Acrobatics studio (Photo: Natasha Ali)

Vagabonds no longer own the circus. In recent decades, Latin American performers have made a concerted effort to elevate the social caste of their trade and the circus has succeeded in reinventing itself as a serious art form. Aerial silk acrobatics has emerged as one of the quintessential aesthetic elements of modern circus.

You can’t help but breathe in the subtle yet distinct air of superiority at La Instalacción. It’s the circus equivalent of a Buenos Aires’ member’s only club – no one here has just wandered in off the street. In fact, you’re more likely to do the wandering on the street, as the studio’s venue is unmarked and its address unlisted. Everyone on the inside did their homework.

If it weren’t for the trapeze, rings and jellybean-coloured cascade of silks hanging from the ceiling, La Instalacción would have the feel of a yoga studio. Mate is available in recently washed, non-disposable cups in the waiting room. Outdoor flora hugs the wall-sized windows of the workspace. The macaw-like squawking heard on the way in is almost overkill.

Classes at La Instalacción live up to the studio’s aura. Of the two-hour class, about an hour is dedicated to stretching and challenging the limitations of your muscles, with practice on your chosen skill area in between.

The classes, which range from only five to seven people, begin with an aerobic warm up and are then divided into three groups. In this instance, one man chose the trapeze, a couple worked on the floating ring and two women opted for the silks. Many stuck with the same element throughout the class, which participant Eugenia Di Fiori says helps you to improve by focusing on just one.

The instructor, Veronica Arabetti, releases one royal purple and one dandelion-coloured curtain from the ceiling’s ropes. The violet one spills onto a black cushioned mat, while its sister hangs like twin stirrups resting slightly a foot above the ground.

Acrobatics cloth dancer (Photo: Natasha Ali)

The most basic, fundamental task to learning the ropes is, quite literally, climbing them. The move is, of course, by no means as instinctive as the skilled would lead you to believe. While grasping the fabric of the silk above your head, you use one foot to coil the loose-hanging silk around it, creating a kind of step for your other foot to climb up on to. Using your arms to lift yourself about a foot higher you unravel the silks and repeat the process to climb the silk.

The beginner’s class administers just the right dose of achievement to entice a return visit. It allows you to feel a certain amount of accomplishment, while Veronica serves as a constant reminder of your inadequacies. There’s a nagging sense that even if you’ve completed a task, there was almost certainly an easier, prettier way of getting it done.

Veronica, like all great athletes, makes aerial acrobatics look easy. She knows which muscles to use to extend her energy most efficiently so that each move is deliberate, yet liquid. As she double-stags her legs and spins horizontally, her body rests within the silk’s tangles haphazardly and as if it was only an afterthought. The stiffness of gymnastics gives way to the fluidity of ballet as her slender limbs dance with the air.

Eugenia says La Instalacción’s focus on wellness and body awareness allows its premium status among Buenos Aires’ circus studios. “You learn to listen to everything that your body is telling you,” she says. “It helps you to be more conscious of your centre and equilibrium.”

“The circus used to be a low socioeconomic class,” adds Veronica. “But recently they started using the activities for gymnastics and body expression. It started to give the activity another point of view, an activity that could include everyone.”

Just be sure to call in advance.

A splash of water in the dark establishes the first primitive connection, starting the energy flowing through spectators’ spines like electricity.

Photo: Lillo Montalto Monella

Staged at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Pinchón Baldinu’s ‘Hombre Vertiente’ is not just one of the best water shows ever produced, it is a highly enigmatic and captivating journey into the human mind, metaphorically presented to an astonished audience through the performance of tribal acrobatics and the pumping beat of electronic music.

Borne from the imagination of Argentine director Pinchón Baldinu, the show comes from one of the most internationally acclaimed choreographers the country has seen. Baldinu’s 1995 hit Villa Villa was seen by more than three million people around the world and, in 2004, he was summoned by Disney’s studio to become an artistic director of Tarzan’s in-air choreographies.

A few months earlier he had founded the Ojala Theatre Company in Argentina, and it was through this company that he first presented ‘Hombre Vertiente’ at the 2008 Zaragoza Expo.

In the beginning, the show was simply an acrobatic display themed around water, but its success was so enormous that, despite a relatively short run-time of only 20 minutes, more than a million people queued to see the spectacle in the 93 consecutive days of showings that followed. Yet, Baldinu knew that more could be done and that the show had enormous potential. By the time the show debuted in Buenos Aires’ theatres in 2011, it had developed into a mature and well-rounded work of art.

“I thought we had to abandon the theme of water and focus on the story of a particular man […] by showing us his existence, with all its contradictions, its ghosts, its demons and accomplishments,” Baldinu told press before the play’s debut last September.

One man, one goal, one mission.

Soaked in the dark, wondering exactly what is about to take place in the high-ceilinged theatre hall, we are told that we are about to witness the story of the Aguador(the Waterman, performed by Leo Kreimer) – “but the name is not important,” the voiceover states, imposingly.

Sebastian Prada, 27, Hombre Vertiente actor (Photo: Lillo Montalto Monella)

‘Hombre Vertiente’ is the tale of a character who struggles to discover himself and travels through the amazing worlds created by his own mind, in which each performance of mid-air acrobatics reflects the devious twists of his tormented mind.

The show does not become a speculative guesswork surrounding the miserable condition of the human soul, though. Words stop right after the curtain falls, and from that moment on it remains the job of the music and the gymnastic bodies to do all the talking.

