Arctic Ensemble: Ensembled

Circus Ruska Festival <3 Arctic Ensemble

ENSEMBLED is the first performance in the group’s own tent. The work is an acrobatic and collaborative circus experience in which 9 acrobats and a jazz drummer transform a traditional circus tent into a contemporary circus playground.

The contrasts between the grit and glitter of circus life are present in the performance. In a participatory game show, the audience tries to knock down a young dancer using leaf blowers and throwing wool socks. On the other side of the scale, a terminally exhausted performer is dragged across a dusty stage in an almost funereal atmosphere.

The piece culminates in a seamless collaboration between the whole collective, with the performers flying wildly through the airspace of the tent. The collective’s speciality, the Korean double cradle, is unique even on a worldwide scale.

ENSEMBLED strives for a sense of community that seeps beyond the boundaries of the working group and makes the work more than just a performance. Ensembled is about the fragility and brutality of human life: how one’s own life can hang by a thread and trust in another is the only thing holding it together.