Rouge

Gluttony & Highwire

Australia's outstanding contribution to evolving contemporary circus must be the emergence of the adult variety—dazzling, physical, sensual and totally inclusive (i.e. QEr’D). With a touch of Aussie bluff, they incorporate plotlines driven by imaginative musical soundscapes—recorded and live. The result is a familiar cup of quality coffee from your local cafe. You don’t know how good it is till you start to travel! Around half the shows featured at the Circus Hub at the most recent pre-COVID Edinburgh Fringe were Australian. There is enough quality contemporary circus in Adelaide for a bottomless cup.

The sumptuous circus that is Rouge returns to Adelaide. Rouge grew from a drop-by, Sunday-night cabaret gathering of performers at a Melbourne café, of the same name. There, guided by producer/director Elana Kirschbaum, a permanent and transferable show emerged, taking on its now inviting cloak of approachable sensuality and palpable physicality.

Rouge is the delectable amalgam of traditional circus arts, acrobatics, burlesque and cabaret. It exudes a comfortably shameless quality of sexual knowing and being. Ever safe, it never threatens as it gently prises the mind open to the joyous fertilities of lush imaginings.

Rouge embodies the rich traditions inherent to the travelling circus from before modern times. From backstage, it places firmly at the centre, the radical inclusivity that has always been part of the circus family. No wonder people run away with it.

Rouge is so effortlessly and gorgeously subversive, to labour the point would be redundant.