Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Limbo: A Sonata for Acrobatic Violinist
Chloe Charody Creations
Genre: Acrobatics, Music
Venue: C-Venues
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Acrobat Josh Frazer pairs with acrobat/ musician Sonja Schebeck in a dynamic partnering that embraces circus, unicycle and cyr wheel as well as classical music. This is a groundbreaking combination of acrobatics and a violin and piano sonata composed by Chloe Charody. There is a slight confusion about underlying story, but the spectacle makes for an enjoyable and unique evening.
Review
In an entirely unique pairing Sonja plays for almost 45 minutes while being lifted, spun, tilted upside-down and sideways by her equally talented (but silent) partner. What appears at the start as a provocative male/female relationship becomes a tour-de-force of partnering acrobatics, where one of them also musically accompanies the performance. The male acrobat masterfully bends, twists and lifts himself around and over the very concentrated violinist and in a moment of seeming impossibility, scoops her onto his shoulders while she continues to impassively play. And that is only the beginning. In an escalating provocation he lifts her by feet, elbows, a hand into her mouth!?, and then jumps in the air and with a flying kick to her chest, lays her flat on the ground. She continues to play. He leaves. She slowly sits up, and without missing a beat (literally) continues playing music with great emotional longing and eloquence; a sonic expression of longing and pain.
And he returns. I do not have the circus vocabulary to explain the build of partnering moves- I can only say that there were impossible pairings on unicycle, on a hoop. In feats of strength, and agility she was balanced (while continuing to play violin) on his back, his chest, his head, while standing on his shoulders, or rolled onto a wheel. The music ranged from a dissonant expression of anger, to plucked strings of frustration or gentle bowed lyricism all seeming in response to the male acrobat.
While admiring the unique and skillful pairing, I missed a clear emotional direction. What seemed a complex male/female struggle, was meant to reflect contemporary Australian political refugee politics. But I only learned this reading the program notes after the show. The underlying metaphor for the performance had to do with the Melbourne Park Hotel in 2021, a time and place where many refugees were detained indefinitely, some having been incarcerated by the Australian government for up to 9 years. The composer clearly laid out the movements of the sonata to reflect seven different states of mind of a person whose life is in “limbo”. I wish the context had been more clear as I was watching the piece, as the poignance of the refugee’s situation would have given deeper significance to the acrobatic struggle. The fact that one of the acrobats was also a consummate violin player and that the entire duet was based around her continuing to play while performing movement, overshadowed consideration of metaphor or meaning. We needed to be hit over the head with it. I find myself a little sorry there was not an opening statement, or some spoken text in the performance, that would have led us into the larger journey. I look forward to seeing this intrepid couple and composer continue to develop this piece. This is high quality and unique. I never seen an acrobat play the violin the duration of the performance while moving, and they are on to something powerful and new. This is GROUNDBREAKING WORK.
