Cirque du Soleil's ECHO: The Montreal Show Explained

In ECHO, Cirque du Soleil breathes movement and wonder into the famous red-and-white striped Big Top of Montreal’s Old Port. Featuring FUTURE, her dog EWAI, and the mysterious, ever-changing CUBE that the pair uncovers, ECHO reflects on the deeply entwined, always evolving relationship between humanity, animals, and the natural world.

While ECHO’s narrative follows each of these three pillars, its movement (featuring 53 artists) centres around the Cube—the titular echo’s physical and metaphorical epicentre. Intricate choreography and acrobatics, live music, and immersive visuals unfold as the performers dismantle and rebuild the structure in an amalgam of fluid, animalistic motions, and more rigid, synchronized patterns, inspired by human invention and science.

Simultaneous to this controlled frenzy is Future’s journey of self-discovery, ushered by EWAI’s encouraging presence, which prompts Future to forge connections with the animals and other characters the pair comes across. Countering the Cube’s strikingly physical transformation with a psychological one, Future’s journey makes clear the symbiotic connection between the Cube, Future, and EWAI; and thus between nature, human, and animal.

In placing human, animal, and nature side by side, author and director Mukhtar Omar Sharif Mukhtar lets the contradictions speak for themselves. The result is less a manifesto than a working model that says: here is what equal footing between human, animal, and nature might look like.

The Basics

🗓 Dates: Every Wednesday through Sunday, until August 16th

📍 Location: Cirque du Soleil Big Top, Quai Jacques-Cartier, 333 Rue de la Commune Ouest, Montreal, Quebec H2Y 2E2

🎟 Admission: Starting at $84, depending on the day and time. Get your tickets here.

The Acts and Acrobats

With 7 live vocalists, 5 acrobatic winches, 16 acrobatic lines, and a 2-storey-tall cube, ECHO presents a diverse cast of performers, demonstrating more than 10 kinds of acrobatics, upon a unique, interactive stage.

The narrative unfolds in a sequence of thirteen “acts” or acrobatic feats, beginning with the acro-dance, where performers dressed as animals are suspended vertically on the Cube, executing graceful, agile movements. Suspended from the Cube and moving in synchrony audiences can see how animals rely on each other and on the availability of natural resources.

In another act, two performers entwine themselves, constructing a machine-like object with their bodies that they then use to begin taking down the Cube. Here, Mukhtar comments neatly on the essence of labour, creation, and transformation.

Other acts include: a double hair suspension stunt, where two performers portray fireflies, sparking hope for a new, united world; a double slackwire dance set to live cello, portraying the fragility of human hands, and their potentially detrimental impact on nature and animals; and the triple teeterboard, during which acrobats dressed as playful birds take flight, leaping through the air in a celebration of connection and coexistence.

The Box

As integral as the many performers of Cirque du Soleil are to the show, the Cube’s design is nearly as important. Deceptively simple, the 7-metre-by-7-metre structure exists as a site for acrobatics and theatrics and as a meaningful symbol itself. At any point, the Cube may be projected with visuals, swung on and scaled by artists and animals, taken apart piece by piece, or re-constructed.

The Future

ECHO is a spectacle complete with acrobatics, intricate set pieces, and live music, but it’s also got something to say. In watching Future forge connections, stumble, and grow, audiences are reminded that the future is not a passive thing, but something we continuously build and nurture. Through the grandeur and skill of the performers, what could easily feel like an environmental guilt trip becomes, in Mukhtar's hands, something closer to an invitation.