BY ANGUS MCPHERSON
Cirque de la Symphonie
With the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Opera House, 17 September
A jester clad in a motley of sparkling red, black and silver diamonds juggles lurid hoops to the Bohemian Dance from Bizet’s ‘Carmen’. Every time the music intensifies, the tricks become more complex, the hoops arching above him. The jester, Vladimir Tsarkov, flicks his foot and another hoop launches from the floor to take its place in the swirling circle above his head. The formations of flying hoops shift and change in the air, and on the rare occasion a hoop is dropped, Tsarkov wags his finger at it, the movements so streamlined that his fumbles are as much a part of the act as his amazing feats of coordination. Tsarkov’s comedy runs through Cirque de la Symphonie, his capering a light refreshment between acts of acrobatic artistry in this collaboration between circus performers and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Guy Noble is conductor and host, lightly compering the evening and visibly enjoying himself. The show opens with the orchestra performing Glinka’s overture from ‘Rusland and Ludmila’. The event is peppered with orchestral interludes, Noble conducting Smetana’s Dance of the Comedians from ‘The Bartered Bride’ and Giménez’s Intermedio from ‘La boda de Luis Alonso’ with the confident flair of a ringmaster.
In the first circus act, Christine Van Loo folds herself into a purple silk streamer dangling high above the stage, along to Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’. The purple silk transforms into angel or butterfly wings as she cocoons and coils to pose, hands-free, for the audience. She spins daringly, the silks unravelling to gasps from the audience. In the final bars, she slides head-first down the silk to recline gracefully on the stage.
In dark red lighting, Aloysia Gavre and Andrey Moraru dance an acrobatic tango to Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Capriccio Espagnol’. Alexander Streltsov spins a rectangular metal frame, and then a large cube (swapped on by Tsarkov, the jester never breaking character) to Bizet’s Toreador Song. Tsarkova (Tsarkov’s real-life partner) performs a balletic contortion dance to the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’. The curving gold lines of her costume accentuate the fluid shape changes made by her body, her legs becoming undulating wings as she stands on her hands. For the finale of the first half, Gavre reclines and poses in a suspended hoop that lifts suddenly into the air. She dangles from the hoop by a single hand (and sometimes by her feet), and the act reaches its climax with Gavre spinning and whirling madly. As she leaves the stage she lures Noble off with her.
‘Quick Change’, a choreographed magic act by Tsarkov and Tsarkova, opens the second half. Tsarkova’s gloves change colour behind her sequinned hand bag and soon her entire costume changes behind flourished curtains (Tsarkov attempts the trick himself and is caught midway through tugging his pants down). Seemingly impossibly, Tsarkova’s dress transforms to a full-length white gown as the jester passes a shining, streamered hoop over her body.
Tsarkov juggles strobing pins to Kabalevsky and Moraru performs a gymnastic hand-balancing act to John Williams’ music from the film ‘Hook’. Tsarkova takes the stage again, twirling a long red ribbon to the Can-Can from Offenbach’s ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’.
Van Loo and Streltsov’s aerial duo to the waltz from ‘Swan Lake’ sees the pair ascending two red silks individually and in tandem, spinning and twirling together. Van Loo splays herself between the ribbons and entwines her legs into them to pull Streltsov into the air with her hands. For Streltsov, the ribbons become a harness and cape, and he flies over the stage and audience, red sails billowing out behind him.
Noble comically introduces the final act as the “Chiropractor’s Delight”, a strength act by former Polish national hand balancing champions Jaroslaw Marciniak and Dariusz Wronski. The act’s official title is ‘Jarek and Darek’, and the two men, identically bronzed from head to toe, perform graceful feats of incredible balance and control, to the ominous strains of Sibelius’s ‘Finlandia’. The act opens and closes with Jarek (or perhaps it was Darek) balancing his entire body in a single handed hand-stand on the crown of his partner’s head, both exuding a sense of ceremonial gravity. The music fades into the background as the audience tries not to imagine what this might do to someone’s neck or spine.
Cirque de la Symphonie was wildly entertaining, the atmosphere relaxed and jovial (Noble had instructed the audience early on that gasping and laughter was acceptable). The orchestra, here a circus band, heightened the drama of the circus acts, resulting in thoroughly enjoyable aural and visual spectacle.
Image supplied.
