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Showing posts with label acrobats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acrobats. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
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It's a real good time to be a fan of attractive people spiralling through the air. Compagnie XY have just wrapped up an excellent run at the Roundhouse and this year's Underbelly Festival promises a stellar lineup of acrobatic entertainment all summer long. As a mark of the upswing in popularity of these shows, Underbelly opens its gates with Flip Fabrique's 'Catch Me', an acrobatic show in which the laws of physics seem to be bent (and occasionally broken).
Hailing from Montréal, Flip Fabrique are Hugo Ouellet Cote, Jeremie Arsenault, Camila Comin, Bruno Gagnon, Christophe Hamel and Yann Leblanc. As is the style these days, they ditch sequins in favour of casual urban gear, which, combined with the chalk graffiti that appears throughout the show, the minimalist stagecraft, and the tasteful (if a little bland) contemporary music gives the experience a chilled out vibe.
But the aesthetic is just the side salad. The main course is their skills and boy howdy, these six are practically superhuman. All have physiques you could set your watch by and all have acrobatic and dextrous abilities borne of hundreds upon hundreds of hours of backbreaking training and working out.
Even so, in most shows of this ilk, the first time someone flies through the air and lands with a smile the crowd lets out a collective gasp, but then repetition dulls the thrill as they become accustomed to what they're seeing. Not here.
Even so, in most shows of this ilk, the first time someone flies through the air and lands with a smile the crowd lets out a collective gasp, but then repetition dulls the thrill as they become accustomed to what they're seeing. Not here.
It's a mark of both their skill and showmanship that the routine that most audibly stunned us was their last. This was a trampoline routine that's a fine demonstration of Newton's laws. Hurling themselves off a high perch, the troupe loop and spiral around one another like a human perpetual motion machine. They run up vertical walls, rocket into a perfect handstand, and flip and tumble with geometric precision.
It's a breathtaking finale and a great example of the wisdom of saving the best for last. Of course, the rest of the show is no slouch. Each member of Flip Fabrique gets a moment to shine, with a particular gem being Hugo Ouellet Cote's jaw-dropping rope routine, which combines intense concentration with obvious taxing physical exertion, with a cherry of humour popped on top.
The only thing us that next to the stunning acrobatics, the more traditional juggling and diabolo routines feel a bit overfamiliar. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good juggling act, but anyone familiar with this kind of show will be all too used to this kind of thing. The diabolo routine is a bit better - one of the best I've seen in a while in fact - but again it pales in comparison to the acrobatic routines.
Iffier are the show's stabs at comedy, which primarily consists of loud screeching, babbling nonsense and OTT mugging. Most of thiscomes courtesy of Bruno Gagnon, who appears to be trying to inject a bit of traditional clown slapstick into the show. Judging by the audience's baffled, laugh-free reaction to Gagnon's antics it simply isn't hitting. Perhaps there's a bit of cultural miscommunication here: the broad gallic comedy not a great fit for a British audience.
But hey - this is all nitpicking. When Catch Me is firing on all cylinders it's utterly engrossing. I was on the edge of my seat in wonder at the best bits, finding myself gasping and applauding on pure instinct. It's a fantastic choice of premiere for a very promising Underbelly festival, and I can't imagine anyone coming away from this without a wide, happy smile plastered across their face.
'Flip Fabrique: Catch Me' is at the Underbelly Festival on the South Bank until 9th July. Tickets and details here.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
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Great acrobatic shows are as much about the personality of the individual performer as the quality of the tricks. After all, if I wanted to see technically precise gymnastic routines I'd just pop along to a sports competition. But French circus collective Compagnie XY's personality isn't focused on an individual performer hogging the spotlight but on the personality of the company as a whole.
Their latest show, It's Not Yet Midnight, is a classily minimalist demonstration of the group's skills and guiding philosophy. Whether they're writhing around one another like a centipede-limbed gestalt or spiralling through the air in defiance of Isaac Newton, it's genuinely thrilling. How can your jaw not drop when you see people stacked four high on top of one another: if they were to fall their only crash mat is the waiting arms of a fellow performer or the hard stage floor.
