News / / 12.06.13

No Fit State presents Bianco

Creative Common, Bristol |  June 8th

Time was when going to the circus meant a mangy lion, a bearded lady and a clown whose breath smelled of meths. But over the last few decades, things done change in the big top – and at the forefront of the shift from sub-standard cabaret to super-styled performance has been Cardiff company No Fit State.

With a week’s run in the Creative Common space in Bristol, and the spaceship dome that has become something of a trademark, No Fit State presented Bianco: a raucous but poignant performance that is a stylistic and choreographic triumph. One of the essential components of a No Fit State show is the live band, whose soundtrack veered from clattering tribal tension to gentle, melancholy dreaminess. And what a show to accompany – the first act offered a striptease on a tightrope as well as a display of muscular precision from a man attached with one arm to a rope who may as well have been dancing in the air. The second act opened with a bonkers display of seaside trampolining and ended with a shower of snow cascading over a silhouetted aerial acrobat slowly spinning her way into oblivion. Because the structures of the show are built, dismantled and then rebuilt in amongst the audience, with no fixed line between the performers and the crowd, even the scene changes become part of the act – a kaleidoscope of colours, sounds, ropes and costume changes. There are other circuses that go for the middle ground between edgy performance art and traditional circus fare. But on tonight’s evidence, No Fit State are the ones to beat.

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www.nofitstate.org/

Words: Adam Corner

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