‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution!’ It could be the cry of a rebellious daughter, but here it’s the embattled mother who utters anarchist-activist Emma Goldman’s famous words. Her daughter is more inclined towards quoting extreme body artist Orlan…

Everything I See I Swallow is one of a number of good circus-theatre shows seen at this year’s Ed Fringe which investigate family relationships – amongst other themes. The show, written and performed by Tamsin Shasha and Maisy Taylor, and directed by Helen Tennison, presents a fictional story in which an unnamed middle-aged art curator (or at least, a character only referred to as ‘mum’), played by Tamsin Shasha, discovers that her daughter Olivia (Maisy Taylor) has acquired over 50,000 Instagram followers by posting semi-nude images of herself.

So, let the battle commence: the feminist who chained herself to railings at Greenham Common to make a political point is outraged that her daughter would choose to tie herself up in Shibari rope-bondage knots just to make an erotic spectacle of herself. The daughter who has spent a lifetime feeling oppressed by her prettiness has found liberation in bondage: ‘I’m not just an object. I’ve made a choice. To be here. To be tied. And not to deny my sexuality.’

It’s the staging of a battle that has been running for at least forty years – with artists such as the porn-defending sex-working performance artist Annie Sprinkle at the forefront of a movement to justify a woman’s right to choose to present herself any way she wishes, and to do what she likes with her body (be it for the sake of art, commerce or sexual pleasure) on one side of the battle lines; and Andrea Dworkin, and a whole army of radical feminists, on the other side, seeing all porn as at best pandering to the patriarchy and at worst a form of violent assault on women’s bodies. The show has an extra auto-fictional element in that Maisy Taylor is indeed an aficionado of the erotic art of Shibari. (She has written for Total Theatre about this, and her work as an exotic dancer within strip clubs and cabarets, in an article entitled ‘My Body, My Self’.) 

The mother-daughter battle is played out through the manipulation of ropes of all scales, from the slim red Shibari ties to two great thick corde lisse (one black, one white) hanging from the ceiling, above a mirrored floor. The ropes are metaphor, and the ropes are the physical medium through which the battle of ideas and exploration of moral dilemmas is played out. Both women are very able aerialists, the solos and duets are thrilling, and the circus work and Shibari tying is well integrated with other elements of the piece. 

Then, there are monologues offered to the audience, and the highly charged dialogue between the two women that is often an excuse for the firing off of volleys of quotes from classic and new feminist texts. The names of feminist writers and heroines flash up on the back wall: from Mary Wollstonecraft to Naomi Wolf; Beauvoir to Beyonce. There are some sections where the writing feels a little ’uncooked’, and the piece would benefit from further reworking to ease out some of the niggles – but this is a minor criticism. The overwhelming sense is of a piece of work brimming with ideas, brought to us with vim and vigour by two highly skilled performers, who cope very well with the delivery of text even when swinging and hanging and tying each other in knots, literally and metaphorically!

An intelligent investigation of the multi-dimensional nature of contemporary feminism; and of the different pressures and concerns facing women of different ages in the 21st century. And although there is no trite resolution in the piece, there is the message that if we just try to listen to and understand each other, we can get through life… There’s room for both M&S and S&M in this world.

Fringe favourites Ockham’s Razor (winners of a Total Theatre Award with Tipping Point) are back at the beautiful St Stephen’s Church with new show This Time. And what a joy it is! It’s a very different piece to their earlier work. For a start, there’s a fair amount of text – spoken live, and pre-recorded – which is interweaved skilfully with the physical work on floor and equipment.

The ensemble of four comprises company founders/co-directors Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney alongside 13-year-old Faith Fahey and 60-year-old Lee Carter. Together, they present an intelligent, sensitive and heartwarming exploration of cross-generational relationships. Stories told verbally include Alex’s trip to Canada with a beloved grandpa (once a daredevil who gave him permission to be wild, now battling dementia); Charlotte’s brutally honest depiction of the daily battles with her headstrong toddler; and Lee’s experience of becoming pregnant unexpectedly at the age of 49. The spoken stories might be mostly of struggle, but the physical stories – enacted on a thrilling range of unusual and specially designed swinging and shape-shifting aerial equipment – is of love and support, counterbalancing the concerns expressed verbally.

