Mechanical Action / Birdhouse Factory
Stars of Cirque du Soleil
The curtain opens up on an industrial complex like one you've never seen before. "Mechanical Action's" "Birdhouse Factory" is a unique show in the nouveau cirque vein full of amazing invention, humour, enchantment and emotion.
Chilled workers, standing in front of the officine’s gates, shudder and tighten their coats. As they enter, an enormous bobin swallows them whole and from it erupts the workers, transformed into jugglers, acrobats, contortionists. The terms sound familiar but they have never been experienced like this before.
The boss, dressed as he appeared out of a Magritte painting, with a long dark coat, uses a bowler hat and his overnight case to surprise the audience with his prodigious acrobatic antics.
A danced tango on vertical bars from an extraordinary duo takes the breath away. The alliance of man and machine is made manifest by creator, Chris Lashua, in his minding bending routine on the German Wheel and these are only some of the striking new elements to be found in this ground breaking new show.
The genius of Chris Lashua, the show’s director, expresses itself in the way he converts the tools of industry into a platform for the talents of his artists.
The beauty of "Mechanical Action/Birdhouse Factory" is its superb integration of the performers’ skill, driving music, atmospheric lighting and astouding choreography into a single cloth, producing a story both visually heart stopping and emotional. Chris Leshau's amazing artistry is only matched by the singular artistry of his performers, acclaimed stars of the Cirque du Soleil.
"Mechanical Action's" "Birdhouse Factory" takes the hard, very real world of the factory worker and transforms it in a palace of heroes who manufacture wonder.
Chris Lashua
Through his unique talent as a bicycle acrobat, Chris Lashua joined at a young age the artists of “Cirque du Soleil” to perform in Japan in a small prodution titled "Fascination". During these years Chris started to work on new ways to express his skills. A friend showed him an image of the German Wheel. He spent several years building and trying out prototypes.
His part in “Cirque du Soleil's” "Quidam" was greeted extraordinary success worldwide. His dance in the German Wheel, in which the artist and his tool share the stage as two ‘prima donnas’, synthesizes the struggle between man and technology into perfect gyroscopic harmony.
