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Finsbury Park, London
Coming to Zippos Circus after years of seeing aerial dance and other tricks performed on a theatre stage feels a shock. Modern circus companies, and the directors who incorporate circus in their plays and operas, seek to absorb traditional skills into a wider narrative, in which each feat can function as a metaphor for human fear, confusion, resourcefulness or courage. At Zippos, what you get are just the tricks, in an old-fashioned sawdust circle. Many of them performed by women whose outfits are either see-through, skintight or skimpy. You search for allegorical resonance, let alone 21st-century values, in vain.
This would matter less if every act in Horsepower were polished and zinging with life. But the knockabout clowning feels tired and cliched; the aerial ballet is pretty but insubstantial; the "equestrian tango", in which a horse stamps its foot while a couple dance conventionally, is lacklustre. Yasmine Smart's four palomino horses are staggeringly beautiful, but their prancing and twirling quickly palls.
And yet, there comes a point where it is possible to appreciate Zippos on its own terms. Kimberly Smith's grace and physical strength on the trapeze alone embody the romance of the travelling circus. Watching Norman Barrett encourage his team of cheeky budgies to drive a toy car, or witnessing Germaine Delbosq lying on her back on a (stationary) motorbike, flipping a metal tube with one foot, spinning a plastic ring with the other, while juggling three balls with her hands, it's impossible not to marvel at these people's dedication to the preposterous, the pointless, the deliciously surreal. And when Zippos rolls out a Globe of Death, a small metal cage in which three daredevils zoom on motorbikes at terrifying speed, you feel like an awestruck child.
