This acrobat’s hand has callouses and blisters; their fingers are flexible and splay wide. A dislocated knuckle is swollen from a fall, and the skin is youthful, supple and smooth. It’s incredibly intimate to hold the hand of a stranger and turn it over in mine. “I’m a bit nervous about it – in a good way,” says Lewie West, ensemble member of Circa, whose hand I’ve been holding.
They’re arguably the world’s most daring circus company, and in their Edinburgh fringe show Close Up, the audience will be invited to examine and touch the dancers’ bodies in this ultra-intimate way. “The closer the audience is, the more I like it, and this is taking it the next step further to me. We show an audience what hands do, what a jump is – so every time we do a jump in the show it has such a rich background.”
Close Up is unlike anything the Australian company has attempted before, a risky venture inspired by Antonioni’s cult 60s film Blow-Up, the verb list of American sculptor Richard Serra, and contemporary performance art. There’s a stripped-back, raw and playful physicality, getting to the essence of circus itself. Is it Circa’s most radical show yet? “In some ways it totally is,” says artistic director Yaron Lifschitz. “It’s a scary mixture of abstract acrobatics, audience engagement and visuals all in the same show, in a very circumscribed timeframe.”
The finished work will involve four acrobats on stage in front of a large screen showing ultra slow-motion close-up footage of their bodies. The audience is invited to look extremely closely, and to get physically close as well. “Every show is an attempt to go somewhere you haven’t been before,” says Lifschitz. “You think you’re sitting on a docile donkey and find you’re on a bucking bronco!” He laughs, eyes sparkling behind black-rimmed glasses.
Over the last few years critics have heaped praise on the company, calling it “caviar circus”, “spectacular”, “original”, “jaw-droppingly beautiful”. Last year’s Opus at London’s Barbican combined the talents of the Debussy Quartet and the music of Shostakovich with virtuoso acrobats and aerial work. Circa are currently collaborating with the Australian Brandenburg orchestra and soprano Claire Lefilliâtre for a dramatic performance of French baroque works, and premiere a new show, Il Ritorno, at Brisbane festival in September. The award-winning burlesque Wunderkammer, meanwhile, is due to head to Berlin for an eight-month run, and is being rehearsed today alongside Close Up.
The rehearsal studio is in the heart of Brisbane’s fashionable Fortitude Valley. It’s smaller than expected and way more intense, full of explosive laughter, concentrated silence, and light-hearted banter. Bach partitas, jazz, ballads, or burlesque songs issue from high speakers and then suddenly stop. Lean and muscled acrobats are tumbling in floor routines, practicing new aerial moves on crash-pads. There’s a striptease on a trapeze. There are humans standing on others’ heads. I sit on a chair on the sidelines. Suddenly, an acrobat walks across my thighs.
“Shooting the slow-motion footage the other day – it was incredible to see what our bodies did,” says Todd Kilby, martial arts expert, surfer and specialist in Chinese pole. “I hit myself in the chest and the amount of ripples that went through, you’d never expect it at all. I’ve definitely learnt things about my body and other acrobat’s bodies that I didn’t know about.” The footage is mind-boggling. When a hand hits a muscled chest at 40 times slower than normal speed, a move Lifschitz calls body percussion, its as if it’s slapping not flesh but the surface of water or mud.
“The core of this artform is this extraordinary sense of presence,” says Lifschitz. “It’s kind of disarmingly simple; it’s designed to be very honest and very open with its audience and yet to allow moments of revelation and the activation of our metaphorical selves as well as our literal selves.”
Lifschitz has chosen his acrobats carefully, all deliberately around the same height and build (“I’m almost gender-blind,” he says). Each has a particular skill that is showcased during the performance: ex-gymnast Daniel O’Brien’s balance, Lauren Herley on vertical ropes, Kilby on pole, while West loves ensemble floor-work and the raw power of the body.
On the rope, Herley winds herself up, gripping the rope with her pale, muscular thighs. She swings around, releases, swoops, blonde hair floating. “When I was a little kid we had a rope in the backyard,” she says back on the ground. Her voice is sweet and musical; I see her thigh has a rope burn. “We are going to be describing a lot what it is like to be a human and an acrobat in very pure and simple ways – that’s different and quite lovely for me.”
• Close Up by Circa is at the Underbelly George Square, Edinburgh, from 5-31 August (not 12, 18 or 25) at 8pm. French Baroque is at City Recital Hall, Sydney from 22 July to 1 August and Melbourne Recital Centre on 25 and 26 July
