosphere and experience of an event, I don't know what does.

Oh, Impro Cirque!

I'm just so smitten with you!