X-trax Street Arts

I am glad that I was able to make it to last night’s performance in Castlefield. Fortunately, it will be on again tonight for anyone who hasn’t yet been able to go.

Now, I could bang on and on about how every single aspect of the first performance I saw amazed me, but that would probably bore you. So I’ll be brief and to the point. One stage under a bridge in a warm, rain-free evening (for the duration of the performances at least), three dancing acrobats – two men, one woman – and a one man band. 

I was immediately sucked in to this show, being a fool for contemporary dance. This talented trio grabbed and spun each other around the stage and also around a pole (several metres high) stuck in the centre of platform. Their interaction and trust in each other, together with their props, was excellent and their gravity-defying skills, amazing. Just the dancers alone would have been enough, yet the added music, coming from a single guy with a keyboard, harmonica and other equipment which generated hypnotic music to accompany the fluid movements of the dancers, was a bonus. 

These dedicated, talented performers demonstrated their skills by sliding down a pole, head first, by their ankles, spreading their limbs in a hoop (similar to the Vitruvian Man) as they dominated gravity and manipulated the circumference of the circle on the ground (this act especially drew many ‘oooooooos’ from the crowd). 

The ending performance of this small group would make a vertigo victim quake. The femme fatal of the three (she deserves this title after teasingly lifting up her stockings Liza Minnelli-style and removing her blouse revealing two strips of gaffa tape on her nips) was hoisted up into the air and swung like a daring child fast and far into the open space above the crowd. At times I had to look away as the height and her stunts were pretty jaw-dropping (yes, I have a major fear of heights). She contorted the ropes around her feet to dangle herself forwards then backwards to return to her sitting position. She spun and twisted making gravity her slave and the audience her admirers. Magnificient.

Main Stage - Several yards to the left and I was taking my seat on the floor in front of the main stage (the stands for seating were heaving). I friggin loved this performance. Again, shan’t go into too much detail but I highly recommend you go tonight or seek out where their next set up will be. (Pictures can be seen at the end of the blog)

The stage was designed like an office; desks, chairs, shredder, boxes, staff etc. Animal species were being confirmed extinct by one man at a desk when the stage began to tilt forwards. The office slowly slid off – together with some members of staff – while the rest scrambled to the top (rising further and further into the air) for safety. The office floor became a screen, for us, and the land beneath for the remaining staff. Their bodies were suspended by wires. They chased, escaped, caught and violently shook as the images of destruction and poverty, floods and droughts flickered by. In a post-apocalyptic world, a woman was left stranded to burn in what seemed like the eternal fires of hell until a man appeared to carry her across the barren land and cracking fields of earth. The images projected were indeed potent and I suppose made many people quiet in introspect; Dubai’s Palm Island, Skyscraper cities, tsunami’s, floods and tornados – Man Vs Nature. The presentation was flawless, the actors spectacular and the message undoubtful. You could see the pleasure everyone had in watching this performance and from those being part of it themselves. The act and their final message should be shown worldwide:

‘Change. Be Change. Demand Change. Now.’

Two massive thumbs up!