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Archive for March 16, 2008

Seven Fingers: Traces

After two years, the Seven Fingers circus company returned to Wellington, New Zealand, as part of the Wellington International Festival of the Arts.

Mar 16, 2008 by


Film Hanger

Paper Hanger Blog
Wellington
New Zealand

It was amazing. This seems to be the direction of modern circus: amazing moves woven into dance, the latter all fitting loosely into a theme with appropriate music. These guys danced, sang, played the piano, and did some great acrobats and juggling.

There was a very nice tribute to Fred Astaire – involving skateboards instead of walking canes!

The juggling was low key no showers of 7-9 objects in the air. Instead as people danced about the stage, the chair of basket ball was constantly in motion – just as the ball or chair or person was about to fall to the ground, someone would step up and catch them.

It looked like they could all play the piano and did a solo piece accompanying what every was going on behind them. One of them even sang to the audience, accompanying himself on the guitar!!

The Chinese nolonger have a monoploy on pole aerials. The ‘Fingers’ did some petty amazing stuff. My pick was the vertical back flick from the pole then back to the pole, and the lady who falls from the top to be caught by her companions – amazing body control and trust!

The acrobats was spectacular. My pick was the standing back tucked somersault, from a position of standing on top of someones raised hands back to the same raised hands! There was also a nice slow semi-comic stretch and flexibility solo – by the same woman who fell from the pole.

These guys are worth seeing – everytime.

The only question is: where were the other two fingers ? there were only five performers!

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They were so popular, that they opened the ‘Gods’ – the Gallery – in the Opera House. They had to: my session was near full to capacity – well over 1000 people.