Live Performance Review - Girls with Altitude by Flying Fruit Fly Circus

Images courtesy of Arts Centre Melbourne.

The Melbourne Arts Centre hosted an evening of delight as a 17-strong troop of up-and-coming starlets cracked wise and levitated before our eyes in spectacular fashion in Girls With Attitude.

The young acrobats representing the Flying Fruit Circus read clippings of comic strips depicting oceanic scenes and progressive memes, inspired by feminist heroes like Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern. The anti-pollutant theming set the stage visually, but sequences and sets in the second half look like they’re coming straight out of a female-led ’22 re-remake of Footloose, if only Ren shared the warehouse scene with 16 of his most flexible friends.

The use of a translucent screen during underwater segments, either between performers or as a smokescreen in front of them, added a delightful flair of beauty as mid-air twirls among the fish & bubbles led to consistent affirmative applause from the crowd throughout. And despite technically swimming, wires sending girls flying through the air with ribbons when co-stars aren’t hurling each other around prevents the show from being waterlogged. 

In front of the stage people are spinning in wheels, running around like hamsters and circling the ground like an overzealous coin finishing up a round of heads-or-tails. Flipping each other on planks fills the time between the biting satire provided by those comic strips. Audiences never failed to share a chuckle when a new zinger bought the acrobats a generous five seconds to regroup and prepare for the next stunt.  

When six or more performers are on the stage it’s a wonderful show of coordination as multiple arms of the same act dance independently before eventually combining for a triumphant finale.

Small moments pepper Girl With Attitude with character. A tribute to Chaplin-era slapstick was entertained to the tune of an old-timey record as the gymnasts danced in a dated fashion, passing their bowler hats between each other until one master manipulator had somehow balanced the entire collection on her head, depriving her friends of their own. Simple humour like this is really all it takes for me.

Girl with Altitude ran September 16 and 17 at Arts Centre Melbourne. For more info, click here.