Air Play

Air Play is the result of a years-long collaboration between Daniel Wurtzel — who, with many different creations continuing around the globe, is a gifted air sculptor — and Acrobuffos, comprising the husband-and-wife circus duo Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone.  A virtually wordless entrancement, it’s an ever-changing creation; as Gelsone describes it, it can be affected by an opening door, by the heated air rising from the audience, and even, mid performance, by a rain shower beginning outside the performance venue.

What makes the performance so susceptible to the vagaries of the air is its use of air currents and very lightweight materials to set things in flying motion ranging from balloons to umbrellas.  This may sound, before the event, like a fairly ordinary day in a breezy park; but the dance of objects in the air turns out to be transcendent in its poignancy and playfulness, and the Acrobuffos performers enhance those emotions with a simple but touchingly understated clown act.

For all its inherent unpredictability, Air Play is no experimental work.  In its fourth Australian season, having played on five continents, the performance lives and breathes through the ability of its performers to respond to events on stage and to its audience.  What a surprise it can be for a large audience to share these wonders as filmy fabrics duet on stage and overhead and umbrellas rise and sink around our joyful clowns amid a storm of stardust.

John P. Harvey

Photographer: John P. Harvey.