Review: Ten Thousand Hours

Gravity and Other Myths are a company who keep the focus tight on their acrobatic excellence, seasoning Ten Thousand Hours with just enough thematic and dramatic spice to weave their routines into a cohesive whole. Based around the amount of time that enables mastery (in any art), their percussion-driven episodes deconstruct the acrobatic routines, emphasising the processes, and the risks, that are hidden by their slick physical prowess.

Most refreshingly, the ensemble eschews gimmicks and clumsy plots for a series of displays that variously expose the workings behind the balances and bundles, occasionally exploding into intense choreographic sequences that suggest the levels of trust and confidence that the performers have in themselves and each other. When an audience member is invited on stage, it is no cheap trick for applause: they are invited to draw stick figures which the ensemble converts into living tableaux. It is a testimony to their quick wit and imagination, as if an earlier interlude in which a single acrobat slowly converts his warm up in something more impressive and humorous.

Unfussy, direct and perfectly paced, Ten Thousand Hours is a family show that never panders to the childish but awakens a sense of child-like awe.