Not all circuses were created equally.

Cirque du Soleil often most closely resembles a play, opera, or dance about a circus, rather than a circus in its own right. Cirque abandons many components of the traditional circus that many people take for granted: you won’t find any animals in here, and all the music is live.

Cirque peformances seem to always carry a narrative component that resides somewhere between the surreal and the fairy tale — always with a ‘once upon a time’ beginning.

Once upon a time, in a blue and yellow tent pitched on the grounds of the District’s old convention center just west of Chinatown, there lived a clown. The clown (Mauro Mozzani) is anonymous, but the script calls him The Dead Clown, because he is probably dead, or at least dreaming. The clown imagines a grand funeral procession thrown to honor him. Invited guests are angels, who teach him to fly and ride his bicycle in the air.

One glance at the press releases reveals that Cirque is quite an ambitious interpretation of the medium. Their performance here, Corteo, is built around the concept of the parade (“Corteo” derives from the Italian, “cortege,” a procession, often a funeral), and according to the release, “the show highlights the strength and fragility of the clown, as well as his wisdom and kindness, to illustrate the portion of humanity that is within each of us,” while the music creates a “timeless celebration in which illusion teases reality.”