Cirque Noel Graz:

Life is a very big production

Artists from the Australian company Gravity & Other Myths on stage at the Orpheum.(Bild: Cirque Noel Graz/Nikola Milatovic)

Year after year, Cirque Noël is the cultural highlight of the Christmas season in Graz: this year, the Australian company Gravity & Other Myths will be performing "The Mirror". With this fantastic play, the troupe holds up a mirror to the audience.

It's all one big production. What has been true of the circus for centuries has been true of all of our lives since the advent of social media. But what does the art of entertainment still have to offer us in these times of omnipresent self-presentation? The Australian company Gravity & Other Myths explores this question in "The Mirror".

They do this by holding up the eponymous mirror to the audience in the form of an LED screen, which is positioned centrally on the stage and cleverly played around. Equipped with cell phone cameras and selfie sticks, the acrobats not only conquer the auditorium, but also broadcast some of their performances live on the screen.

Vignettes of self-dramatization
These are acrobatic snapshots that the troupe reels off in front of the audience at breakneck speed - as if you were swiping through the Instagram reels of the acrobats and their characters. The sound backdrop that musician Ekrem Eli Phoenix conjures up live on stage is more than fitting: like a living radio in constant search of a station, he performs his way through the hits of pop history - and at the same time acts as a commentator on the action with his pop quotes.

Every trick, every feat, every short scene becomes a vignette of self-dramatization. And because acrobats have impressive bodies, they sometimes wear little more than skimpy lingerie - always with a wink, of course.

With lots of humor, a smart stage show and incredibly creative acrobatics, the performers (Lewis Rankin, Emily Gare, Maya Tregonning, Hamish McCourty, Sandy Tugwood, Leann Gingras, Ashley Youren and Nadav Sadlik) surf through this world of self-reflection - until they finally break through the screen and become mirrors themselves.

The show "The Mirror" can be seen at the Orpheum in Graz until December 29. From January 3 to 6, Gravity & Other Myths will then present another production there, "10,000 Hours".