Reviewed by: The List
Review by Jo Laidlaw | 05 March 2024
Billed as a circus performance, Duo is as far from the big top as almost anything you can imagine. With elements of acro, physical theatre and dance (it feels closer to a contemporary dance piece than anything else), it blurs genres to create a heartbreakingly beautiful performance. Almost wordless, the action centres (as so much of life’s action really does) around a table, some chairs and a pile of laundry, which the two performers use as props, puppetry and scaffolding, literal jumping-off points. It isn’t clear (and it doesn’t need to be) if the perfectly executed choreography covers the span of an hour, a day, a year or a whole relationship; it could even be a single, extended moment of anger and joy, the push and the pull, the ins and outs of love, all portrayed in sinuous, flowing movement. Cheng-Hsueh Sun and Ling Hsia wrap and swing around each other, create characters from clean shirts, break apart, then ultimately come back together in almost perfect performances. All the big emotions are here, but in such a stripped-back, delicately detailed way. It’s circus of the small room and the small lives, of the intimate gesture, the tiny cuts and gentle touches of love; funny one moment, recognisable another, devastating in the next, but always stunning, true and beautiful.