Viktor Kee
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Viktor Kee performs with Cirque du Soleil in Dralion
quotes from Helen Smindak, Ukranian weekly:
...April 22, 2001
Included among the acts - (of Dralion) - is the marvelous skill of a juggler from Ukraine. Viktor Kee is not your common, everyday juggler, keeping a few balls aloft in the air with his hands. A lean, muscular athlete, Mr. Kee gives a breathtaking performance that combines amazing balance and grace with sinuous movement as he juggles balls with his head, his torso and his toes.
Mr. Kee is an Adonis, a matinee idol, a charmer. With his short hair dyed red, and wearing a flesh-toned body suit that makes him appear to be naked except for red knee guards and a matching G-string cover, he rolls around a raised stage like an acrobat, balancing and juggling balls on his head and his back, balancing his whole body on one hand. Finally, when his contortions and juggling come to an end, he drops out of sight through the stage floor with a dramatic swoosh. Watching his performance is worth the price of admission, I feel, even though there are many more acts in this Canadian circus spectacle.
...June 10, 2001
Across the Hudson River at New Jersey's Liberty State Park, fiery-haired juggler extraordinaire Viktor Kee (whom I wrote about in The Ukrainian Weekly of April 22) has continued to fascinate "Dralion" audiences with his futuristic outfit, his dance show and unique juggling since early April. Interviewed by phone, Mr. Kee told me he was born Viktor Kiktev in Pryluky near Kyiv in 1970, the progeny of a Ukrainian mother (maiden name Tsybulka) and a Russian father.
Emulating his older brother, he began training at age 6 at a circus school in his home town and enrolled in a professional circus school in Kyiv at 14. Before joining Cirque du Soleil two years ago, he worked in Europe full-time as a juggler in shows like the famous Moulin Rouge in Paris, always inspired by the famous German juggler Francis Brunn.
Mr. Kee's cross-country tour with "Dralion" has netted him meetings with scads of celebrities, among them Kim Basinger, Nicolas Cage, Steve Martin, Harrison Ford, Charlton Heston and Martin Sheen. As a guest artist with "Dralion," he is permitted to take on other jobs, as he did last New Year's Eve, performing with Barbra Streisand before an audience of 15,000 in the Millennium Show at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. He has an apartment in Jersey City, where his mom recently stayed during a stopover between Florida and Ukraine (she likes to spend winters at her son's Florida home). If you did not manage to catch the mesmerizing Mr. Kee in "Dralion" (the local engagement ends today), take a look at Viktor and his $2,000 skin-tight futuristic costume on his website viktorkee.com.
http://www.viktorkee.com/images/doucett13.jpg
