Ten Thousand Hours

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Ten Thousand Hours

Gravity & Other Myths

Auckland Arts Festival

Civic Theatre

March 19 – 22

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Gravity & Other Myths

Director: Lachlan Binns

Associate Director: Darcy Grant

Set & Lighting Designer: Chris Petredis

Assistant Designer: Max Mackenzie

Composer: Nick Martyn, Shenzo Gregorio

Costume Designer: Olivia Zanchetta

Production Manager: Martin Schreiber

Creative Producer: Jascha Boyce

Ensemble: Jacob Randell, Alyssa Moore, Kevin Beverley, Lachlan Harper, Annalise Moore, Andre Augustus, Axl Osborne, Shani Stephens

The ten thousand hours rule refers to the concept that it takes that many hours of focussed practice to achieve expertise in a complex field. I suppose that’s why I have never become a contortionist or acrobat even though I did practice for three weekend in a row.

Seeing the eight highly skilled members of Gravity & Other Myths going through their routines is to enter another realm of physical prowess. They manage to do things that most humans would not only find impossible, they would also never even contemplate them. I the reckon the Gravity team probably put in way more than ten thousand hours of practice .

The show starts off simply enough, a few simple lifts, jumps and handstands, all very clever, and the audience was very appreciative but no clapping. But then the troupe  ramp up the action with the performers taking on more elaborate and risky moves and the audience erupts with, lots of  ohhs, and ahh’s and tremendous rounds of applause.

From then on the audience kept a constant steam of applause, whistles and gasps.

The trick that the team seem to have mastered is that of working together, understanding their colleagues’ intentions, working with the team collectively to achieve incredible outcomes.

Some of the inspiration for their work probably comes from the Spanish human towers which are a spectacular Catalan tradition and can be up to ten stories high with up to one hundred people.

The towers of this troupe are only three storied but are pretty spectacular for the ease with which they construct them, the way they can link them and the way they effortlessly deconstruct them.

The group is also very good at throwing each other around. A lot of the time they are like trapeze artists but without the trapeze, hurling each of the across the stage as though they were rag dolls.

There were number of individual acts which start off seeming easy. Possibly a few people could leap, hands first ,across two people lying on the stage but diving across four people would be virtually impossible. So, when one of them manages to dive across six people there was an initial gasp of disbelief followed by massive round of applause.

It is small acts like this which captivate the audience, the attempts by ordinary performers to take on impossible stunts and impossible acrobatic moves. The audiences were always right behind these almost superhuman performers, even when they failed in their attempts, they still got rounds of applause.

In a bit of audience participation one (un)lucky person was cajoled onto the stage where she was quickly instructed in the art of stick figure drawing. After a bit of instruction, she was able to produce a series of composite portraits of stick figures which the group then formed themselves into human versions of her sketchs.

All this tumbling, climbing, throwing and weird acrobatics are supported by Nick Martyn an onstage drummer who interacts with the performers, adding moments of comic relief and hectic drumming solos between the extraordinary acts.