Crowds won't be filling Ball Arena's parking lots to watch the NBA champion Denver Nuggets Ball Arena until the fall, so in the meantime, world-renowned Cirque du Soleil will use a lot to put on its show KOOZA.
The show opens July 5 and will feature balancing acts, contortionists, high wire acts, teeter boards and silk aerialists. The show will run through August 13 under the Big Top at the Ball Arena Parking Lot.
KOOZA, inspired by the Sanskrit word "koza" for box, chest or treasure, first premiered in April 2007 and has since been put on in more than 60 cities in 22 countries. It combines the physical demands of an acrobatic performance with the slapstick humor and color that honor the art of clowning.
Mizuki Shinagawa is a Japanese aerial artist that studied at the École Nationale de Cirque Montréal, a circus school in Montreal, Canada since 2015. This is her first time touring with Cirque du Soleil.
"There's so many people involved," Shinagawa said. "I'm really interested in that we move everywhere in the world, but we are always having the same village everywhere and the same people."
There are 120 people overall between cast and crew, including 54 artists on stage, representing 25 different nationalities around the world.
On average, the Cirque du Soleil site takes seven days to set up, involving 67 trailers, and three days to take down.
The Big Top is composed of 18 pieces of flame retardant vinyl canvas, measures 56 feet high and holds approximately 2,600 seats.
The Cirque crew will be wrapping up their time in Toronto before heading to the Mile High City, Shinagawa's first time visiting.
"People say [Denver's] a beautiful city," Shinagawa said. "One thing I will say I'm scared about is the altitude because when we were in Mexico we had a hard time getting used to [the altitude]."
Shinagawa started performing aerial arts in 2011 and in 2019 she was awarded the first bronze medal ever awarded to an aerial artist at the Cirque de Demain Circus World Tournament in France.
"When I was five or six years old I was watching a circus anime called Kaleido Star," Shinagawa said. "Since that time I fell in love with the circus and then my dream was to be a circus artist."
