Cirque du Soleil KOOZA Review

Cirque du Soleil’s KOOZA is here in Phoenix for a lim­ited engage­ment (now through July 15th before head­ing on to Hous­ton, Dal­las, Tampa, & Lon­don), play­ing under the “big top” at the Uni­ver­sity of Phoenix Sta­dium. The Grand Chapiteau tent helps cre­ate an inti­mate, tra­di­tional cir­cus feel. And, no need to worry about this crazy Phoenix heat. The tent is air-conditioned & was actu­ally quite cool inside!

KOOZA is a return to the ori­gins of Cirque du Soleil, com­bin­ing two cir­cus tra­di­tions of acro­bat­ics and clowns. It tells the story of “The Innocent”–a sort of young, loner, elf-like clown who is trans­ported into this amaz­ing dream-like world of kings and clowns and amaz­ing per­for­mances. This is a true Cirque show in every sense! There are edge of your seat death-defying stunts, bod­ies doing things that you can’t quite com­pre­hend, great live music, ele­gant cos­tumes, humor­ous clowns, and audi­ence involve­ment. There were numer­ous times dur­ing the show that I sat there with my mouth open, com­pletely shocked & amazed at what the per­form­ers could do. One such acts was the con­tor­tion­ist girls–completely unbe­liev­able what they can do with their bodies!

(Photo credit: Cirque du Soleil)

There were also plenty of nerve-wracking, edge of your seat per­for­mances. I have a bit of an issue with heights, so when the dou­ble tight rope walk­ers took the stage with no guide wires or net at first, I could barely watch! Eek! And, then there is “The Wheel of Death” per­for­mance! So exciting–with peo­ple actu­ally gasp­ing & scream­ing in the crowd!!

(Photo credit: Cirque du Soleil)

In between all these amaz­ing acts were some hilar­i­ous clowns, magic acts, and fun audi­ence involve­ment. With that said though, much of the humor was geared toward adults–with very obvi­ous innu­endo & adult top­ics. How­ever, that wasn’t sur­pris­ing to me. I’ve been to numer­ous Cirque shows, and I per­son­ally don’t think they are for kids. Instead, I think it makes for a GREAT date night out! Mr. Mom Endeav­ors and I had a fab­u­lous time and def­i­nitely think it’s worth a splurge for a nice adult evening out!

There are still tick­ets avail­able, which you can find on the Cirque du Soleil web­site here. Our seats were about 6 rows back, just barely off cen­ter (which were amaz­ing). But, hon­estly, given the small inti­mate feel of the tent, I think just about any seat in the house would be fine (the extreme sides might be the only excep­tion). So, if you’re in the Phoenix area until July 15th, or the other cities Kooza will be head­ing to this year, I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend check­ing it out!

Dis­clo­sure: I was given com­pli­men­tary tick­ets by Cirque du Soleil for the open­ing per­for­mance of Kooza for the pur­poses of review. All opin­ions and expe­ri­ences are my own.