Despite this, it's easy to get blase about acrobatic shows. Yes, it takes years of pain, sweat and dedication to be able to do this stuff and yes, it's intrinsically exhilarating to see the human body flying through the air. But let's face it, if you've seen one person doing a handstand on someone's head you've pretty much seen them all. This is where circus shows can founder: the audience will probably be familiar with the impressive feats, and showing them something new requires elite levels of skill and heightens the danger to the performers (if your star acrobat is nursing a broken leg it kinda puts the kibosh on a tour).
What smart companies do is layer the tumbling and tricks on top of a firm intellectual skeleton - giving us a bit of context. And this is precisely what Compagnie XY do - giving us a physical argument of the merits of cooperation and trust vs paranoid individualism.
Which is why we open with a mass brawl. One performer strolls onto the stage looking pleased with himself, before being roughly tackled and tossed across the stage. He lands with a thump, gets up and launches himself at his assailant. Soon the room is full of tussling performers, all beating the crap out of one another. It's an eye-opening start and a fine contrast to an evening in which life and limb hinges on trust. Would you hurl yourself backwards from a second story building on the promise that someone will catch you?
It's Not Yet Midnight stacks people on top of one another like they're pieces in some gigantic Lego set, coming up with all kinds of unlikely configurations, or using the performers as counterweights to launch backflipping people high into the air from a seesaw, or as the legs of a multi-tiered human wedding cake. This combination of strength and grace impresses even the most sourpuss cynic - the audience audibly gasping and breaking into spontaneous applause throughout.
There's a few mistakes here and there (at one point someone painfully thwacks into the floor), but the flaws only underline the point that these people or not so different from you or I. This is helped by them all wearing muted smart casual - if you saw them on the street you'd probably think they were refugees from a GAP photoshoot rather than high-octane circus performers. That these normal looking people can execute such jaw-dropped acrobatic manoeuvres only amplifies the message - we are stronger together than we are alone.
Maybe the only fly in the ointment is a slight sense of twee-ness that pervades the latter half of the show - men with lumberjack beards, suspenders and ties energetically lindy-hopping teeters right on the edge of hipster self-parody. But quibbles aside, this is a powerful, effective and concise show that's pretty much guaranteed to please. It's Not Yet Midnight gives us acrobatics where the brain is at least as important as the bicep.
It's Not Yet Midnight is at the Roundhouse until 23 April.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
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Circus is usually all about razzle-dazzle. Sequined costumes, rictus grins, glittery lipstick, flaming rings - stuff like that. Circa push against all that, their shows straddling contemporary dance and circus via sleek monochrome minimalism. Their latest at the South Bank's Udderbelly is Closer, which, as its name suggests, is all about intimacy and physical contact: the acrobatics of human interaction.
With front row seats I got to observe them at close range. Awe is all but inevitable on viewing intense feats of strength, balance and timing. To a classily refined indie-tinged soundtrack they tie themselves up in knots high above the hard floor, arrange themselves atop one another into living human sculptures and confidently stroll over each other's strong-as-steel bodies. Best of all, at close range you observe the tiny tics that others might miss: quickly fading crimson hand-prints on backs; eyes locked ahead in fierce concentration while subtly shifting your weight to maintain balance; or the exhalation after successfully enduring four people standing atop your body.
Simply performing feats like this is worthy of praise. The audience gasps and applauds with each triumphant moment, each of us marvelling at the dedication needed to tune the human body to such a high standard of excellence. Frankly, just watching attractive, incredibly fit people in skintight lycra flexing their muscles is far from the worst time you can have in London on a Tuesday night.
And yet I found myself surprisingly unmoved by Closer. At least for the first two thirds the performers appeared to have been instructed to display no personality or emotion. While that fits right in with the minimalist musical setlist and staging, it got a bit creepily cold-hearted. Despite obviously the five having perfect trust and synchronisation, I couldn't detect any camaraderie or even pleasure in their movements.
