By MIKE SCHNEIDER
The Associated Press

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- In Cirque du Soleil's newest show, a bald, hunchbacked muscle man spends most of his time slithering across the stage. Clowns wear face-distorting metallic makeup. Women dressed like Soviet-era peasants in brown dresses and babushkas march on stage at regular intervals.

The show by the world-renowned, Canadian-based circus performers is avant-garde. It's haunting and sometimes ghoulish. It's also playing permanently at Walt Disney World.

The theme park resort built a $27 million theater for Cirque du Soleil at Downtown Disney, its restaurant and nighttime entertainment complex. The 1,671-seat theater is the first freestanding, permanent theater built for the troupe.

Disney had pursued Cirque du Soleil for several years before the performers agreed to open a permanent show here. The show, called La Nouba, features gravity-defying acrobatics, trapeze and high-wire acts, aerial dances, doleful clowns, rising stage sets, elaborate and flamboyant costumes and opera-quality singers.

Headquartered in Montreal, Cirque du Soleil has six troupes. Two are based in Las Vegas and three are touring troupes. The show at Walt Disney World opened a few days before Christmas and had its official premier late in January.

Disney officials say they had no problem reconciling the Main Street, U.S.A., sensibilities of its guests with the surreal, sometimes weird show.

''Our shows have pretty much the same clientele that come here to Orlando,'' says Jaques Marois, general manager of Cirque du Soleil's Americas division.

While Disney and Cirque du Soleil officials say the show is for children, the dark images and occasional gender-bending performers (male trapeze performers in pink tutus) are probably too sophisticated for the little ones.

The show-stealers are a group of Chinese girls, ages 11 to 13, who perform with Chinese yo-yos. Holding two sticks linked by a string, they slide, juggle and toss a wooden spool while performing flips in the air.

The international cast of 65 performers speaks more than a half-dozen languages among each other. They perform two shows a day, five days a week.

At $59.89 per adult, including tax, the price of admission for the 1 1/2 hour show is $15 more than the entrance fee at any of Walt Disney World's four theme parks, which are all-day affairs.

Price hasn't been an issue and each show has been close to selling out, says Karl Holz, vice president of Downtown Disney.

''This is a show that ranks right up there with Broadway,'' Mr. Holz says. ''I think we offer an entertainment value.''

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