So many beautiful moments: Two performers of different ages gaze into each other’s eyes through an empty frame, becoming each other’s mirror, beaming them forward and backward in time. Each person’s uniqueness as an individual is acknowledged along with the relationship between them – in some cases, presented as someone speaking to their younger self. In another wonderful scene, the four performers climb around and through each other and over the equipment, ending up spooned together in what seems to be a treetop family bed. There’s a gorgeous aerial doubles act from Alex and Charlotte, in which the real-life and circus relationship are intertwined as they support, swing from, and cradle each other. Faith’s youthful energy and stage presence is a delight – she is a fantastic, flexible flyer and it is so, so great to see such a laid back, skilled, gender-neutral performance from a teenage girl. Lee is a wonderful addition to the ensemble, fluid, physically graceful and expressive – and her duet with Alex is fantastic, two bodies of different ages / different genders moving together harmoniously, taking turns in holding and carrying the other. Its suggestion of mother-son relationship is particularly poignant in light of Lee’s own personal story.

Every element of the show – circus equipment, stage and costume design, music, lighting – has been thought through carefully and works brilliantly. An impressive team has worked on the show with the directors and performers – including musical maestro Max Reinhardt (yes, he of Radio 3 Late Junction fame), and costume maker Tina Bicat (see her article about her involvement with the company, here). The scenography works perfectly: a dark mirrored floor and back wall gives multiple reflections of each person (shadows of their former/later selves?), and feels like the perfect setting for the shiny silver aerial equipment (the company is as innovative as ever in their creation of new playgrounds for their performers!)

I have some reservations about some sections of text. I love everything in the piece that is about parenthood and inter-generational relationship, but there are slightly too many stories, overbalancing the piece a little, and the ones about schooldays and teenage experience could be cut, as they take the piece beyond the core themes of family love and support across the generations.

It is early days for the show, and it will only grow and grow. But even in its opening week, the piece feels full and rich. This Time really takes its time – and the gentleness, care and commitment in the making is there for all to see. A heart-warming and soul-nurturing circus theatre show.

As we wait for the show to start we’re treated to the sound of Dean Martin singing ‘That’s Amore’. Knot is a love story – but one whose Facebook relationship status might read ‘it’s complicated’.

Nikki (Rummer) and JD (Broussé) arrive on stage and announce themselves. They’re dressed in baggy, neutral coloured rehearsal wear. They tell us about how they met. They talk about previous relationships. As JD talks about Aurelie, Nikki gives him sidelong looks and there’s a small wry smile on her face. As Nikki talks about Leo, JD shifts uncomfortably, and gives us a magnificently French ‘pfff’.

They move away from the mics and onto the floor, stripping off a layer as they go, for the first of a number of gorgeous sequences combining acrobatics, contact dance, and hand-to-hand (the piece is choreographed with Lost Dog’s Ben Duke). The soundtrack is a smooth and mellow jazz track. Such fluid, graceful movement. Cradling herself into JD’s body, as they both lie on the floor, Nikki tells us that she needs a man who can lift her, support her. She outlines what she loves about his skin, his chest, his hands, the musculature of his arms.

Now standing, the lifts and drops and balances become more energetic, intense. But something’s going wrong. ‘Let’s do that one again’ she says. There’s an argument. She leaves. Not just off the stage, but right out of the room, down the stairs – trip, trap, trip, trap. JD is left alone. ‘I can do things by himself’ he says petulantly, giving us a warrior pose. Now what? He waits nervously for her return, then calls for her. Nothing, and then – thank God! – trip trap trip trap, back she comes. There’s a gorgeously sulky sequence, Nikki balanced at full arm’s length high on his hand, her arms crossed, a grumpy expression on her face. When it’s her turn to be left alone onstage, she’s better at coping, giving us cheery solo pirouettes and cartwheels, channelling the girl gymnast she once was.

Back together again, more chat: he’s the person she shares her 2-4-1 railcard with, the person whose body she knows better than anyone else’s, the person she sees more than anyone else, who she shares a bed with, but things aren’t quite as they seem. There’s a twist to the tale….

The rest of the piece plays out with new information on the table (I won’t say what), as the two explore what it means to be ‘together’. There is a very lovely sequence, to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Am a Portrait of a Man’ – exploring masculinity, unsurprisingly, with some thought-provoking revelations about each performer’s relationship with their father.

Knot isn’t a ‘big wow’ show, but rather, a gently clever piece that merges autobiographical storytelling, dance and acrobatics beautifully. The love and commitment between these two shines out from the stage, and it feels an honour to spend an hour in their company. That’s Amore, indeed.

