Spiegelworld's Empire has landed in Auckland and it's an amazing show I thoroughly recommend.
It's a spectacular and sexy circus-meets-cabaret show featuring supremely talented performers, hilarious comedy and some great live music to boot.
The final piece - a balancing act which had the performer creating a sculpted artwork with sticks and a feather - is one of the most impressive bits of live performance I've ever seen. It was a mind-blowing, slow-burn finale by Turkey-born Canadian performer Memet Bilgin Rigolo and I still can't quite believe what I saw.
Preceding it was a highly entertaining vaudeville series of acts, many of which would give Cirque du Soleil a run for its money, only with a much more modest stage setup.
There's a burlesque-inspired female contortionist routine in an elevated Perspex bubble, an intense roller-skating couple act, an acrobatic balancing trio and a hugely impressive ring/giant hamster wheel performance, among others.
Hosts Anne Goldmann and Jonathan Taylor deliver most of the show's laughs. Loud and lascivious, the couple are in-your-face but in a good-natured way that makes the experience feel like a party.
It's quite a racy show, with nudity, swearing and moments of crowd interaction that require courage and a strong stomach from those participating.
A gentleman named Ross was picked from the audience for possibly the least appealing lap dance in history, and later performers and punters spat bits of banana into each other's mouths. It was bizarrely refreshing to have such low-brow gross-out humour mixed into a show with such world class acrobatic performers.
This New York troupe are very proud of where they're from and the whole show yells "NEW YORK!" with a kind of punk attitude that I dug, too.
Empire is running in Auckland until February 15 at Wynyard Quarter and I'm very eager to go again, especially for that final act.
3 News
source: newshub archive
