The 85 minute performance of The Goblin Market by New Zealand’s circus/theatre The Dust Palace the Cultch's York Theatre last night overpowered me with so many images and associations (from my memory) that I was unable to clap after every extraordinary act of trapeze, aerial hoop and aerial silk. There was  even one event using multiple chairs balanced at impossible angles that left me wondering what these three, Rochelle Mangan, Eve Gordon and Edward Clendon River would do next.

Mixed in were projections of nighttime freeway scenes and bits of lines from the poem The Goblin Market by the English Poet Christina Rossetti (1830 – 29 December 1894). Rossetti was known as a poet for children but this particularly long poem involving fruits and the love between two sisters has many saying it is an erotic poem not proper for children.

I would not argue this at all but I would assert that in The Dust Palace’s version of the poem seen in two acts (one involving Rochelle Mangan and Edward Clendon River (a younger and more handsome version of Daniel Day-Lewis) on the trapeze and that of Rochelle Mangan and Eve Gordon on the aerial hoop was for me as erotic as Argentine Tango can be. While I am an Argentine who dances, so-so, of the Argentine Tango I know enough when I see the real thing.

The lighting by Technical Director Michael Craven particularly in Edwad Clendon River's aerial silk work brought to me the image of Salvador Dalí's Christ of St. John of the Cross. This lighting was in contrast with Craven's comment to me, "At first I did not know how to light this."

But those two stupendous performances of Eros in the air (Bianca Beebe, the rigger was an unseen star who made sure nothing slipped or fell) to me were nothing in comparison to Eve Gordon reading bits of a Lydia Lunch's poem while Rochelle Mangan, up front on the stage, standing on her hands moved her legs and feet with an eloquence that defied logic. This was, achingly, the best. Mangan talked with her feet.

It brought from the memory of my youth in Mexico City of the comedian José Antonio Hipólito Espino Mora, Clavillazo, who was known as “the man who talks with his hands”.

The  Goblin Market does have a political message which with the recent death of Playboy Magazine publisher Hugh Heffner is quite up to date on how men prey on women.

After the show I was escorted by the three performers to their dressing room for our photograph. I asked the women why they were wearing the sheer body stockings. It seems that the stockings prevent skin from sticking to trapeze and hoop.

Director  Mike Edward & Eve Gordon

The three almost believed me when I told them there was a New Zealand version of Genesis that involved the mandarin orange and not an apple. The mandarin orange played a central role in Tuesday’s performance. But it seems that the fruit used depends on the season and the location of the show. Who knows what other fruits will crop up in the next performances until the last on October 14 (all at 8pm).

In my photograph below you can see a masked Edward Clendon River holding a cantaloupe. A pair in the audience behind me spoke of the bounty of New Zealand fruits (Clandon brought out an avocado and a banana). They did not seem to understand that the fruit in question represented the nether parts of humans! I told Clendon that in Cuba the papaya is an unmentionable fruit name and that the preferred name is “fruta bomba.”

Edward Clendon River

A trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes or metal straps from a support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances. Trapeze acts may be static, spinning (rigged from a single point), swinging or flying, and may be performed solo, double, triple or as a group act. It is officially the last performance of the circus.

The art of trapeze performance was developed by Jules Léotard, a young French acrobat and aerialist, in Toulouse in the mid-1800s. He invented the flying trapeze, practising over his father's swimming pool

Wikipedia

It would be extremely difficult for me to describe plainly to anybody asking me what I saw at the Cultch last night Tuesday, October 3 at the York Theatre. If I answered, “The Goblin Market by a New Zealand theatrical/circus group The Dust Palace,” that would not help.

The aerial hoop (also known as the lyra, aerial ring or cerceau/cerceaux) is a circular steel apparatus (resembling a hula hoop) suspended from the ceiling, on which circus artists may perform aerial acrobatics. It can be used static, spinning, or swinging.Tabs are the connection points where the aerial hoop attaches to the rigging. Most aerial hoops connect at either one point (single tab configuration) or two points (double tab configuration). The number of tabs an aerial hoop has will depend on how it will be used, the intended effect, and the performer's comfort level. - Double tab hoops hung from two points (at equal or wider spacing as the tabs on the hoop) will swing like a trapeze (or a child's swing) and do not spin.- Double tab hoops connected to a single aerial point, the hoop can spin and swing in a multi axis plane i.e. a pendulum swing or a circular flight pattern.- All double tab hoops have the ability to hinge from the tab points when the artist hangs from the top portion of the hoop making this style the very different in acrobatic capacity than a single tab hoop.- Single tabs hung from a single point can spin, and swing along more than one axis i.e. a pendulum swing or a circular flight pattern. Aerial hoops can be hollow or solid. Lighter hoops will spin more easily; once a solid hoop gets momentum, it will stay spinning for much longer. Sometimes aerial hoops have crossbars or hand or foot loops to aid the performer.

Wikipedia

Aerial silks (also known as aerial contortion, aerial ribbons, aerial silks, aerial tissues, fabric, ribbon, or tissu, depending on personal preference)  is a type of performance in which one or more artists perform aerial acrobatics while hanging from a fabric. The fabric may be hung as two pieces, or a single piece, folded to may a loop, classified as hammock silks. Performers climb the suspended fabric without the use of safety lines, and rely only on their training and skill to ensure safety. They use the fabric to wrap, suspend, fall, swing, and spiral their bodies into and out of various positions. Aerial silks may be used to fly through the air, striking poses and figures while flying. Some performers use dried or spray rosin on their hands and feet to increase the friction and grip on the fabric.
Wikipedia

Addendum: The Cultch’s Executive Director, Heather Redfern, looked smashing in a tight white dress. I enquired. She told me, “I bought this dress 25 years ago at Le Chateau.”

Perhaps in her spare time Ms Redfern is a master of the trapeze or the aerial hoop.

Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Goblin Market - The Poem

Script Treatment that includes the music heard during the performance: