Amazing physical action

The Olympics meet the circus in The Space Between by Australian company, Circa, which has been filling the Black Box Theatre for the first week of the Galway Arts Festival.Brisbane-based Circa, which began its life 18 years ago as a Rock 'n’ Roll circus, has worked towards re-imagining the entertainment form in their home country. Having purposefully avoided reading the preview in the brochure until after the show, this reviewer had no expectations heading into it.With what can be described as an 'unusual’ soundtrack of mostly unknown (to me) French songs, the cast of three spent a full hour doing amazingly physical actions, that most of us have only dreamed of seeing live.Hence the reference to gymnastics in the Olympics and the acrobats of an international circus, as many members of the audience previously only had the pleasure of watching this kind of talent on TV. The aforementioned preview describes, better than I could, what David Carberry, Darcy Grant and Chelsea McGuffin managed to do over the duration of the show: “bodies collide, balance, tumble and hang in sequences of stunning solo dexterity, beautiful duets and gorgeous ensemble work”.The show began with a confusing amount of falling backwards on the hard floor (you could hear their bodies hitting the ground), not the type you did in your school gym though — there were no landing mats! It continued for the hour with individual and collective examples of their exceptional talent. There is no doubt that Circa’s performers are amazingly gifted, but The Space Between is not a mainstream production.One person described it afterwards as fabulous and the best movement show in years, but it is fair to say that not everyone will feel that way. This audience member was put off by the erratically edited and unfamiliar music, the lack of visible structure to the show, and the element of 'modern dance’ which rendered me confused as to the presence of certain scenes which displayed no rhyme or reason.As for the meaning of the title, that certainly went over my head.