Limbo

Photo by David Solm

Circuses have changed heaps since I hit the Big Top. I was eight at the time. The ringmaster pulled me from the audience, clicked me into a trapeze and thrust me standing onto the back of a circling horse (yes, circuses had animals then). 

When that got boring, they yanked me up to the ceiling for a laugh … and my pants fell down.

I like to think my surprise risqué act heralded the coming of burlesque circus, when tricksters discovered attitude and funky music, and circus took up with cabaret.

From those Ashton days to Circus Oz, from Cirque du Soleil to Limbo, there’s no shortage now of wild and atmospheric acts to fill the Sydney Festival’s 1920’s baroque Spiegeltent.  This year the festival has expanded its usual Hyde Park precinct into the Festival Village and Limbo takes centrestage.  Fresh from the London Wonderground, this Australian troupe of very hot international talents weaves a nicely textured narrative of acts.

 I’m not sure I got their metaphysical intention to be a limbo world between heaven and hell but I was just fine with the old Wild West musical hall aesthetic blended into a raunchy Berlin dance party.  And with three studs atop long flexible poles sweeping above us and around each other, there’s much dancing beauty to match all the sleaze. 

Central is the driving off-kilter beats of New York showman Sxip Shirey, reminiscent of Madness and the vaudevillian excess of Ska music in the 1980s, as he and his musicians fuse brass, electronics, hip hop and all sorts of homemade instruments.

Almost everybody plays something, as well as excelling at their signature skills  – Germany’s Tigris staggering as a contortionist, Danik Abishev leaping quicksilver through heights on his hands, France’s swathe Mikael Bres mastering his Chinese pole, and sexy Afro-American Hilton Denis conquering all from his first tap dancing. 

The girls have a smaller profile but Evelyne Allard takes well to the aerial hoop and sword swallower Heather Holiday is also breathtaking eating fire. 

Such moments of staging are a credit to Australian director Scott Maidment who, with his agile family of talent, frames each act with much personality and panache.  Winks, teases and ironies help launch each trick beyond just a circus act – even if some I do remember from back at Ashton’s

Rating:  4 stars out of five

Sydney Festival 2014
www.sydneyfestival.org.au
9-26 January