Staring into the blank, expressionless face of someone dangling, motionless, from a trapeze made me think of dolls, robots or puppets - presumably rather far from the intimacy they appear to be going for. The parade of hyper-taut flexing bodies eventually reminded me of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia; in which the muscled human form is fetishised by the fascist film-maker, linking her subjects to ancient Greek statuary.
Mercifully, things take a turn for the personable in the final couple of segments. Some audience interaction is pleasant and amusingly flirty, splashing a bit of much-needed comedy into affairs. Similarly, a spirited hula-hoop routine, while not exactly breaking new ground, is as good as any hoop routine I've seen previously. There's even a spot of karaoke where we're asked to sing along with The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony (though, confusingly this doesn't seem to actually go anywhere).
It feels a little churlish to criticise performers like this. They're close to the pinnacle of human physical perfection, their physiques the product of hours of pain, gallons of sweat and rivers of tears. Who can imagine what they've had to sacrifice to be able to entertain us like this? Even so, about two thirds of Closer left me cold - far from feeling closer I felt like the performers were consciously distancing themselves from the audience and from each other.
★★★
Circa: Closer is at the Udderbelly until 12th June 2016. Tickets here.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Thursday, June 11, 2015
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Attractive twenty-something acrobats flying through the air to Radiohead? I suppose there are worse ways to spend a Wednesday night. This is Traces, the current show from Les 7 doights de la main / The 7 Fingers, billed as "the world's coolest contemporary circus company." For once it might not be hyperbole; Traces is a laid-back, stylish and fashionable show filled with feats that conjure up constant involuntary gasps.
In recent years, acrobatics shows seem to have banished sequins, tights and vaseline smiles in favour of earthy, low-key authenticity. Autumnal pastels, natural fabrics and indie rock are the name of the game, all part of a mission to ground the acrobats as regular people (doing amazing things). The implication being that, crazy though these feats are, with enough practice and dedication you or I could be twirling majestically through the air.
This crusade to get the us to identify with the performers means they can't just be stony-faced acrobat-automatons, they've got to be likeable. Fortunately, The 7 Fingers have a surfeit of charisma - their personalities practically radiating off the stage throughout the performance.
For most of the first part of the show their individuality is repeatedly underlined. They introduce and describe themselves, giving us a potted history of their lives to date. Then, as if competing for our attention like naughty children, they barge and jostle amongst each other for the spotlight. At times they even square off against each other and for a brief moment, it seems that fists might fly in annoyance.
This makes a decent chunk of Traces weirdly melancholic, a peculiar contrast to the intense physicality of the performances. This all feeds into a subtle psychic misery that suffuses the cast - are these flips, dives and tumbles a manifestation of some inner woe? After all, who hasn't been so annoyed that they've felt like they're climbing the walls? By the time they're climbing poles to Radiohead's dour masterpiece Talk Show Host (with the repeated refrain "I wanna be someone else") you pray they're going to snap out their funk.
They do - if half of the show shows insecure jockeying for attention, the other fuses the company into one organism and develops bonds of trust. Perhaps the clearest example is when a giant see-saw is produced. With two cast members perched on a scaffold, a third stands opposite them. The two jump down onto the see-saw, propelling the third into an impossibly high parabolic arc. As he spins gracefully through the air, the rest of the cast catch him on a large cushion, which he hits with a satisfying *thump*.
The slightly depressive mood of the first half makes these explosions of energy that much more uplifting. It's this carefully considered emotional core that sets 7 Fingers apart from the rest. Sure it's awe-inspiring to watch someone bending their body into a gravity-defying pretzel high above a hard stage, but it's even more intense when you genuinely care about that person.
