By Nick Pilgrim
The Melbourne Fringe Festival runs each year for three dynamic and jam-packed weeks. Covering a multitude of live entertainment and social event options, this season has already proven it is bigger and stronger than ever.
With hundreds of acts on offer, as always there is something for everyone.
Circus Arts and Physical Theatre play an integral part of the 2024 program.
Having reviewed for more than a decade, I have had the privilege of critiquing a solid handful of special presentations with a focus on dance and acrobatics including:
- Briefs
- Burn The Floor
- Club Vegas – The Spectacle
- Circus Oz – Precarious
- Hot Brown Honey
- Kapow
- Le Noir
- Railed
- Velvet
- Voila
- Werk It – Tight Fit
Playing for a strictly limited season, By A Thread dazzles and delights with subtle and deceptive simplicity. Staged by One Fell Swoop Circus, seven female and male acrobats throw non-stop caution to the wind with energy and aplomb.
Stripping the art form back to absolute basics, a single rope provides the visual key from which the show’s theme is generated. Whether pushing their own athletic ability to the hilt or doing their best to outdo one other, there is no denying the daring.
Like the best entertainers who make what they do look far too easy, don’t be fooled for one minute. This is very much a combined trust exercise where split-second timing is crucial.
At Friday night’s performance, the award-winning troupe was represented by Ellie Grow, Rachel Locks, Easa Min-Swe, Jonathan Morgan, Shona Morgan, Charice Rust, and Latonya Wigginton.
Streamlined costume design not only accentuate their toned bodies, but it also allows viewers to focus entirely on the difficult tricks and jaw-dropping skills at hand.
Highlights from the hour-long show at Gasworks Theatre in South Melbourne included:
- Using the rope as a cloud swing or human tightrope
- Working solo, in pairs or trios doing trapeze and aerial ballet
- Forming human pyramids (standing on shoulders or heads)
- Lifting each other into adagio pairs
Fluid transitions between routines made for a seamless experience. The sixty minute running time simply flew by.
Just to show they are human after all, one diabolically difficult routine towards the show’s conclusion got the better of them. Making light of the fact that they had trouble passing the rope to one other with their feet while each member was in a handstand position, made the audience love the team even more. That stuff is hard (and made this reviewer feel tremendously unfit watching them perform!)
Perhaps my biggest takeaway from the experience was the childlike innocence and wonder the group exuded throughout the journey. Their genuine delight made for a tremendously touching show, which will enchant both the young and the young at heart.
Earning the team a well-deserved standing ovation, here’s hoping for a return season very soon.
