11:11:23 ... Four deep-sea creatures that embody electric eels inside the Seeker’s cabinet come to life in this stunning, fast-paced and fluid contortion act. The wriggling artists execute a series of incredible pyramids and figures at an astonishing pace using the Mechanical Hand as a platform.

A huge mechanical hand, weighing 340 kilograms and measuring 4.6-meters by 2.1-meters crawls upstage next. Operated by two artists using a pedal and gear mechanism, the all-fiberglass hand is an automaton built from various parts that look like wood, metal, marble and iron. Atop the structure four bendable ladies from, uhm, Russia (Ayagma Tsybenova, Lillia Zhambalova, Bayarma Zodboeva, Imin Tsydendambaeva), practice the extreme physical discipline known as Contortion. Clothed to appear as Eels, they fold and contort their bodies into various mind-bending poses. Appearing in their third Cirque du Soleil show – having first appeared in Banana Shpeel and later IRIS – these ladies perform a stimulating routine fans of these two previous shows will undoubtedly remember.

Consequently, in the Set Designer’s mind, the Seeker built the hand with rare objects collected on his travels: a wooden finger found in Sienna during the Renaissance, a nail picked up in a Greek temple, and so on. And the mechanical hand represents a paragon of the do-it-yourself ethos and evokes the richness and the materials from the era of the greatest scientific discoveries.