"… a revolution in the spectacle of circus."
"Extraordinary, brilliant, great (genius). All of these words will be heard to describe the show Opus by the Australian company Circa. For once, itʼs all true."
Opus
Yaron Lifschitz with the Circa ensemble and Debussy Quartet
Circus
Opus is a work of stunning power, virtuosity and poetry.
Fourteen acrobats and a string quartet celebrate the music of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich’s quartets are by turns intimate, passionate, lyrical, ironic and deeply moving personal testimonies by one of the 20th Century’s greatest composers. In Opus, three of his quartets form the musical and dramatic spine of a red-hot fusion of extreme acrobatics, lyrical movement and group choreography.
Opus begins from a solo performer suspended on a rope serenaded by musicians, then moves through rapidly alternating scenes of dislocated stillness and violent explosions into geometries of acrobats intersected by extreme physicality to arrive at exquisitely detailed and nuanced choreographies of acrobats flying, balancing and landing. Opus explores the complex relationships between the individual and the group, between the march of history and the dictates of the heart and between the tragic and the comic. This is groundbreaking work of intense power. A melding of music and bodies at the highest level.
Director Yaron Lifschitz
Technical Director/Lighting Designer Jason Organ
Costume Design Libby McDonnell
Set Design Yaron Lifschitz and Jason Organ
Debussy Sound Engineer Christophe Germanique
A Nuits de Fourvière production/ Département du Rhône, coproduced with Les Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg, GREC Festival of Barcelona, Le Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf, Dusseldorf Festival, Barbican Theatre, CACCV Espace Jean Legendre-Compiegne.
Circa acknowledges the assistance of the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. Quatuor Debussy acknowledge the support of the French Ministry of Arts, Région Rhône-Alpes, City of Lyon and SPEDIDAM