CIRQUE du Soleil visits Yorkshire for the first time this weekend with its biggest-ever show on its first arena tour, and inevitably tickets are at a premium.

Both tomorrow and Sunday's 8pm performances of Delirium at Sheffield Hallam FM Arena have sold out, and fewer than 100 tickets were left for Sunday's 3pm matinee at the time of going to press.

The advice from the arena box office is to ring 0114 256 5656 to check late availability before setting off to Sheffield, but staff did not rule out the possibility of returns from promoters being put on late sale for all shows.

So hope springs eternal for those wishing to see Yorkshire's most spectacular entertainment of the autumn.

Performers from more than 20 nations will be taking part in a multi-media show that combines acrobatics, dancing, song and theatre with costumes, lighting, digital imagery and sound.

Created by Michel Lemieux from an idea by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, Delirium was inspired by a desire for exploration.

"Guy wanted to go beyond the big top shows and explore a new genre of show: more multi-media centred and based on music rather than acrobatics, " says Michel.

The show features 20 songs, rooted in urban tribal beats, selected from Cirque du Soleil's catalogue of more than 500 by musical director, producer and arranger Francis Collard.

"The 'urban' reflects the society in which we live: modern, chaotic and always changing, " says Michel.

"'Tribal' means the idea of coming together, the hope of escaping our solitary cocoon, and living a powerful collective experience.

'Beat' is the sound and movement, the rhythm that unites space, individual and society.

"The result is that the music is a mix of percussive-driven pop and electronic music meets ballads and world rhythm sounds."

For the first time, lyrics in English have been created to replace the invented language by Cirque du Soleil in a two-hour show with no interval that blends old theatrical techniques with hitech digital projections.

"Delirium is virtual imagery meets performers live on stage.

The fact we can create a show and project gigantic images on IMAXsize screens is unique; it's a mix of cinema and theatre, " says Michel.

Amid the cinematic and theatrical spectacle, a plot bursts through: "It's a contemporary urban tale, a quest for balance in a world increasingly out of sync with reality, " says Michel.

"Bill, the main character, is an ordinary man living inside a bubble, in a society where relationships are 'virtual' and where the television and computers have become a way for us to isolate each other from one another.

Everything in Bill's life draws him into an imaginary, virtual world, but he learns to ground his energy in the real world."

Cirque's first arena show must "sparkle the imagination and light up lives", says Michel, and for that to happen the cast must dazzle just as much as the technology.

Among the 38 performers is experienced Canadian dancer and singer Kafi Pierre, who is participating in her first Cirque du Soleil show at the age of 27.

"I've been doing the North American tour since May last year and this Delirium show is on a wholly different scale to what I've done before, " she says.

"I've never performed in an arena before, and there's a difference between performing to 1,000 people or 4,000 or 8,000 people.

It's definitely a different feeling, it's very inspiring, and this show is grand with so many layers: acrobatics, dancers and singers, multimedia elements, two huge screens."

Kafi's past performances in musical theatre include the Bollywood musical Bombay Dreams and The Lion King.

"The biggest difference for me is that this is the first show I'm not singing in, " she says.

"I'm dancing, and I'm representing myself, I'm exploring myself as a performer and I have the chance to improvise, which I don't have in musical theatre."

The stage is "the size of a football field", Kafi says.

"The first time I went out there, I thought 'You want me to improvise on there? I don't know if I can do that', but you find you just have to dance cleaner for all the people at the top to see your moves."

Delirium is such an "eye-candy experience" that Kafi recommends watching it more than once.

"You could see the show seven or eight times and still not see everything, and we know through our fan club that people are coming back again and again."

If only there were more tickets still for sale.