OCircus Captivates Audience With Time Travel Theme
Last Friday and Saturday, OCircus performed its showcase in Hales Gymnasium. Performers wowed the audience with juggling, handstands, flips, human pyramids, and aerial acrobatics while suspended high above the stage from hanging silks. Through their feats, they displayed both athletic ability and artistic style and showed off countless hours of practice and training.
The theme of this year’s show was time travel. Each act was based on a historical era or event — the creation of the universe, the Dark Ages, the psychedelic 1970s, and a futuristic zombie apocalypse, among others — with music, costumes, and choreography to match. The arrangement of short, disparate acts gave individual performers a chance to shine, and allowed for costumes to vary from tie-dye to a garb of medieval jesters and for music to range from 1980s exercise tracks to bass-boosted Gregorian chants. The set-up kept the audience on the edge of their seats, never sure what would come next.
Even with the clever theme and excellent direction, the focus of the show was still on the performers’ physical abilities. In pairs, in groups, or by themselves, performers executed stunning splits, somersaults, and walk- ing handstands. They climbed on silks and hung suspended in harrowing yet graceful positions or wrapped themselves around hanging hoops with fantastic ease. The show revealed how physical strength and precision, coupled with an artistic approach, can create something beautiful and awe-inspiring.
