Welcome to the jungle - cirque style.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

The circus is coming to town - one of those very nouveau-style circuses with the Euro sounding name.

Cirque Dreams is the brainchild of Neil Goldberg, a former convention promoter who says he finds greater satisfaction in producing family entertainment for the masses than he did in staging corporate productions for IBM.

And he loves aerialists.

"Acrobatics and gymnastics have become very intriguing to audiences not just in the U.S. but all over the world," he said. "For our particular show, audiences find this very refreshing.

`Not only are we once again reinventing the European circus genre called `cirque,' but putting it in a very traditional Broadway musical kind of setting."

Since he was a kid, Goldberg said, he has hated conventional circuses because of their three-ring chaos. Hence the stage show.

"It seems uncomfortable to me: a lot of noise, whistles and bells and popcorn everywhere and animals running around," he said. "I like the structure of being able to control my and my audiences' imaginations."

Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy has a script and a story line, revolving around a lead character named Ladybug and a tree that comes to life and plays the violin.

"We blend authenticity with fantasy," Goldberg said. "We have taken what animals would do indigenously in the jungle and let our performers showcase their skills.

`Butterflies are flying. Monkeys are jumping all over the place. Giraffes are standing way up high. Snakes are slithering. And they are all doing it on unusual apparatus in a setting of 30-foot-tall trees."

There are no actual animals in the show; Goldberg doesn't like animal acts. He also says he shies away from anything too nerve-wracking for the audience to watch, because he wants the show to be a pleasant experience.

Cirque Dreams draws many of its performers from Russia and the Far East. In the 1990s, Goldberg "traveled the universe, from the contortion schools in Mongolia to acrobatic associations and training centers throughout China" to assemble his cast, he said.

Russia is a great place to find circus performers because the country has a lot of cir- cuses.

"Circus is a national treasure and art over there," Goldberg said. "If you ever have the privilege of walking around downtown Moscow, circus in Moscow is like theater is in midtown Manhattan.

`There are at least two dozen circus buildings, with primary schools, secondary schools, performance centers and training facilities. People in Moscow get dressed up every night and go to a circus."

Goldberg opened his own training center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2000, and is using more and more American performers in his shows. About half the cast of Jungle Fantasy is American, he said.

Cirque Dreams keeps multiplying and dividing as Goldberg finds more venues to play. By this time next year, he expects to have some 300 players in eight separate casts putting on Cirque shows, including one at a permanent theater in Branson, Mo., as well as several at various Six Flags theme parks around the country.

STAGE PREVIEW Cirque Dreams' Jungle Fantasy What: Circus aerialists in a stage show Where: Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday Tickets: $25 to $49, 682-5000

Bob Keefer can be reached at 338-2325 or bkeefer@guardnet .com.