Live, Cirque Du Soleil's elaborate shows can be a frustrating blur of distant, colorful pageantry. But while TV cameras can bring viewers into the performers' sequin-studded laps, video versions of the shows create as many problems as they solve. Cirque Du Soleil's designers are masters of showmanship and spectacle who turn traditional circus routines into an innovative, immersive theatrical experience. Flamboyant makeup, costumes, props, and staging transform the performers from dancers and acrobats into demonic archetypes, weird creatures out of some nether consciousness. On video, the costumes are fully visible, but so is the performers' humanity, particularly in a number of ill-chosen closeups focusing on trembling muscles and grimly set faces. But more importantly, the cameras forcefully direct the viewers' eyes, limiting them when they most want to wander. As a show, Dralion is a typically astounding collection of acts that mix dance, visual art, and gymnastics, often centering on controlled athleticism that has to be seen to be believed. Old Cirque Du Soleil standbys—a pas de deux between aerialists dangling from silk streamers, a double-level trapeze routine—mix with segments inspired by traditional Chinese circus routines and executed by a cadre of 36 specially recruited Chinese performers. Strikingly attired vocalists pace and pose about the stage, singing in an artificial "language" set to world music that veers among Indian, African, Asian, and European influences. But David Mallet's video direction doesn't quite do the show justice. The cameras tend to focus on the center of the action, missing peripheral acts; at times, they ignore the acts entirely, focusing instead on the more easily captured stationary singers. The intermittent camera tricks, such as quick fades and slow-motion lapses, are intrusive and irritating. Admittedly, a few segments, such as an elaborate and breath-stopping full-body-contact juggling routine (which involves the juggler's feet, face, neck, spine, knees, and elbows more often than his hands), are seen head-on, in a predictable sequence of medium shots for limited-area movements and long shots during the full-body feats. These faithfully recorded pieces prove far more satisfying than the more auteur-driven segments, which look a bit like abstract music videos and have about as much sense of live performance. (To compensate for some of the missed material, one DVD feature gives viewers a multi-angle option on four selected acts, with the "angle" key toggling between camera feeds. Unfortunately, neither of the segments most ill-treated by the Dralion video are included in this option.) It took a phenomenal amount of imagination to realize that the human body was capable of some of these contortions and creations, but what Dralion most needs is a video director with a little less imagination.