Even without all that on top, the simple skill in Traces would make it a more than worthwhile watch. Just watching someone put their body through this, firing themselves through tiny hoops with laser-guided precision or doing a mind-bogglingly complex diabolo routine. My personal favourite bits were the aforementioned Radiohead routine, the pleasing-to-the-eye 'Cyr Wheel' and an awesomely cool, gymnastically excellent segment set to UNKLE's Burn Your Shadow.
It's difficult to imagine much else topping this in terms of circus in London this summer. A wonderful watch from start to finish, topped off with heaping dollops of élan. Recommended.
★★★★
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Thursday, April 30, 2015
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Most people dread getting dragged up on stage during a performance. Not me. Sure it's scary in that "I hope my flies aren't undone" sort of way, but not once have I ever regretted sitting on the front row. That said, I had some serious misgivings when a smiling performer extended his hand and hoisted me up onto the gym mat. A couple of minutes later I was lying flat on my back with an acrobat balanced on my outstretched palms.
The experience cut to the heart of A Simple Space. Being inches below a woman standing on her palms, an intense gaze burning a hole in the stage, veins wrapped around her muscles like steel cables and beads of sweat mazing their way down her face cements the effort, concentration and toll that these gymnastics take.
Composed of seven young acrobats from Australian company Gravity & Other Myths, the show makes an austere first impression. The set is a square mat with a couple of lights at each corner and the performers are clad in khaki and pastel tops, creating an effect not unlike being trapped in a GAP advert. We soon realise that everything that's not vital to the performance has been stripped away- the company even do their own lighting cues live on stage.
Minimalist it may be, but the aesthetic heightens the many feats we see before us. These range from human sculptures that bristle with limbs, to performers balancing in shaky human towers, being whirled around the stage by their wrists, leaping onto each other's backs or being gracefully tossed in parabolic arcs towards each other. This is standard acrobatics fare, but it's still thrilling as all hell. There's something adrenaline inducing in watching someone plummet towards the ground, only to be caught at the last moment and bounce up smiling, or the wobbly intensity of a man balancing three people on his head.
There's a bedrock of skill here that all but guarantees A Simple Space will entertain, but what's most interesting is where they deviate from expectations.The classical acrobat show is all tassled outfits, vaseline smiles, safety nets, circus lighting and glitter, shooting for the goal of showing the performer as an effortlessly graceful automaton, an image that this company are keen to subvert.
They achieve it by emphasising anatomical and emotional effort. Key to this is the obvious fatigue; the performers going red in the face as their muscles shiver n' shake under the strain. All this is accompanied by a symphony of grunts, groans and moans - leaving us in no doubt as to the effort going into every motion. Another deviation from the norm is baking in elements of failure. Many of the acts are competitions between the company - the most eyecatching a backflip contest. Stood in a row, they take turns backflipping to a rhythmic beat, eliminating a person when they fall to the group.
Paradoxically, the constant sight of failure makes the show that much more impressive. It drums into us the effort, training and skill needed to do even the simplest gymnastic action, as well as allowing us to empathise with what's going on before our eyes. It all feels extremely modern - the scuffed knees and bleeding feet in perfect sync with a contemporary YouTube/Vine fails orientated audience.
As far as an hour's entertainment on the South Bank goes it's totally worthwhile. Sure, there's not a huge amount of depth to it - but then you don't go to an acrobatic show expecting a life changing emotional experience. For what it is, it's superb; a thousand thumps, gasps and smiles combining into a straight-up fun tapestry of tumbling.
A Simple Space is at the Udderbelly, South Bank until 24th May. Tickets here.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
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There is a strange casual sadism in watching an acrobatics show. One one hand you're impressed by feats of strength and agility, and on the other you're ghoulishly wondering if they're going to screw up and seriously injure themselves. Watching people hurt themselves in various ways is undoubtedly quite popular nowadays (and probably has been since the dawn of time). I'd imagine that any audience watching people performing dangerous feats is half wondering what would happen if they were to slip off a rope or crash into the audience. I suppose it is to 'Tumble Circus' credit that most of the enjoyment and suspense came from deeply hoping these nice people would survive their act with a full collection of teeth and no broken bones.
