At the Symphony: A Real Circus

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Among the cornucopia of holiday events this year, the “Cirque of the Season with the San Francisco Symphony” seems likely to enthrall all members of the family and fill everyone with wonder and amazement. Combining forces with the Cirque de la Symphonie, the orchestra will conjure the magic of the circus in Davies Symphony Hall.

It may seem like a strange marriage — the symphony orchestra, with its refinements and collective history, musicians placed in an orderly half circle, decked out in black and white; and the circus performers, with their exotic costumes, glittering physicality, and commitment to the arcane sciences of balance and strength. But who says a symphony concert has to be business as usual?

The “Cirque of the Season” program mixes both music alone with music and circus performance, opening with Leroy Anderson’s upbeat medley of carols, A Christmas Festival, featuring lots of splashy percussion and snappy brass, interspersed with soulful horns and woodwinds for the more tender songs. This is music that will focus even the littlest person’s attention.

Christine Van Loo performs with her dreamy aerial silks to Howard Blake’s “Walking in the Air” from the 1982 animated film The Snowman, (“We’re swimming in the frozen sky ... we’re dancing in the midnight sky”). Aerial silks are long swatches of suspended cloth that float through the air while the aerialist moves within their billowing folds. The effect is both gentle and otherworldly. The penultimate piece is also performed on the aerial silks by the angelic Alexander Streltsov.

Juggler and mime Vladimir Tsarkov shows his mastery of juggling rings to Leon Jessel’s Parade of the Wooden Soldiers and throws batons to Tchaikovsky’s “Russian Dance” from The Nutcracker. Tsarkov is a remarkable dancer, with a set of moves

that would have given Michael Jackson serious thought. His moonwalk is interplanetary, and there’s a delicate pathos and whimsy to his miming that reminds me of Marcel Marceau at his best. His ability to combine dance, mime, juggling, and narrative has set him apart from other performers in his genre and won him gold medals internationally.

One of the most riveting pieces, though, is bound to be the hand-balancing of “Jarek” Marciniak and “Darek” Wronski. The Polish duo has performed with the Cirque du Soleil, and their slow, sustained interweaving, in which they use each other’s bodies as balances and fulcrums, is breathtaking. As is the sheer beauty of their bodies.

In between each cirque piece, San Francisco Symphony Assistant Conductor Donato Cabrera will lead the orchestra in a series of holiday works by Bizet, Mozart, Prokofiev, and Vaughan Williams, sure to be full of insistent percussion and bright strings, warm woodwinds and brass, and the delicate cascades of pitched bells. Everyone will love it all. Tickets are half price for ages 17 and under. It’s a gift!