I got major mom points this week when I got Lilly a behind-the-scenes look at Cirque du Soleil’s traveling area show, Ovo! As many of you know, Lilly (my 16-year-old) is an aerial performer, who specializes in silks, and she’s been doing this as her sport, and will hopefully do it for her career. She attended a two-week summer intensive at Ecole Nationale de Cirque in Montreal, which is a national circus school, and is across the street from Cirque du Soleil. She takes lessons locally at Aerial CLT, and has her own 25 foot silks in my hubby’s work warehouse where she can do additional practices. It’s what she eats, breathes, and sleeps, and we’re encouraging her to go as far as she wants with it. She often says, “thanks for being the kind of parents who will let me run off and join the circus!” 🙂

Needless to say, when I got the email to share about Ovo coming to town, I made sure to mention how much my daughter loves Cirque, and my contact invited us to do a behind-the-scenes experience! I was so pumped, Lilly was giddy, and we got to do it a couple days ago! I am so grateful for this experience, and I speak for Lilly when I say, she is still on a high from what she got to see, who she got to meet, questions she got to ask, connections she was able to make, and so much more! What’s better as a parent than seeing your kid live out a dream?!

I”m someone who likes to see how the sausage is made, and lovvvvvve a tour of any kind…the more info, the better! So what I’m going to share here is some of the BTS stuff (pictures): what we saw behind the curtain, and how we saw them in the show! For example, it was so incredibly cool to see the wardrobe director tinkering with a costume backstage, and then what the performer did in that costume on the stage! We even got to interview Nathan, who is one of the crickets, and is a trampoline (and high dive) specialist! He gave Lilly so much food for thought, and spoke extremely highly of Cirque du Soleil as a company to work for.

For those wondering, Ovo is Portugese for egg, so this story is about an insect who’s carrying an egg, and stumbles upon other insects, and they show him their lives. These are some of the acts: ants are foot-juggling, a dragonfly is hand balancing, soon-to-be butterfly is doing aerial silks, butterflies do duo straps, a firefly does Diabolos, the Creatura that does the giant suit below (looks like slinkys), scarabs do Russian cradle, a spider does contortion, fleas do Chinese pole, a spider does slackwire, crickets do trampoline and tumble track. There is non-stop movement throughout the entire show, and funny skits as well! Here are some of the things we saw, behind the stage, and then during the show:

I could go on and on showing y’all pictures of all of this, but you get the gist! And forgive the blurry pics-I took videos of most of these and grabbed screenshots from them! Not to mention, we were in the mezzanine, so I was zooming into the stage! We, of course, gave them a standing ovation, I mean, OVOtion! 😉

Ovo is beautiful, colorful, full of movement, filled with Brazilian music, and the performances are phenomenal! If it’s coming to a city near you, I can’t say this enough…GO! I don’t know how I’ll top this, but I’ll keep trying for sure! Lilly, keep chasing your dreams! Ovo Cirque, thank you for being fantastic, and for putting on such an incredible show for the whole family to love! And thank you for making this girl’s dream come true!

If you want to see the show, click HERE for tickets! You will also find short videos of the acts at that link so you can see a peak of the show! If you’re having FOMO from the Charlotte shows, they’re headed to Greensboro next, and it’s a quick drive!