The Montreal-based artistic theater group Cirque Eloize will be visiting the Eisenhower Auditorium tonight, bringing with them a State College circus, dance, music and of course, Rain.

Cirque Eloize was founded in 1993 by a group of seven graduates of L'école nationale de cirque de Montreal. Since the beginning, Cirque Eloize has performed more than 1,400 performances in 200 cities and 20 countries.

"I fell deeply in love with the circus as a little girl. After years of ballet, modern dance, gymnastics and climbing everything in sight, I had discovered an emerging voice in physical performance," Krin Maren Haglund, who is a Cirque Eloize performer, said.

The show follows the story of protagonists in a theatre where a circus show is in rehearsal.

This is often where reality and theater start to mix together.

Sometimes, one almost can't tell where one ends and the other one begins.

"Unexpected things can come from the sky: messages, signs, promises. On our stage, not only rain will fall, surprises will pour down as well," Daniele Finzi Pasca, Cirque Eloize director, said.

The group's performers specialize in contortion, trapeze, juggling, acrobatics and aerial rings.

They will use all of these talents in this performance, along with poetic lines.

"I am ecstatic to now be a part of the international ensemble of Rain. I am living my dream of performing with Cirque Eloize," Jonas Woolverton, Cirque Eloize performer, said.

Pasca is hoping the audience will get a lot out of the performance.

"I want this show to be like a caress -- simple, direct, filled with sensuality and tender hope. The protagonists in this adventure appear and gaze searchingly at the audience from the front of the stage. They begin a dialogue with the spectators, looking them straight in the eye. Then they are once again swallowed up by the surreal images of the story," Pasca said.