Urban – Circolombia

Overview

Who needs unicycling dogs and lion tamers when you have fleet-footed humans springboarding one another into five-count backflips?

Circolombia is a troupe of street circus performers from the Colombian city of Cali, and Urban is their gracefully mind-boggling autobiographical show. It paints a portrait of life in a city as dense with both poetics and violence through seamlessly executed dances and acrobatics, the ballsiest stunts quite effectively calling to mind both life and death. Strobe lighting and a throbbing soundtrack presumably do little to make backflips atop tightropes less alarming.

Urban comes to the Sydney Festival following sell-out shows at London's Roundhouse and Broadway in Paris. If you only see one non-inner-city performance this year, this is a pretty weighty contender.