Circus of life

Sophie Winch on this year’s season of acrobatic performances at Jacksons Lane in Highgate

An acrobat hanging from a rope surrounded by other acrobats — By A Thread at Jacksons Lane – (Credit – Asha Foulkes/Jacksons Lane)

Silence in the theatre: the stage is bare, save for two pulleys and a square of light illuminating a spool of rope. A contemplative piano instrumental fills the auditorium, and we are left watching the rope, as people appear around it – silent, expressionless, clad in white and grey. A whoop; the eerie monochrome is broken by warm light, and the spectacle begins.

One Fell Swoop, an Australian aerial circus company, are performing their show By A Thread at Jacksons Lane in Highgate, to mark the beginning of the theatre’s circus season.

For Angus MacKechnie, creative director of Jacksons Lane, By A Thread is about “support and trust”. “That’s what I see,” he tells us, in his season launch speech, “but you’ll all see something different”. The performers are almost entirely wordless; the piece is not pinned down by an explicit intention. Support and trust do feel prevalent, though.

The show is almost entirely done on a single rope, pulled taut by people on the ground as others are suspended in the air. The stunts are nearly all unachievable alone; though your eye is often drawn to the people on the rope, you are constantly reminded of those below them.

Connection is central to the show. It seems to showcase the full spectrum of it: from friendship to love to animosity to networks of support. The double-edged nature of human contact becomes apparent: performers are enabled to swing alone by others, or pull back against their prisons of ever-tightening ropes.

Physically, we see a range of connection too; from full-body embraces to holding hands, from feet on shoulders to fleeting eye contact. What makes One Fell Swoop so brilliant is not only their deftly breath-snatching acrobatics, but also the reasons for them.

There’s a thrum of emotion under each scene, which seems to govern each movement; lingering glances and moments of stillness work seamlessly in tandem with the stunts. Each drop and climb seemed to illustrate some universal emotional truth: a loss of stability, the buoyant euphoria of new romance, a leap of faith.

By A Thread is the first in a series of events being put on as part of Jacksons Lane’s annual circus season. It’s been in the works for nine months; “this is my child,” MacKechnie jokes.

One of the key differences between these performances and traditional circus is in how the performers are presented, he tells us. In traditional circus, performers are uniformed and indistinguishable; there is a push now towards “seeing individuals” onstage. This is clearly apparent with One Fell Swoop; each performer is given the limelight in equal measure.

Jacksons Lane continues its circus season with a range of performances this autumn and winter; among them are Unboxed (an angry acro-dance duet using sign language), How A Spiral Works (contemplative hair-hanging), and Space Hippo (the end of the world as seen by a hippo, communicated through Japanese shadow puppetry).

The season also includes older-people-friendly sessions (Circus Skills for Mind and Body) and children’s workshops (Jacksons Juniors) – as MacKechnie says, Jacksons Lane treats circus “as a cradle to grave endeavour”.

Tickets for Jacksons Lane performances are available here: https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/whats-on/all-performances/

And courses to book are available here: https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/whats-on/classes-courses/

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