It’s how visceral your reactions can be, that’s the appeal of circus. A lurching stomach when an aerialist plummets towards the floor, or an involuntary gasp when an acrobat nails a tricky catch. So, when someone jumps the full height of the Royal Albert Hall on a giant trampoline, and your heart leaps to join them, that’s pure joy; vicariously free and flying, all from the safety of your seat.
Cirque du Soleil has been performing for almost 40 years and knows how to push our buttons. The company excels in large-scale spectacle, gathering some of the best acts from around the globe. In Kurios, the theme stringing those acts together is a steampunk world of retro-futuristic inventions: it’s hot air balloons and madcap Heath Robinson machines, rivets, bolts and leather flying goggles, and eccentrically shaped characters like something from Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet.
The designs, plus the live band, drawing on European folk and jazz, give whimsical character to what’s a very slick operation, many bodies fluently handled on stage (choreography is by Belgian contemporary dance-maker Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui). But it’s all a frame for the big skills, like the Russian Cradle, an act where Volodymyr Klavdich is up on a high platform, swinging Ekaterina Evdokimova between his legs then swooping her to the ceiling in somersaults. I’ve seen this performed as the big climax to a whole show; here it’s only the first act.
There are many more acrobatic feats, flips and twists, human towers, soaring flight and impossible landings, as well as juggling, contortionism and even some virtuoso yo-yo-ing. But the skill is one thing, the art is in shaping the act. That can be with delightful invention, as when handstander Andrii Bondarenko builds a tower to the sky in a scene with hints of Mary Poppins, or it can be in tension-building and showmanship as in James Gonzalez’s Rola Bola act, balancing on a wobbly tower of cylinders while on a moving swing. The steampunk genre might be about harnessing technology and mechanical invention, but this show is really about the mastery of human mechanics, the minutiae of muscle control, and our reflexive surprise at what flesh-and-blood bodies can do.
At the Royal Albert Hall, London, until 5 March.
