Unexpected expressional acrobatics - Knee Deep review

At Umeå contemporary circus festival Knee Deep was completely sold out, so I was so happy that it was possible to see them in Piteå yesterday. In Piteå, I was surprised that it was not so many people in the audience, but I really liked the scale of the scene: It was a small theater hall and I was on the first row.

Knee Deep starts with the acrobat Emma Serjant walking on eggs, setting the egg and wine bottle theme that runs loosely through the show. Just like eggs, the human body can be both fragile but strong when many of them are put together. When they drop the egg from at three man high, it also reminds us how easily it breaks and that circus always involves some form of risk.

Knee Deep is a four person acrobatic show performed by Circus Casus from Brisbane, Australia. The show has a decorticated set with almost nothing on stage except the performers. The show starts with a routine of group acrobatics that shows amazing skills from the acrobats. The acrobatic numbers are mixed up with mostly aerial, but also some other acts.

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The group acrobatic number where the one I liked the most. More towards the end there were one performed to more upbeat music that I preferred to the first one, but I really like how they moved in different way and did some very unexpected moves. It was refreshing to see that even if the group consist of one woman and three men, the all base and fly equally through the routine. Sometimes I really wished that there where more elements borrowed from dance to fill in the spaces between the acrobatic moves. I liked the part in the end where one of them did some arm movements like he was controlling the others with a force to do some moves.

The aerial parts seemed a little unpolished in this performance. I could see some mistakes in the silks, but they where well covered up. The straps started up by some moves that looked like they where from rope to me, which I have not seen much. In the end, there was a nice four person group trapeze. In this trapeze act they switched a lot between the moves and who would do them, but they where never all four in the trapeze. The aerial contributed with some change to the acrobatic acts.

There was no manipulation in the show expect from a hula hoop act. Men are not often seen on stage doing hula hoop, so it was nice to see. It started of with three of them on stage, and I thought about how we did hula hoop on the school yard. Then the two in the background "grow up" and stops hooping, while the one in the middle continue and does a nice little routine. Some other review I have read though this didn't fit into the show, but I liked the unexpected variation in the pace of the show.

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My favorite act in the show was actually not the last act, but the later group acrobatics because I could see the joy in their eyes while doing all their acrobatic tricks.

To sum this up, I enjoyed some of the unconventional parts of the show, as well as the intense expressions of the performers. There are some details to be improved, but to sum it up Knee Deep is an unpolished diamond.

Link to Casus Circus homepage