About the Show
Beginning with the contradictory yet interdependent nature of human relationships, the work explores the delicate and fragile balance between the individual and the collective. Through circus and its inherent relationship with risk, trust, dependence, conflict and balance are transformed into physical relationships. We need to be ourselves, yet we must also find our place among others.
Seven performers from different backgrounds are brought together by a shared ideal, only to find themselves taking different paths in life. Born into a relatively prosperous era, they have more choices than generations before them, yet face a future filled with uncertainty. “Having everything, yet having nothing” captures the contradiction of their generation. When an individual seems capable of achieving so much alone, do we still, at the most fundamental level, need one another?
Bodies and objects continuously intertwine, stack, collide and merge as the performers move through exploration, extremes, collapse and reconstruction. In moments when one performer must surrender their weight to another, or catch someone just before balance is lost, circus becomes a tangible metaphor for human relationships. The work uses contemporary circus to reconsider the relationship between “I” and “we”, revealing how we can be intimate yet distant, constrained by one another yet dependent on each other for support.
Presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the production was named by Time Out Edinburgh as one of the “Top Five Circus Shows.”