There are predictably lots of kids in the audience to see Freedom2Fly’s award-winning The Balancing Act at Te Auaha’s Tapere Nui. The woman next to me has brought hers. She’s brought her husband too. Marriage – now there’s a balancing act if ever there was one. 

The onstage balancing is going to be the physical kind though. It’s billed as a circus act and I spot promising objects such as a hoop, a dangling tasselled rope and a couple of batons. 

In the dark is a still female figure: mannequin like. Enter a cleaner. He’s in blue overalls and brandishing a broom.  He moves the hoop, shifts the rope and finds himself balancing the broomstick. Then he encounters the mannequin and they begin a slow, balletically athletic balancing act in which each takes turn to bear the weight. There is vaguely erotic suggestiveness which adds to the charm. 

Each does some solo work. The most memorable is his turn with three juggling batons – their colours forming dazzling patterns in the dark. There’s appropriately tension-evoking music throughout and some inventive costume changes that reflect the pair’s changing roles. 

Balance, I’m thinking, requires some important elements: strength, judgment and daring. Also flexibility and trust. We get all this in an act without words. In Freedom2Fly’s circus performance, are we witnessing a lesson about how to live our lives in greater harmony?   

A circus act – yes. And would you like metaphor with that?

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