Keeping the audience on its toes

Acrobatics, dance, confessions – 'Traces', which comes to Dublin next week, is the kind of show that's at its best when the sense of danger is palpable. SARA KEATINGmarvels at the fearlessness of its performers

THERE IS SOMETHING daring and incongruous about watching Tracesin the 200-year-old Theatre Royal in the seaside city of Brighton. The five performers in the production – part circus showcase, part dance routine – look like they'd be more comfortable performing on the street. They wrap themselves around standing poles that might be lamp posts. They skim across the stage on skateboards, weaving in and out of miniature traffic cones. Meanwhile, the pulsing score is the soundtrack of the city – electronica and indie rock, mixed with the lull of background traffic noise and the hum of generic urban chaos. Traces is certainly not what you would expect to find underneath the ornate gilded roof of a Georgian theatre.

Indeed, the framing of the stage at the Theatre Royal appears at first to confine the performers. The tilted stage causes trampolines to slip a little, so that bodies spiralling through the air land more unpredictably than you might expect, while the run-in to trampolining and tumbling tricks is almost impossibly short, the performers having to fold themselves into the tightest compact shapes that their small, elastic frames can manage.

But Traces is the kind of show that is at its best when the threat of failure is palpable, when a performer almost seems to slip but catches his balance just before he falls; when a body diving through implausibly narrow hoops catches the ring with an untidy foot and sends the whole structure careening to the floor. Every misstep reminds you just how difficult these feats of bodily contortion and strength truly are, when you are in danger of being made complacent by the apparent fluidity of movement and the litheness of the tightly controlled limbs in front of you.

When the opening set-piece involves a neat body reshaping itself into an armchair, you think anything is possible. But the performers – no matter how expert their execution – are unharnessed human bodies, as mortal and prone to injury as us sedentary spectators, and our awareness of their fragility is essential to creating that atmosphere of danger that under-pins the whole mood of this unique and ultra-cool display of urban theatrics.

Backstage, amid bags of discarded props and stacks of multicoloured lighting gels, the cast are limbering up. They pause, like seasoned professionals, for photographs, in which the playful spirit that keeps Traces on its toes for the 80-minute performance is evident in manic grins, crossed eyes, and bunny fingers held behind each other’s heads. They are clowns as well as acrobats.

BRIGHTON IS THE third-last stop on an extensive international tour which finishes in Dublin with six performances at the Olympia Theatre. The show's five current performers have been on the road since Christmas, but Tracesitself has been touring for four years. A creation of Montreal's multidisciplinary circus troupe, Les 7 Doigts de la Main, it has even visited Dublin before, for a week of sell-out shows during the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2008. But this latest tour has been embarked upon by a new generation of performers, all graduates of Montreal's prestigious École National de Cirque, whose various backgrounds in ballet, gymnastics and jazz have brought another dimension and a new lease of life to the production.

Philip Rosenberg is the youngest of the performers and is also the linchpin of the show. Limber as a spider, he carves shapes from his body as he soars through the air in a variety of different poses. He controls the stage alone for almost 10 minutes with a mesmerising hand-balancing act upon a pile of headless mannequins. Like many circus performers, Rosenberg came to circus from the world of gymnastics. Although a highly skilled performer, he had decided by the age of 10 that he “didn’t like the competitive edge. It was too structured. Competitive gymnastics is all about achieving the highest score, being perfect, and all the time this is based on someone else’s idea of quality. I wanted to perform in an environment where you could be creative and expressive. Circus, and a show like Traces, is a perfect forum for that.”

He adds that " Tracesis about us as performers – it is based on our particular skills, but our own stories and lives are woven into the show too".

In fact, the performers introduce themselves at the start of the show. They tell us details of their weight and height which have greater significance because the show is built upon their bodies. They each describe themselves in just three words – reserved, determined, playful, and so on – and they confess other secrets too: first memories, injuries, hidden scars. They ask us to like them as well as marvel at their skills, not to mention their sheer fearlessness.

THE PERFORMERS HAVE different attitudes to the physical risk in each element of each performance. (Sliding down a pole head first at lightning speed, they use their ankles as brakes, stopping inches from the ground. When they turn somersaults in mid-air, they land with their shoulders, using the force of their landing to spring to their feet.)

For Rosenberg, “you use whatever nerves you have to channel your energy”, transforming fear “into an adrenalin rush. But once you start questioning yourself – will I do it? – you lose it”.

For Genevieve Morin, who left dance school for the circus when she was 20 and who turns reading a book into an amazing acrobatic feat at the beginning of the show, you “have to make sure that you never forget that you are nervous”. Knowing that your grip could slip at any moment, she says, “helps you concentrate, makes you sure that you get it right”.

So far on this tour there have been minor injuries (Rosenberg fell from the top of a 12ft pole and landed on his shoulder), but, as Antoin Auger says, “you just keep on going through the pain”. Rosenberg chips in: “The audience respects that . . . It is just us – only five of us – on stage, no illusion.”

There is little in the way of conventional theatre narrative in Traceseither, despite the teasing nod to postmodern theatre in the details revealed about the performers' own lives. The narrative is characterised by a vague post-apocalyptic mood rather than a plot or story and, as Rosenberg explains, "it is not meant to be literal but to create a certain undertone for the show. It is not a story but an atmosphere, which gives an extra sense of urgency to our performance."

It also heightens the sheer improbability of the human body’s capabilities. Indeed, at the end of Traces, after a high-octane 80-minute romp across the rostrums and rails of the theatre structure, the performers break the theatrical frame for the audience entirely, leaping across the stage boundaries into the auditorium. They disappear into the foyer rather than backstage, as if heading outside to recolonise the street.

Tracesruns at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, from April 12 to 17