As my generation grew up with Looney Tunes, Disney's "Fantasia" and the MTV music video, I'm well used to visual entertainment accompanying music. Of course, seeing it live is a whole different matter, particularly when the visual entertainment is as spectacular as Cirque De La Symphonie.

Unfortunately for many of you, the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra's performance with Cirque De La Symphonie was sold out days ago for both performances. For those of you who were lucky enough to get ahold of tickets, let me give you a bit of advice: it's okay to clap. You'll have the urge early on, when aerial acrobat Christine Van Loo ascends a rope during HSO's performance of Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre." Go ahead and be the first one, so that everyone knows it's all right. You'll be doing a lot of it.

Stuart Malina and the HSO have a program filled with popular works, many with a carnival theme. The concert began with lively "Carnival Overture, Opus 92" by Dvorak, and the energy didn't let up from there. Well-known pieces such as "Sabre Dance from Gayaneh" by Khachaturian, "Danse Macabre Op. 40" by Saint-Saens, "Gaite Paisienne, Can-Can No. 4" by Offenbach, suites from Bizet's "Carmen" and selections from Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" are just some of the highlights. The orchestra manages not only to perform a set of difficult pieces of music, but do so with wildly distracting objects (and occasionally people) hurtling through the air just downstage of where they're playing. Of particular note were the intensely fast string section workout during Glinka's overture to "Ruslan and Lyudmila," Francisco Salazar's violin solo in the opening of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34" and the rousing percussion section in Johann Strauss' "Thunder & Lightning Polka, Op. 324."

The concert would have been well worth the price of admission with just the music, so it speaks to the amazing talent of the Cirque De La Symphonie performers that such musical precision becomes the backdrop instead of the main course. Whether it was Christine Van Loo's spiderlike, gravity-defying, gasp-inducing aerial rope routine, Vladimir Tsarkov clowning around while juggling bouncing rings, Elena Tsarkova's unbelievably fluid contortionist act, the whirling dervish of Byambatsetseg "Byamba" Jigdengombo, or Alexander Streltsov's hypnotic spinning frame and cube, each act leaves you wondering how it will be topped by the next. Tsarkov dragging Maestro Malina into a magic act with Tsarkova, and then conscripting a few members of the audience to help him in the juggling act.

The most spectacular physical feats came at the end of the show, with the aerial duo of Streltsov and Van Loo and the strongmen Jarek and Darek, both of which really must be seen to be believed.

If you don't mind the chance of disappointment, I'd strongly suggest swinging by the Forum Sunday afternoon, on the off chance someone has to cancel at the last minute. There's a reason that the 1700-plus house was completely sold out two nights in a row. There is no hyperbole used when I say this concert was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen.