Las Vegas Odyssey
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his men not to succumb to the temptations of slaughtering the Helios’ cattle and
sheep on the Thrinacian Island. They succumb. As a result, Ulysses is alone.
Calypso rescues him and keeps him for seven years. As Ulysses tells it,
he pines away everyday, weeping at the shore. Apparently he is finally
sufficiently convincing for the nymph to help him on his way. During his
sojourn. Calypso serves as Ulysses’ lover and surrogate mother, giving birth to a
rejuvenated man. The portrait of the nymph suggests a compassionate and
womanly human being who has enjoyed an earthly experience with all its
sensual and intellectual challenges, vhien Ulysses begs to return home. Calypso
speaks:
You are so naughty, and you will have your own way in all things.
See how you have spoken to me and reason with me.. . .
I am thinking and planning for you just as I would do it
For my own self, if such needs as yours were to come upon me;
For the mind in me is reasonable, and I have no spirit
Of iron inside my heart. Rather, it is compassionate (93).
Like Calypso, Las Vegas presents itself as a reasonable way to play with the
fates. Ulysses never tells all, neither to the Phaeaeceans, to Penelope, or to the
real listener, similar to the new Las Vegas slogan: “What happens in Vegas stays
in Vegas.”
No production performs myth as magnificently as the many Cirque du
Soleil productions. Cirque du Soleil is a Canadian performance group whose
signature pieces are elaborate productions showcasing the human body
duplicating the movements and the energies of nature. Reminiscent of the Italian
commedia dell’Arte tradition. Cirque features character types or allegorical
representations of the forces of nature. A Pulcinella character plays the
philosophical, eternally melancholic dreamer along with other types to suggest,
but not individualize, the human role in this cosmic, mythical imagination
(Commedia para 1). Cirque’s work combines movement of all kinds: ballet,
trapeze, gymnastics, juggling, and the breadth of circus performance tradition.
The anonymity of the performers enhances the mythical feel of the performance.
In one of the productions. Cirque du Soleil’s O, performers walk on,
dive into, fly over, and splash in water. Movements suggest birth, joy, struggle,
individual emotions, celebration, life passages, romance, and conflict—^the
wind, bending, fear, crawling, soaring. Performers are made anonymous through
make-up and body wear, which enhance the emotional intensity of the
movements, but also depersonalize the human, thus transforming the actors into
mythological symbols. Viewers are not quite sure wliether they are watching
animals, microbes, or pieces of pasta undulating, twining, flapping. The human
no longer exists but has become a feather in the breeze, a scrap of paper falling