Friday 6 May 2005

Circus Oz

Wednesday night, Circus Oz came to town for one night only, and Tanya and I went to see it. Circus Oz (a quick web search tells me) has been around since 1977. It's a world-class, human-only stage performance similar to Cirque du Soleil - but a bit rougher, more down to earth, and funnier.

For their performance here in Rockhampton they used the Pilbeam Theatre, and I was impressed by how well they set up such a dynamic array of acts on such a small stage. I thought for sure there would be times when someone would accidentally tumble off the front of the stage, but no-one ever did :)
Speaking of which, only one acrobat made one misstep through all the performances, and even crashing down from missing a trapeze was covered so smoothly that I was left wondering if it was intentional - the act was certainly all the more amusing for it.

I'm amazed by what humans are capable of doing with their bodies. Over the course of the two hour performance, the different acts awed, inspired, and (sometimes sickly) fascinated. I would so much love to have some of the gear that they play with - especially the cylindrical frame in which a person stands spread-eagled, Da Vinci posed, and rolls effortlessly around the stage. That looks like so much fun :D

It was so much fun, I wish I had of learned of Circus Oz coming to town earlier and had time to invite anyone who wanted to come, but I only found out about it the day before. (The Pilbeam Theatre's online ticketing system works really well, by the by - we got great tickets the night before the performance! :) )

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

friday, 6 may, 2005 17:00 MAT

nick's not fooling anyone. he wanted an exclusive date with tanya and didn't want to include us... :P

i'm glad you had a good time.

Nicholas Young said...

Now that's not fair Melanie. Well... not entirely fair. Honest. Um... I feel a bit guilty for not inviting anyone else? :p
Ok, I wanted an exclusive date with Tanya, but I still wish you guys could have seen the show too :)