About the Performance
Tensegrity sculptures have an impossible quality – large solid bars seemingly suspended in mid-air, held in place by floating compression.
We are struck by the power these structures have to evoke wonder and curiosity. The same principle of suspended tension applies both to the human bodies of our acrobats – without the tensional network of fasciae and tendons your bones would just be a pile of sticks on the floor – and the connections and dynamism of a community.
This new work continues our practice of exploring circus as it relates to life. In it we grapple with the idea of the social safety net: the network of systems, formal and informal, created by society to support the lives of its people.
This community safety net is not something tangible or visible. It is built by belief in shared responsibility for looking after each other and strengthened by the commitment that we collectively put into it. Like the invisible tension holding the tensegrity structure aloft, its strength exists in its wholeness – the pressures and forces acting on it being spread out and carried across all its parts.
This same principle applies to group acrobatics. In order to build a tower of three people standing on one another each person has a role to play in balancing the forces at work: minute shifts in weight to offset someone else’s; bearing someone’s weight under pressure to support the whole; and once it’s built, the whole tower standing still but buzzing with invisible tension and strength.
Current Cast
Performance Credits
Directors: Charice Rust and Jonathan Morgan
Original Creative Cast: Charice Rust, Jonathan Morgan, Easa Min-Swe, Claire Bindoff, Sarah Gray, Roya the Destroya, Shona Morgan, Rachel Locks
Production Head: Dawn Holland
Composition: Emma Kelly, Happy Axe
Lighting Design: John Collopy
Costume Design : Harriet Oxley
One Fell Swoop acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land where we create. We are privileged to live and work on the land of the oldest living culture with more than 60,000 years of history of art-making, story-telling and caring for country. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
One Fell Swoop Circus is supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body