'Tumble Circus' is made up of two performers: Tina Machina, and Kenneth Fall. They're a modern, no frills kind of act: very stripped down and self-aware with a nice line in self-deprecating humour. This performance tells the story of the ups and downs in the 17 year relationship of the performers, as they fall in and out love and argue amongst each other. I don't know how much of it is true or not, the line between reality and fiction seems somewhat blurred. There are short spoken word sections which punctuate the various circus acts involving clubs, rope climbing, a trapeze, hula-hoops and an impressive range of acrobatics.
The stripped down and personal nature of the performance gives them a bit of a license to make mistakes and get away with it. There were quite a few screwups near the beginning of the performance involving dropped clubs and hula-hoops that Tina Machina couldn't quite flip off the floor. Perhaps this was intentional in order to build a genuine sense of danger for the acrobatics to come? Whether these were intentional mistakes or not, it certainly adds a bit of an uncomfortable air to proceedings. After all, if they keep dropping these clubs on the floor, how can we be sure that they are going to be able to catch each other when they're swinging high above the audience? I did enjoy the narrative of the performance, which grounded the personalities of the performers very effectively. Maybe the timing and pace could be a little faster, but I half suspect these moments of down time are to give the performers a chance to have a breather.
The common image of an acrobat troupe is sequined leotards, constant grins and a near total air of consummate professionalism. When watching a performance like that, you get a vicarious sense of danger, but with the understanding that it's not very likely to go wrong. The movements are practised and machinelike, with no room for error. In 'Tumble Circus' there is (at least the illusion) that things are somewhat looser and have more room for interpretation. The two performers, even as they place complete trust in each other act out little bickering sequences, hitting each other in the head with their shoes and refusing to extend a hand to pull the other up.
The fact that the glamour has almost entirely been stripped from the act makes the performers much easier for the audience to identify with. You start to think, 'if 'normal' people like this can pull off acrobatics feats, then maybe I could too'. It's a pretty nice message to give to an audience, and even though the illusion breaks very quickly once you start to consider the massive effort needed to train yourself to this level, it's fun to entertain the idea.
As the narrative proceeds, and the couple make up and break up, parts of the audience are sucked into the narrative. I had been assured there was no audience participation in the performance, but two members of the audience were picked on quite mercilessly. One woman was singled out for receiving a series of roses taken from the top of a rope. Receiving roses plucked from an acrobat's teeth seems like a quite flattering and nice experience. On the flip side, a man in the audience was quite meanly attacked for being 'old', 'grey' and 'over-the-hill'. This was the only sour note in the performance for me. It is a little jarring to hear these pleasant people repeatedly bully someone based on his appearance. They could have gotten away with maybe one jibe and kept me on side, but throughout the latter half of the show they kept picking on this one guy, who as far I could tell had done nothing to warrant being singled out. It's not like someone sitting in the audience has much of a chance to respond, and after all he has paid to get in, so I felt a bit sorry for him, whoever he was.
Apart from this slight hiccup though, the audience seemed to be having a great time, applauding at the right moments, and even engaging in an impromptu pillow fight when one was tossed into the audience.
The music used during the show also hit a sweet spot for me. Covers of what sounded like 'Today' by the Smashing Pumpkins and 'No Surprises' by Radiohead were played repeatedly as an instrumental soundtrack to proceedings, and to close the act, 'Cannonball' by the Breeders was played. They're good choices, and contemporary indie songs goes a little way to adding some kind of authenticity and emotional honesty to the act.
I think 'Tumble Circus' achieved what they set out to do, and at no point during the show was I bored. There is a slightly scrappy nature to the show, and a few more mistakes than you'd expect to see in an act like this, but then it's entirely possible they put those in to increase suspense. It's not exactly a world-shaking show, but it slotted very neatly into the kind of semi-subversive cabaret world that they're trying to establish in the Spiegeltent down at the Udderbelly.
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