This is a beautiful show, meditative, engaging, poetic and suprising. Go and see it.

The show begins with a woman in white, contorted into a small  perspex box, frantically scribbling on the glass. The music is a lyrical solo piano and there is such a sense of gentle and graceful  invitation set against the extremity of the contortion and the image it creates which continues through out the show.

Temporal Aria is a contemplative piece, with a simple unhurried pace, beautifully lit and performed. It is accompanied by cello and piano scores and Maisey creates a series of evocative images using her aerial and groundbased movement vocabulary. The skills are never presented for applause and there is none throughout the show,  they are used in service of the images and ideas-a poetic exploration,  art form practice at its best.

The classic Hair Hang is another example of Maisey subverting the norm…it is generally performed in traditional or cabaret circus to feelings of horrow and wonder at the feat of strength and bravery. Maisey subverts this trope with an extraordinary piece of grace and beauty presenting images of balance and counterbalance, strength and vulnerability with such grace. There is always a  sense of the audience being invited gently into this liminal space.

The same magic is woven with white fabric which is lifted to create an abstract landscape of peaks , shadows are enlarged and the audience are encouraged onstage  to hold lights to a sculptural, image- rich tissue/silks act. 

“Nicole Maisey is a multidisciplinary performer who has worked across a variety of disciplines including circus, cabaret and dance. Originally trained as a show pony she enjoys” breaking the mould”.  Temporal Aria does exactly that –  its  counterbalance of  gut wrenching skills and gentle, effortless grace create haunting and magical abstract images which resonate long after the applause has died.

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