Pushing the boundaries of strength and endurance as well as guts and daring, the athletic acrobatic Circa group brought quite an astonishing show to the Lobero last week with their performance of Humans 2.0. Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, this contemporary dance and modern circus group from Brisbane, Australia could easily be the next breed of superheroes. Their feats of strength and impressive choreography and coordination are breathtaking. I spent much of the evening on the edge of my seat as their formations and incredibly high pyramid towers and drops got progressively more daring and audacious throughout the performance.
Ten performers began the show in punctuated plank positions with a flash of light. As the primal beat of the musical score by Ori Lichtik pulsed throughout the night, these acrobats bent their bodies in a variety of formations and moved, leapt, swept, and rolled themselves into a variety of shapes and forms.
How tall can they go? Three people high is apparently the answer to that question. It’s not just watching them leap up there almost to the rafters of the theater, but watching them tumbling downward was equally impressive.
Seeing them perform a series of bouncy lifts and seemingly wild but technically controlled swings, then jump on each other’s backs like stepping stones before seemingly stretching themselves into human rubber bands kept my stomach muscles clenched with excited tension throughout the 70-minute performance. Their timing was impeccable, not only the lifts and the leaps, but every time the death-defying tricks got to be almost too much, they morphed quickly into childlike tumbling and silly dancing before segueing into a playful series of somersaults onto each other’s backs. That carefully choreographed tension and release makes all the difference in bringing the show up to a high level of artistry to match the technical skill.
Created and directed by Yaron Lifschitz, the work is presented as a sequel to the company’s 2017 show Humans, and the title accurately gestures towards the superhuman capabilities of the cast. A mesmerizingly entertaining evening exploring the physical limits of what the human body is capable of, Humans 2.0 truly is the next level of circus style entertainment.