Throughout five different metaphorical sets, the Aguadorfights in mid-air with the beastly creations haunting his imagination. In one highly spectacular scene, he confronts his own alter egos where, in a 7-minute-long battle, performers explode 18,000 liters of water while flying around the stage. In another he travels through the three-dimensional desert of his soul, eventually becoming absorbed by it and finally, assists the struggle of female acrobats trapped in the gigantic silky convolutions of his brain.

The end of the show, which finishes with a great deal of dancing and the appearance of an enormous inflatable dragon, leaves the audience captivated by the primitive energy of the performance.

Photo: Lillo Montalto Monella

Watching the soaked audience swaying and screaming with enthusiasm makes you think that the fourth wall has probably never been that broken in a theatre show before. The aboriginal beat of Gaby Kerpel’s electronic soundtrack fuses the mood of the crowd with the show, working as amplifier for those basic feelings like euphoria, tranquility, hope and fear felt by the Aguador along his journey.

A surge of disappointment sweeps the audience when the lights turn on after only one hour and the tribal connection breaks up at the highest point of the emotional climax. But the sudden cut to the celebrations is understandable. “The show is highly demanding in terms of physical energy,” explains Leo Kreimer, the 40 year old star of the show. “We can’t physically last for more than one hour, we have to push our bodies to their limits.

“This show has a different characteristics from any other show,” he continues. “The storyline wants to show people something, yet it’s not really clear what this something is. We want to keep it this way, so every one who sees it can make up his own narrative, looking for himself into all of the metaphorical scenarios we present in the show.”

Given the success ‘Hombre Vertiente’ has encountered so far, the production company have confirmed that the show will continue to be staged at the same venue, Centro Cultural Recoleta, until next June.

Photo by Beatrice Murch

Interested in tango, and want to see a show that is a little more intense? Interested in circus, and want to see it done Buenos Aires style? Then ‘Nocturna’, a fusion of tango and circus performed at Centro Cultural Recoleta, is for you.

The show is directed by Gustavo ‘Mono’ Silva, who initially trained as an actor but has now been working in the circus for over 20 years. In 2006 he first put on a show that combined tango and circus, calling it ‘Primer Vuelo’. The name was appropriate, as Mono describes it as a sort of test flight, which he used to feel out whether the combination between the two art forms would really work. It did. The show was a hit, and Mono went ahead with the more ambitious, and more heavily tango-influenced ‘Nocturna’. The project has now been running for three years, with continuing success.

The fusion of tango and circus is certainly powerful. Mono states that, whether or not it is your favourite type of music, “tango resonates in Buenos Aires” and this is the reason that the show works so well. He also tells me that the concept of ‘Nocturna’ was partly inspired by China and Russia, as both of these countries use their national music for circus performances, and it seems logical to him to do the same thing in Argentina. Seen in this context, he tells me that he views this acrobatic performance with an Argentine twist as a “little contribution to the different types of circus around the world”.

Photos by Beatrice Murch

However, even though the tango in ‘Nocturna’ taps into an Argentine tradition, the music itself is anything but traditional. Rather than classic melodies by the likes of Carlos Gardel, the show features tango nuevo – fast-paced electronic tango with strong beats. While the sounds may seem unconventional, they work well with the performance, which is also extremely modern and dynamic. ‘Nocturna’ plays with tango traditions rather than just mimicking them and the electronic music does exactly the same. Moreover, although there are mellower moments, it is often the sheer pace of the tango nuevo that really keeps the performers on their toes.

In fact, staying on their toes is only the beginning. The show begins with all fourteen acrobats gathered on a central flat stage, surrounded by tables and chairs, and with the floor painted to give the idea of a conventional milonga. They begin to dance, but the tango becomes steadily more acrobatic, and the chairs and tables are used as props in gymnastic routines. The show is then separated into twelve narrative sections, with the acrobats performing sequences on the trapeze, the springboard, the tightrope and with hoops. One of the most impressive parts takes place with a double trapeze, as performers fly from one end to the other, catching each other and twisting up and down in ways that you would not imagine were humanly possible.

Each of the 12 sections has a narrative quality, which gives ‘Nocturna’ a theatrical flavour. When the show begins, one of the performers opens book and a voiceover begins to narrate a fairytale. This storybook quality then continues throughout the show, enhanced by dramatic music and lighting. The little narratives have different themes; some are about love and longing, others feature more comedy. Mono tells me that part of the idea behind these narratives is to prevent the show from becoming too abstract. He does not want to use circus to express obscure ideas about art, but instead to keep it extremely concrete and accessible to the audience. Overall, he has a reassuringly practical attitude towards performance, dismissing the idea of “circus romanticism” and saying that the troop is, first and foremost, “a professional team that works well together”.

Mono’s troop performs on the terrace of Centro Cultural Recoleta, with the audience sitting on wooden bleachers and watching the performance from above. Although the fact that ‘Nocturna’ takes place in the open air can make scheduling unpredictable (shows are cancelled when there is bad weather) it also lends it a livelier atmosphere, a little like a street performance. The terrace overlooks Plaza Francia, and the experience of watching the show surrounded by trees and sitting under the stars is truly stunning.

For anyone interested in tango, circus or simply in great performance, ‘Nocturna’ is a must see.

‘Nocturna’ is performed in Centro Cultural Recoleta (Junín 1930) from Thursday to Sunday at 9pm and is scheduled to run until the end of April. On Thursday tickets are priced at $5 for children, $20 for adults. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday regular entrance costs $35. For more information call 011 4803 1040 or visit the website: centroculturalrecoleta.org or buy tickets straight from Ticketek.

To hear some of the music featured in the show, see the following links: www.gotanproject.com (Gotan Project) www.myspace.com/bajofondomardulce (Bajofondo), www.otrosaires.com (Otros Aires)