Cirque du Soleil: Corteo @ Climate Pledge Arena

Clowns are coming 🤡

📸: Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo

📅 Wednesday, January 17th – Saturday, January 20th
📍 Climate Pledge Arena: 334 1st Ave N, Seattle
🎟 $55+

Watching someone do something freaky and seemingly impossible is a total thrill—and for the past four decades, the Montreal-based circus company Cirque du Soleil has sent bodies bending, leaping, and twirling in front of audiences worldwide. This month, the circus is coming to Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena with Corteo, their wildly popular act that premiered in 2005 and has now been seen by over eight million pairs of eyeballs across the globe. 

The plot summary for Corteo—which is Italian for “cortège,” a fancy word for “procession”—is kinda dark, but stick with me: a clown named Mauro imagines his death (!) and funeral (!!) taking the shape of a festive carnival attended to by beautiful acrobatic angels. As he moves through memories of his life, figures from his past and The Great Beyond visit him in fantastical, back-bending ways. Four former lovers swing on chandeliers above his bed, a dancer contorts their body on a long suspended pole, and five artists spin around the stage in giant rings. With big balloons, ladders, and hula hoops galore, this production has something for everyone in the family. 

And at the end of the day, aren’t we all clowns contemplating our deaths?

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Author

An author pic of Jas Keimig. They have blue braids.

Jas Keimig

Jas Keimig is an arts and culture writer in Seattle. Their work has previously appeared in The Stranger, i-D, Netflix, and Feast Portland. They won a game show once and have a thing for stickers.