After all these years, I finally attended a Cirque du Soleil performance. Saturday evening, we saw Kà at the MGM Grand Theater.

Kà tells the story of twins separated and driven from their homeland after an attack by a group of archer warriors, and the battles and other conflicts they must overcome to reunite.

The music was great, as were the acrobats, the dancers, and the acrobatic dancers. The impressive costumes included attire from a variety of cultures, as well as a giant crab, turtle, centipede, and starfish. Puppeteers worked giant birds that flew across the audience. 

But the sets were the real stars of this show. Giant platforms rose, sank, and tilted to provide the audience with a unique perspective of the action and intensify the sense of danger. These platforms, along with curtains and lights, became boats, glaciers, and oceans. Fire shooting from a seemingly bottomless pit below frequently threatened the protagonists.

And there was plenty of action! Warriors attacked our hero at each turn, and the dancing conveyed a sense of danger as fighters fought above and fell into a seemingly bottomless pit.

It isn't easy to point to a single highlight in this impressive show, but athletes running inside and outside, rotating cylinders whipped around by cantilevers while jumping rope, stand out for me.

It is hard to imagine this spectacle working outside the MGM theater that was built specifically for this show two decades ago. Characters ran along catwalks along the sides and swung out over the audience. Some of them began these acrobatics fifteen minutes before the show started.

Although the plot of Kà can be challenging to follow without knowing the story in advance, the visual spectacle more than makes up for this shortcoming.