Hungary’s cirque dance company Recirquel, under the direction of the company’s artistic director and choreographer Bence Vági, brings intellectual rigour to traditional circus acts, braiding together vertiginous risk with a profound emotional core. Alive with a spiritual intelligence, Paradisum transfigures feats of strength and agility into iconographic images.

With its reference to a post-apocalyptic world, Paradisum summons archetypal figures, each engaged with the overwhelming effort of existence. Elevating aerial and groundwork, elements of stagecraft – a rippling black drape, a ladder, rings, a hoop – create otherworldly vistas. Underpinning the larger cosmological ideas with concrete manifestations, the work is both deeply grounded in the earth and yet defiant of gravity.