11:11:33 ... A fearless Aviator who happens to be an expert in the discipline of rola bola makes a soft, graceful landing in his small propeller plane, which he will use as a platform. Balanced on his impressive, tottering structure, the artist and his cylinders and planks rest on a platform built into a trapeze Washington. The suspended apparatus moves up and down and swings in a long pendulum motion – an incredible feat requiring an extraordinary sense of balance.

Rola Bola is one of this production’s centerpieces. “It’s the only act of rola bola aerial of its kind in the world,” said Michel Laprise in an interview with the Montreal Gazette. “When I was presented that act by Casting I said: ‘we do everything to get this guy.’” And so they did. The “guy” is James Eulises Gonzalez Correa, a native of Colombia who has performed all over the world. And his act is simply breathtaking.

Gonzalez personifies The Aviator (you can spot him throughout various scenes wearing a gold-lined, translucent aqua-colored overcoat, aviator goggles and appropriate leather head-gear. And in the opening of the show, flinging far-traveling paper airplanes into the crowd), man’s dream and ambition of achieving mechanical flight; he makes his approach upstage (quite literally) in a boxy winged aircraft of his own design. As he lands, he transforms his aircraft into a performance space where he first balances upon a bowling ball, then ever-increasing (and rotating) cylinders. And just when you think he couldn’t up the difficulty, he returns to the air, all the while balancing on his rolas… Invented in 1898 by Vasque, a Frenchman, the Rola Bola discipline consists of standing and balancing on an unstable assembly of boards supported by cylinders roughly 25 centimeters in diameter. The system is a lever similar to a see-saw that the performer stands on, usually with the left and right foot at opposite ends of the board. The performer must then stay balanced enough to keep the board’s edges from touching the stage and to keep from falling off the apparatus.

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