Knot is presented in association with Jacksons Lane

Contemporary circus, like dance before it, was once perched precariously on the outer edges of the performing arts scene – insiders headed to Circus Space or Circomedia to get their fix; outsiders thought themselves daring for going to see Cirque du Soleil whenever they visited (and every time that company was reviewed in its early UK appearances, the review came with an astonished comment that there were – gosh! – no animals, and it wasn’t aimed at children). The Soleil model soon became the new traditional.

All that’s changed, with circus of all sorts programmed in built venues across the UK, and a strong feature of outdoor arts festivals nationwide. We have an educated audience for circus, both generally across these British and Irish Isles, and specifically at the Edinburgh Fringe, which has strong circus programmes at numerous venues, most notably those run by Assembly and Underbelly.

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows is the Fringe’s only dedicated circus space, and features two venues which run shows day and night throughout August. The Lafayette  is a 550 seat-big top) and The Beauty is a 500-seat Spiegeltent. The two venues are named after one of the world famous circus performer and illusionist The Great Lafayette and his dog Beauty, who famously both died in Edinburgh in 1911.

Here’s three very different circus shows seen at the Hub. All  had full and highly appreciative audiences… And take a look elsewhere on Total Theatre Magazine’s reviews section for more circus shows reviews, at Circus Hub and elsewhere. It’s a bumper year for circus at the Fringe!

Race Horse Company’s Super Sunday is an artier and more knowing take on the ‘boys with their circus toys’ model, presented at the Circus Hub big top, Lafayette. If you can imagine a wild dream – sometimes verging on nightmare – of what happens at the fairground after dark, this is it. The carousel horses come off their roundabout and canter around – the ludicrous multicoloured hobby horse meets pantomime horse costumes/whole body masks are wonderful. Talking of which, we also have a morose and tatty six-foot teddy bear – I imagine him as the prize on the ding-the-bell strongman contest come to life. He gets catapulted into the heights. There are teeter boards and trampolines, the later of which, after a spectacular sequence involving all six of the fabulous Finnish performers, becomes a toddlers’ bouncy play-space filled with garish plastic balls  There’s a crazy car catapult, and in an odd turn – perhaps because it is Sunday in the world of the show – we get a crucifixion scene that would give The Life of Brian a run for its money, the wooden cross eventually turning into a Russian beam. The grand finale is a Wheel of Death – rarely seen these days. It’s massive: two giant hamster wheels joined together, spinning on an axis. ‘Jesus’, his long hair flowing, is fastened to the underneath of one wheel, seemingly just with clingfilm, whilst the others take turns leaping on and off the wheels as they dip down. As in every other scene in this brilliant show, the pace is frenetic, the performers’ stage presence cheekily boyish and playful, and the skills astonishing. If you want all the wows of traditional circus delivered with contemporary knowingness, this is the show for you.

Company 2’s Le Coup, seen at The Beauty (Circus Hub’s other venue), is a perfect Spiegeltent show. It’s presented by the company that brought us Cantina and Scotch and Soda, and is another feel-good whoop and holler outing. (The company do also make more experimental circus theatre work presented in regular end-on theatre settings, but that’s a whole other story.) The premise this time round is that the company are a travelling boxing show, who have ‘nothing to lose and everything to gamble’. So ding ding, here we go – welcome to the ring, amongst other magnificent characters: The Ugly Hungarian, The Sisterless Twin, Sally the Alleycat, the King of the Tent, and Barry the Cross-Dressing Builder. It’s brash, it’s bawdy – and it is bursting at the seams with strong circus acts, all mulched into the storyline with consummate ease. There’s apache-dance inspired acro, with girls swung madly around the space; men with red-painted forearms wrestling themselves in and out of gasp-worthy acrobalance poses; and hand-balancing on a construction made out of beer barrels – barrels previously used in a ludicrous human turtle race. There’s a live band, Father Grant and the Blunt Objects, all multi-instrumentalists (surf guitar, banjo, trumpet, drums, keyboards and more), featuring The Murderess, who gives us a whimsical folksy song about how she’d ‘kill again tomorrow’, which follows on from the excellent (male) solo trapeze act in which he turns the trapeze in on itself and ties himself in knots, accompanied by The Murderess on toy piano. The company use the audience and the auditorium brilliantly: there’s fake money issued to bet on the turtles; the foolish King with his bell-dinging device; the big and beefy Barry the Builder clambering over seats, naked but for two strategically placed hats; and hair-hanging referee ‘Audrey’ racing up and down the aisles, rounding up ‘contestants’. The finale is a fabulous cat-fight between Sister and Sally. Le Coup is a gloriously (mock) gory night out – a raucous rollercoaster ride through vaudeville’s darker histories.

