Courtesy of Cirque du Soleil

It’s a show about bugs, and it’s under the big top, but this is no flea circus: Ovo, Cirque du Soleil’s latest production to come through D.C., opens tomorrow at National Harbor. And just as the show re-creates a busy colony of insects, there are dozens of people buzzing about behind the scenes to make it all happen. Marjon Van Grunsven is one of them: As the show’s artistic director, she’s responsible for the fine details of the show, as well as the creative development of the acrobats and performers from around the world who comprise Ovo’s cast. She also sees herself as a den mother of sorts, for a cast that ranges in age from 14 to 54.

“Our cast was young and inexperienced at being an artist,” says Van Grunsven. “They came straight from a gymnastic background. They never lived a life of an artist, where you don’t compete, but put beauty on the stage.”

In the year since the show was developed, Van Grunsven has watched it evolve.

What you see now is more precise, more full of heart and soul,” she says. “I can see the artists are artists, rather than acrobats.”

But has Cirque lost its soul? I’m not the first to ask that question — the San Diego Union-Tribune posed it four years ago. The circus has come a long way from its origins as a group of street performers in Montreal in the '80s. Now, it's an international entertainment company that has toured dozens of shows across the globe, and made a billionaire of founder Guy Laliberte. It’s more like Disney than street performance, these days.

Van Grunsven doesn’t agree, of course.

“The work and the quality that I put in here is the same as a smaller group,” says Van Grunsven. “It might happen slower than with a small group, but the show will live for 10 to 15 years, rather than a week-long performance. Here, you can take your time and see how the show grows. It hasn’t put any limits on me; I think it has enlarged the possibilities and the range of what I can do.”

Ovo is also the first Cirque show to be directed by a woman, Deborah Colker. While Van Grunsven is proud of this accomplishment, she isn’t sure it has any influence over the show.

“It’s a very happy, loving, feel-good show, but I think could have come from the hands of a man as well,” says Van Grunsven. “That's tricky, I don’t want to fall into how females are like this and men are like that. I think there’s a different approach because of the experience she has in her life as a choreographer. The story line is simple — it’s about love. Maybe that could come more easily from a woman than a man, but I don’t want to put women in a box like that.”