Award-Winning Aerial Dance Duet Imago Makes Its Adelaide Fringe Debut
Former Cirque du Soleil artists Gabrielle Martin and Jeremiah Hughes present their acclaimed contemporary aerial work in Australia for the first time.
Imago, the contemporary aerial dance duet created by Corporeal Imago, will make its Adelaide Fringe debut this February at Ukiyo at Gluttony – Rymill Park. The production arrives following its Intercultural Connections Award for Best Production at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and continues an international touring life that has included seasons in the UK, Canada, and the United States.
Created by former Cirque du Soleil artists Gabrielle Martin and Jeremiah Hughes, Imago departs from large-scale circus spectacle in favour of an intimate, emotionally driven physical language.
The work is performed on a custom rope-loop apparatus invented by the artists, reimagining aerial movement as a site of vulnerability, trust, and transformation. Fusing floor-to-air choreography, original cinematic music, and dreamlike visual design, the non-verbal duet explores the fragile space between holding on to and letting go of another.
Martin and Hughes first met while performing lead roles in Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK – The First Flight, before leaving commercial circus to develop a more personal and experimental practice. That shared history informs a choreography that is both technically rigorous and emotionally exposed, where each lift, suspension, and release carries relational stakes. For the Adelaide Fringe season, the work will be performed by Jeremiah Hughes and Brenna Metzmeier, maintaining the intimacy and risk that define the original creation.
“We wanted to create something that could hold both physical danger and emotional fragility,” said co-choreographer Gabrielle Martin. “The rope-loop apparatus doesn't support you—it responds to you. It forces a constant negotiation between trust, independence, and surrender.”
The deceptively simple rope-loop apparatus functions as a shifting partner within the work, acting at different moments as tether, cradle, and tightrope. Its instability allowed the artists to develop a new movement vocabulary, moving away from fixed aerial techniques toward a raw, responsive physical dialogue.
Imago features an original score by Montreal-based composer Nicolas Bernier, whose work blends organic and digital soundscapes, with lighting design by Sophie Tang. Together, sound and light mirror the emotional arc of the choreography, creating an immersive and atmospheric stage environment.
With its interdisciplinary form and non-verbal structure, Imago is accessible across cultures and suited to audiences new to contemporary aerial dance.
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