Cirque Du Soleil's Amaluna

Dictionary.com says the definition of manipulation is “the act of managing or influencing skillfully, especially in an unfair manner.” The book Tom Sawyer, written by Mark Twain, accounts the young life of Tom Sawyer and the ways he uses manipulation to change the minds of Aunt Polly, Becky Thatcher, and his friends for something he desires.

Manipulation can serve as a very impressive social tool in order to bend someone's will to fulfill your agenda and trick them into carrying out a specific action. To manipulate is to manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner. This is prevalent in the tragic play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Macbeth, an ambitious general, is manipulated by both his wife and three witches to commit heinous crimes. The witches manipulate Macbeth by using his faith in the supernatural to force him to carry out certain actions. As well, they present him with deceiving prophecies to give him false confidence. Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth by questioning his manhood

The two live dance works viewed this year were “Emergence”, performed by Sydney Dance Company, choreographed by Rafael Bonachela, performed at the Princess Theatre and a recorded dance performance titled “Image”, choreographed by Jason Northam and Liesel Link. The two dance performances substantiated were exceedingly diverse and dissimilar. The two performances juxtaposed their intentions and interpreted opposing elements through diversity in movement vocabulary, structural devices and form, performance skills and technical elements.

Over the years, I have flirted with visual art. It started with pencil drawing, continued as an affair with marker illustration, then a dalliance with lettering, and I now have a relationship with photography. However, my favorite art will never be displayed in museums or galleries. It is not static and immutable. Rather, my chosen medium is fluid, living, volatile. No matter how well rehearsed, it will never be the same again. That’s the beauty of performance art.

“Audiences today want a real experience in their live performance, because they can get great script based entertainment at home, through various new media sources. Traditional theatre, which appeals on a mental, and hopefully also emotional level, has not been enough to compete with other media, and audiences have been declining. Physical theatre, by contrast appeals to the audience on a physical and emotional level, providing a much more immediate experience than traditional theatre” ~ (Artmedia Publishing in Zen Zen Zo’s “The Tempest” Teacher’s Notes)

Cirque du Soleil was founded in 1984, in Baie-Saint-Paul, Canada. The four founders of this amazing company were Guy Laliberté, Gilles Ste-Croix, Daniel Gauthier, and Rachel Vertus; however, this wasn’t the true beginning of Cirque du Soleil.

A respectable reputation is a commonly sought after title that many will go to extreme lengths to achieve. People all over the world value how their peers view them. In the late 1600’s one’s reputation was their everything. In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, characters manipulate the truth and strike fear into others to furiously protect their reputation. Multiple characters use the act of manipulation to save their reputation in a small town.

Manipulation is a very puissant term. It is usually viewed in a negative sense by its definition of skillfully handling or controlling someone or something. Manipulation is a scheme used by people everyday to achieve their goals. It is an attempt to cunningly outwit another to gain personal advantage. In order to outwit the other person, people tend to exploit the person's weakness, which generates more situations favouring them. In Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible and Shakespeare's Othello, the villains, or in other terms, manipulators, Abigail Williams and Iago illustrate the essence of manipulation. Both characters take advantage of their state or situation and skillfully turn others into puppets which later goes on to having a huge impact on the fate other characters.

After diving deeper into the production of Metamorphoses I couldn’t help but recognize a theme of, “The Powers of Love”. The objective of the performance was to present the transitions and effects that love has on people, by staging different myths and stories. By enabling different design element and implementing special effects, the production of Metamorphoses created a visual world in which the play could unfold.

Manipulation, the act of manipulating, is a common occurrence in teenage HSE. Waters presents manipulation through double lives and using technology as a method gaining trust from others. As Cady becomes exposed the Regina’s true side, she begins to be manipulated by Janis in implementing revenge by manipulating the plastics “cutting off her resources…Regina would be nothing without her high-statues man candy, good physiques, and ignorant loyal followers” and turning them against one-another. Regina Geroge’s character also holds the power of manipulation through her attractiveness and social intelligence in understanding people’s fears and insecurities. This is evident when the rules that Reinga invented to control and manipulate the plastics

The dancers run out onto the stage and form two straight lines consisting of three girls in the front and three girls in the back. As the piece progresses this formation does not vary other than to switch lines. Once on stage, the music finishes the introduction and the happy, lively, carnival type music begins. The dancers throw confetti onto the audience members and begin their variations of shimmying, hip thrusting, being overly dramatic and movements that were highly sexualized. Each movement seems as though it was choreographed in order to make the dancer’s body shake specifically within the bosom and the buttock. The dancers’ facings were both front and back displaying the entirety of the female body. Within the clip at 28 seconds the camera focuses only on the female’s buttock as it its shaking from side to side in time with the music. By 37 seconds colored streamers fly down from the stage as the dancers walked dramatically in unison

Only a few hours earlier, dancers filled the back dressing rooms with makeup and costumes thrown around in chaos before their final performance of AROVA’s “Choreography Showcase.”

Cirque du Soleil ("Circus of the Sun") is a Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a "dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment." Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix.

Q1. How would you assess the attractiveness of the circus industry in early 1980s? What would you conclude from industry analysis?

Manipulation is getting what you want by ignoring or harming the desires of others. Manipulators use charm, persuasion, coaxing, trickery, and misdirection. The underlying idea is "I have to fool people to make them give me what I want." We can catch ourselves falling into this behavior when you aren 't listening to other people, when you ignore what they want and when you pretend that your desires cost nobody else a price. There are also