Their jaws hang slack as they watch the spectacle they paid for. Some light bounces off into the eyes of the audience but the lights and the eyes are all staring at the stage, wide with awe and worship as the performers glide around the stage. It is beautiful: blue lights and white lights dancing over painted faces; limbs bending in ways seemingly impossible for a normal human being; applause penetrating the music after every gesture of completion.

It is almost grotesque: such admiration and worship over a few lowly humans, but for the performers at the Cirque du Soleil, this happens every night.

Every night the dumbfounded faces. Every night the dazzling lights. Every night the final curtain call.

And so they don’t break the illusion. They flex and dance and dazzle and shine created light from their eyes, and keep their secret, ordinary lives to themselves. It is not for them to destroy the fantasy, nor to let their private mournings release themselves. They only entertain: their purpose; their life.