Performing Arts

It looks effortless and incredibly beautiful – hoops flying, pins spinning, acrobats swinging under glittering chandeliers.

MONA REEDER/DMN

Cirque du Soleil's Corteo, which opened Friday night in Fair Park, is full of breathtaking moments.

Then a performer falls and you realize the great risk of pushing the body beyond the breathtaking limits of imagination and possibility.

In Friday's final act of Corteo, the latest live touring production by Cirque du Soleil in the blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau (Big Top) in Fair Park, an acrobat fell off a horizontal bar and the show stopped. Performers sat still on the stage, watching intently while at least six people tended to him from 10:30 to 10:35 p.m., carefully strapping him into a stretcher and carting him offstage, ending the show a minute early by eliminating what organizers called "a final giant swing."

Reggie Lyons, publicist for the show, declined to release the performer's name but said his injuries are "not serious." He was taken to a local hospital as a precautionary measure, she said, adding, "He is alert and awake."

It was wrenching and cut right to the heart of one of the most emotionally powerful shows in Cirque's illustrious repertoire. For Corteo – which is Italian for "cortege," or "celebratory procession" – is a memory play: the story of a dead clown looking back at his life.

It begins on an artfully constructed revolving stage between two semicircles of seating, giving each side the impression that they are looking into a mirror image while that mirror image is looking back at them. Sandwiched between two delicately painted curtain scrims, the clown – played by hearty, curly-haired circus veteran Jeff Raz – rises from his funeral bed. Then, as angels fly overhead, acts unfurl like flashes of his past.

Beautiful women – perhaps women he has known – twist and spin on chandeliers, and youthful acrobats that suggest his younger self joyously leap on trampoline-like beds amid a pillow fight. The lacy, velvety, flowing clothes all suggest a bygone time, and the performers' props had a similarly natural feel – a beach ball, gigantic helium-filled balloons, shoes that walked by themselves.

And there were of course classic circus acts done in Cirque's signature reality-challenging style.

Children and adults alike sighed as fairy dust fell on a tenderly embracing couple twirling while supported by the slightest of straps. Tightwire artist Anastasia Bykovskaya did everything you can think of on a wire and more: walking on pointe, on a unicycle and ascending on a diagonal incline to a spot that suggested heaven.

Heaven, actually, was the motif that seemed to inspire the artists to push themselves beyond what they dreamed they could do, whether it was a juggler working up the guts to go for catching just one more hoop or the act by Uzeyer Novrusov, which shows him climbing, sliding down and balancing upside down on a small ladder without support. After he gets his applause, an angel prods him to try a larger ladder. He tries to walk away from the challenge, then ultimately masters it and ascends to the rafters.

It's one of so many glorious and touching and funny and breathtaking moments in a show that is ever cognizant that life's most joyous moments are but sparks of light in the shadow of death. And for five tense moments that shadow seemed all too palpably real.

•Through March 11 under the blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau (Big Top) at Fair Park. $40-$75, $28-$52.50 children, discount and VIP tickets available. 150 mins. 800-678-5440, www.cirquedusoleil.com.