YOAH
YOAH is the returning work from contemporary Japanese circus company Cirquework, back at the Adelaide Fringe after an award-winning season in 2024. It’s a big-top production with amazing visual effects, a thumping soundtrack, and impressive physical acts from the five-strong team.
The narrative of a woman chased by darkness and looking for hope in the moon runs through much of the show, though for the most part, it’s a loose connection between the circus acts.
Tsumugi Masui moves beautifully through gymnastic floor routines but more incredibly with her aerial silk performances that bookend the show. These more elegant routines are counterbalanced with the speed and agility of the dual / duelling diabolos from Yusaku Mochizuki and Tomohiro Morita. Their rapidly spinning tops are illuminated from within, which adds significantly to the light show when they’re balanced, thrown and recaptured by strings moved with considerable talent by this pair. Morita also provides some light relief as he juggles countless balls, launching them from all over his body.
Along with Yuya Taktori and Kyle Fowler, the four take the parts of masked Japanese warriors who seem to be hunting Masui, before their diabolos become goblets to share a drink. Takatori amazes by striking remarkable poses atop many levels of balanced chairs, and Fowler is a star on the ‘cloud-swing’, which oscillates high, high above the crowd whilst he sits and hangs and twists his body around the rope.
These high-tension acts are accompanied by bold visuals projected to a screen behind them, vast moving lines and particles that are expertly timed to match the movements of the acrobats and jugglers.
It’s all very precise and expertly delivered, though aside from the narrative propelled through Masui’s presence, it’s a little soulless. It doesn’t engage emotionally as much as anticipated, and its story is stretched to fill the hour. However, the acts remain an incredibly impressive spectacle for the whole family.
Review by Mark Wickett
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