With 'Kooza,' Cirque struts upon the stage

The contortionists of ''Kooza,'' Cirque du Soleil's latest production. (courtesy of Cirque du Soleil)

Cirque du Soleil, the biggest of the big tops in the contemporary art-circus world, is billing "Kooza" as a return to its roots, a streamlined production that emphasizes the traditional circus arts of acrobatics and clowning. No doubt it is a pared-down show, compared with the Montreal-based troupe's Las Vegas extravaganzas. But a peacock with its tail furled is still not exactly a sparrow.

And this particular bird's plumage may not be to every Cirque fan's taste. Unlike the dreamy, flowing aesthetic of some earlier touring productions, this one has a hard-edged, pounding, and decidedly masculine feel. Many of Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt's costumes look more like armor than leotards, and the performers milking the audience for applause after an acrobatic feat are more likely to be men pounding their chests than women swirling their wrists. Jean-Francois Coté's music, too, is full of pounding rhythms.

Sometimes that's invigorating, as in a creepy but heart-pumping dance of skeletons (some of whom, by the way, have exactly the feathered headdresses you'd expect in Vegas). Sometimes the noise and flashing lights add to the adrenaline-fueled excitement of the acrobatic acts, as in the "wheel of death" routine that has Carlos Enrique Marin Loaiza and Angelo Lyerzkysky, in outfits straight out of "Mad Max," trotting and leaping around two giant, linked wheels. But sometimes it just feels like a hangover from an '80s dance club.

What's kept Cirque du Soleil going, though - and growing, from its origins in Canadian street theater to its international reach today - is its combination of art and entertainment. In any given show, you may find the artistic elements stronger than the circus acts, or vice versa (as in "Kooza"). But, either way, the show will have something that takes your breath away.

In "Kooza," that would be the "Chinese chairs" routine near the end. Yao Deng Bo balances atop a 23-foot-tall stack of chairs as casually as if he were sitting down to breakfast. His grace and precision are the equal of the wheel-of-death guys', minus the strutting machismo.

The teeterboard troupe also delivers some spectacular aerial twists and loops, and juggler Anthony Gatto demonstrates why he's often billed as the best in the world. The best mix of art and circus, though, probably comes near the beginning, when contortionists Julie Bergez, Natasha Patterson, and Dasha Sovik use the impossibly twisting limbs and arching backs of their craft to produce gorgeous, delicate, and ever-shifting patterns of movement and form.

As for the clowning, in keeping with the general mood it's more testosterone-fueled than it really needs to be. Lots of slapstick, lots of bodily-function humor, leering and bullying and audience-teasing: the brothers Stooge, not Marx. Like some of the disco-funk-worldbeat music, it feels at once as if it's trying too hard and not quite as fresh as it needs to be. But then the clowns go offstage and the acrobats come on, and the tired sigh turns to a gasp of delight.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.