Chasing Smoke

Born out of Circus Oz’s BLAKflip, a program that nurtures and actively increases the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander circus artists on stages in Australia and across the globe, Chasing Smoke is Australia’s first all-First Nations contemporary circus show. And as Samoan-Australian director Natano Fa’anana writes, this fact is “… both a travesty and a celebration. The travesty being that it’s taken so long. The celebration – we finally have one. The promise – there will be more to come.” And if the spontaneous standing ovation from tonight’s capacity opening night audience is any indication, then this young company’s future on Australian, and I predict, international stages, is assured.

Exploring the minefield of identity through performance can be a fraught undertaking. In this new age of narcissism-fuelled pop-media, everyone’s a celebrity. We all matter. Why we should pay attention in our theatres today has become something like I imagine it was for ancient Greeks. Theatre, today, has a critical and timely new potency – the immediacy of its impact, and the freedom of access to it as an art form that ensures that even the angriest and most impatient young voices can be heard. In a world where moral compasses have been rendered redundant, experiences in our theatres have become a moral imperative. Combine this with stories from the world’s oldest living culture, told by ambitious, gifted, passionate young descendants of ancient dreamtime stories, re-imagined for our time through circus and comedy, and you have an unforgettable night at the theatre.

Mr Fa’anana and his exceptional ensemble waste no time in smashing through stereotype and expectation. White Australia is demolished, leaving its legacy of a hapless, hopeless cruelty laid bare in the stunning songlines that appear on the stage, in sand poured from coolamons, for a devastating conclusion. In this work, though, there is no blame. There is no guilt. Nothing about this work is second-hand. There is, in its place, a considered, respectful understanding and appreciation that we yearn to belong, together, now. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Now. It is this urgency, and complicity of an unsaid vision and hope for unity, that powers this performance.

The highlights are many, and every moment of Chasing Smoke is a precious gift that evaporates as quickly as it materialises. As the women launch the men onto their shoulders and into the air, all of our assumptions of gender, strength and ability are demolished. These are fleeting moments of grace, muscular agility and skill that are distinctively of our time. There is Mr Singh’s aerial trapeze, where his hands are bound by rope, restricting not only his personal freedom, but his expansive use of the apparatus.  It is a perfectly flawed performance, and what he achieves with his wrists bound, is incredible.

But nothing will prepare you Mr Mann’s performance on the aerial Corde Lisse. I have seen this treacherous apparatus used on many occasions. But on this occasion, rising above the sandy songlines created on the stage, the juxtaposition between the rope of slavery and the rope of freedom and exhilaration was complete.

Whatever you need to do to get a ticket, do it.

Geoffrey Williams