THERE'S an element of Emperor's New Clothes about contemporary circus which rejects traditional sawdust-style presentation in favour of sinister, in-your-face excitement.

Without a mustachioed ringmaster or any other kind of introduction, the cackling performers are laughing but the audience doesn't automatically get the joke. There is some imagination in a lithe, camisole-clad woman juggling iridescent hoops while drinking from a teacup, but does her stony expression require half-hearted applause?

Without any seating, those who have stood for some hours already that day find the spectacle more than a little challenging on the legs. Constantly being jostled by a selection of alternative performers - a woman pushes a pram through the throng with a pretend package of 200 Players Navy Cut cigarettes replacing the baby - tests our reserved British manner to the limit. There's plenty of ability to observe: eight people who appear to have been strung up by the neck suddenly burst into life as rope artists and four Victorian swimsuited women repeat the moves using material instead of rope. We may have lost the lion-tamer snapping his whip at the moth-eaten former king of the jungle, but today's health and safety circus gives us a trapeze artist anchored to her perch by a guy rope - there is still the threat of a nasty rope burn, of course.

This curtain-raiser for the 17th festival comes complete with mournful music, half-understood poetry, unintelligible pronouncements and a man positioned in a tin bath 20 feet above our heads. I can't wait for the next stage, when an animal cracks the whip at a growling male form displaying an impressive set of yellowed fangs.

Published: 02/08/2004