CIRCA at Malthouse Theatre

Throughout history the circus in all of its forms has returned obsessively, incessantly, to the strangest and most mystifying animal of all: the human.Now, Australia’s world-famously inventive and intelligent proponent of the form is presented by Malthouse Theatre in a performance that stretches the limits of what bodies can be. Provocative, affecting and always unexpected, CIRCA dispenses with the hoopla and cuts straight to the quick. KEEP UP!Mind-bending aerial displays, unfettered acrobatics and the slap and shudder of bodies pushed to extremes — all there, but this is no mindless diversion. Dragging the language of traditional circus arts kicking and screaming into the relentless throb of the twenty-first century, Circa creates spectacle that somehow speaks to something deeper: our need for connection, our fears of failure and hopes for triumph, and to the spaces we inevitably share.