One of the daily tragedies of being human is that notions in our heads of unaided flight, levitation - any thought of lift-off from our material horizon - lie in drastic disproportion to what flesh and muscle permit. As children, we dream of flying, or living, say, on ocean floors without gas-tanks. As adolescents, we dream of many things, most of them impossible. As adults, sportspeople and dancers strain to defy nature, but never do. Most of us go on to live resignedly alongside, or inside, nature, glum in the knowledge that our "machine", as Hamlet terms his mortal frame, will of course wholly fail.
I note this with some feeling, as this week alone I've managed to stub a big toe badly and shatter its nail from the outside in, then, yesterday, to rick my right calf in a storming walk toward to my bank (RBS, since you ask) in central Cambridge - where you can't park - to complain, rowdily, after a new card had malfunctioned for the 15th time. It was thus with positive awe and a growling awareness of my late-40s decrepitude, to say nothing of fury at the limitations of the material world, that I watched Circa last night at the Barbican.
Circa is a Brisbane troupe of 20-something perfomers who do things on stage Health and Safety should probably proscribe - but the BITE (Barbican International Theatre Events) season is a daring entity, and thank God for it. (This time last year I was watching, in BITE, Romeo Castellucci's Purgatorio, featuring a father's rape of his prepubescent son in possibly one of the most demanding, viscerally challenging pieces of drama I've ever attended.) Circa's four boys and three girls career, undulate, explode, entwine and reverberate in an hour-plus of stage hedonism which, in its sheer force of daring and corporeal ingenuity, might - once they and I are serious dust, and as long as someone's recorded it - become one of the Wonders of the World.
Let's be clear about what Circa is not. Though the performers might pay tribute to circus, there's no "circus" here: no flames, no hurdles, mercifully no animals, no paraphernalia. No clowns. The guys, in cotton trousers, are bare-torsoed; the girls are in swimsuits. That's it (plus music: electronica, Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead). Their show - OK, there's also a bit of trapeze- and rope-work - is an exhibition of trust and understanding. Without them, there'd be no show.
One guy can climb on to the shoulders of one of the girls, and then almost stand on her head with both feet - he doesn't quite manage it - because they know they can try it: they've done it before, and elevation on his colleague's skull with one foot is scary and extraordinary enough. Another girl can fling herself high from the arms of colleagues across at least a metre knowing she will be elegantly caught - and it will be theatrical. These lunatics know exactly what they're doing.
Individuals come into their own. One guy keeps us entranced with his fingers, just his fingers, clicking (audience clicks along), sculpting, playacting; then, after a couple of experiments at standing upside down on the same fingers, first five, then three, he tries to hold himself up with just one on each hand. We know each will break. It doesn't happen. It shouldn't. We're relieved. This is theatrical.
A girl comes on with obscenely high heels - red, potentially lethal. A boy's there, prone, and she walks all over him: spine, shoulders, inside of his thighs. Sexually, it's exploitative. Technically, it's riveting. Much of what Circa does is actually a tad troubling, but it's all so witty and and so beautifully controlled, and so flipping skilful, that a lack of subtlety can be forgiven. Almost.
A review attempting to evoke the sheer bloody exuberance of Circa's work is bound to shortchange them, but they need to be told that 1) they aren't dancers - no circus, but no choreography either - and 2), with these talents, they could surely create something thematically meatier. But this creaking curmudgeon came out into a chill March night feeling, nonetheless - well, knowing, having just witnessed it - that the human body is capable of joyful, fearless defiance. Next time round, Circa, please: more matter.
Circa is a Brisbane troupe of 20-something perfomers who do things on stage Health and Safety should probably proscribe - but the BITE (Barbican International Theatre Events) season is a daring entity, and thank God for it. (This time last year I was watching, in BITE, Romeo Castellucci's Purgatorio, featuring a father's rape of his prepubescent son in possibly one of the most demanding, viscerally challenging pieces of drama I've ever attended.) Circa's four boys and three girls career, undulate, explode, entwine and reverberate in an hour-plus of stage hedonism which, in its sheer force of daring and corporeal ingenuity, might - once they and I are serious dust, and as long as someone's recorded it - become one of the Wonders of the World.
Let's be clear about what Circa is not. Though the performers might pay tribute to circus, there's no "circus" here: no flames, no hurdles, mercifully no animals, no paraphernalia. No clowns. The guys, in cotton trousers, are bare-torsoed; the girls are in swimsuits. That's it (plus music: electronica, Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead). Their show - OK, there's also a bit of trapeze- and rope-work - is an exhibition of trust and understanding. Without them, there'd be no show.
One guy can climb on to the shoulders of one of the girls, and then almost stand on her head with both feet - he doesn't quite manage it - because they know they can try it: they've done it before, and elevation on his colleague's skull with one foot is scary and extraordinary enough. Another girl can fling herself high from the arms of colleagues across at least a metre knowing she will be elegantly caught - and it will be theatrical. These lunatics know exactly what they're doing.
Individuals come into their own. One guy keeps us entranced with his fingers, just his fingers, clicking (audience clicks along), sculpting, playacting; then, after a couple of experiments at standing upside down on the same fingers, first five, then three, he tries to hold himself up with just one on each hand. We know each will break. It doesn't happen. It shouldn't. We're relieved. This is theatrical.
A girl comes on with obscenely high heels - red, potentially lethal. A boy's there, prone, and she walks all over him: spine, shoulders, inside of his thighs. Sexually, it's exploitative. Technically, it's riveting. Much of what Circa does is actually a tad troubling, but it's all so witty and and so beautifully controlled, and so flipping skilful, that a lack of subtlety can be forgiven. Almost.
A review attempting to evoke the sheer bloody exuberance of Circa's work is bound to shortchange them, but they need to be told that 1) they aren't dancers - no circus, but no choreography either - and 2), with these talents, they could surely create something thematically meatier. But this creaking curmudgeon came out into a chill March night feeling, nonetheless - well, knowing, having just witnessed it - that the human body is capable of joyful, fearless defiance. Next time round, Circa, please: more matter.
- Circa is at the Barbican until 14 March: book here.
- Check out what's on in the 2010 Edinburgh International Festival
