“UPheaval” at Fringe.

UPheaval: fearless, talented and extremely lithe air-dancers from the DC Aerial Collective do their thing. It’s like one act from a Cirque de Soleil show, except performed in Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre instead of a circus tent. What more do you need to know?

Okay, so it takes a few minutes to get to the aerials; musician W.M. Goree plays contemplative bass music while the dancers assume the roles of various women, all strangers, waiting at a bus stop. They interact uncomfortably, as strangers tend to do, and then we see what’s going on inside their souls via the interpretative medium of aerial performance. A woman (Gwynne Flanagan) who misses a lost lover wraps and unwraps herself around a single trapeze; a workaholic (the dancer goes by “EcHO”) annoyed by the other strangers forcefully weaves herself through those air-ribbon things; Flanagan’s character and a tall traveler (Kate Winston) knock over each other’s bags and subsequently perform a cooperative/competitive pas de deux in air. The storyline, while a little slow, does add a nice bit of context (and humor) to the show and provides breathers between each act; later on, when it is seemingly abandoned for a barely-justified (but skillful) flamenco dance — on the ground — it’s slightly annoying.

As the DC Aerial Collective seems to perform pretty rarely — and definitely not often in such an intimate space as this — UPheaval is not something to miss if watching appealing acrobats treat gravity like a musical instrument seems at all like good entertainment to you.

UPheaval has 3 remaining performances, listed here. Tickets are available online.