Meanwhile, back at Lafayette, Circa: Humans makes a return appearance to the Fringe. Most of the action is floor-based acrobatics, tumbling or hand-to-hand – rolls and flips, rising and falling towers, walking on shoulders, swinging around or through bodies – although there’s some aerial (corde lisse and a three-person straps tag-team). There’s a hand-balancing act on tiny floor-level red bricks,and a clever take on the old vaudeville favourite, the Rag Doll routine, as a woman is puppeteered around the stage by her male partner. The transitions from one section to another are beautifully managed, and the relationship between performers (and occasionally, when they break the fourth wall, with audience) is gentle and touching. As always with Circa, women frequently base, and/or take the initiative. Music is brilliantly chosen, with Caetano Veloso’s Triste Bahia a firm favourite – used for a long and beautifully enacted acrobatics sequence that loosely references Brazilian capoeira. On second viewing, I love the show even more than ever – just human bodies in space, doing clever and beautiful things – who could ask for anything more?

Featured image (top): Company 2: Le Coup, at Underbelly Circus Hub’s Spiegeltent, The Beauty. 

For full details of all Circus Hub shows, see here

Australian circus company Casus brought their acclaimed autobiographical two man show You & I, staged in a theatre setting, to Edinburgh in 2018. For Ed Fringe 2019, the company (creators of Knee Deep and Driftwood) return to more familiar Spiegeltent territory with a new ensemble piece, DNA – in this case, increasing to a seven-strong company, four women and three men.

There’s a familiar Casus start as all make their entrances from different points in the auditorium, onto the almost-in-the-round thrust stage. At the rear of the thrust, lined up on stage, are a row of chairs, which are used throughout in a way sometimes reminiscent of Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof, as performers step in and out of the action. Bausch’s ghost is also present in the gestural choreography that is a motif throughout the piece, arm flicking or hair smoothing gestures mirrored, or passed from one performer to another.

Everyone is dressed in a deep red that feels like a visual extension of the tent’s red plush drapes, in varying styles of high-waisted pants, bodysuit or skirts, embellished or plain, so that each is part of the whole, yet individual. I struggle at first to understand the relevance of the title/theme, DNA, and especially don’t understand what the red-hooded figures that are a recurring motif  represent – hidden demons, perhaps? But never mind, it is visually lovely, highly skilled circus set to a great soundtrack. On reflection, I think the message is that although nature and nurture vie with each other within one human body, nature will out: we are who we are, regardless.

Although DNA takes on a more traditional format, the themes developed in former show You & I – of self-identity, and being true to yourself, play out here too. There’s fluid ensemble acrobatics and hand-to-hand, including a breathtaking never before seen (well, not by me anyway) walk-across that turns into a cartwheel; expert hand-balancing, using those chairs, naturally; and plenty of challenges to gender stereotype, with a strong female base holding up two, three or more of the other women (and often men).

In a lighter moment, there’s a comic aerial act in red high heels and a vaudevillian flouncy dress that refuses to guard its wearer’s modesty, this to what sounds like Florence Foster Jenkins, the early 20th century opera singer who refused to believe that she couldn’t sing. A metaphor for the trappings of femininity that are holding the woman back? A shadow screen at the rear of the stage is used cleverly to add another visual dimension to the piece.

All the ensemble are great – but the stars that shine brightest are Jesse Scott and Lachlan McAuley, co-founders of Casus (with DNA director Natano Fa’anana, and Emma Serjeant, who left the company a few years back). These two base and fly with such tender ease, whether on the ground or in the air for the doubles trapeze, their bodies moulding into and growing from each other effortlessly. Maybe, following on from You & I, it’s because we know that the two men are a longstanding couple in real life, as well as in circus life, that the love and support visible tugs so strongly at our heart-strings.

DNA feels a little uneven, and not completely cooked as a show – but it is so skilled, full of so many beautiful images, and balances strength and tenderness so well, that on balance, it’s fine.