Royal Festival Hall, London
Borrowing from Swan Lake and the Ugly Duckling, Circa deliver wow moments and ornate arrangements as the dancers move in finely tuned equilibrium

Australian company Circa are masters of modern circus, often eschewing obvious exhibitionism, and instead weaving acrobatic skills with a dance and theatre sensibility to make mood pieces. Previous works have considered the plight of refugees (The Return), tragic tales of Orpheus and Eurydice or Dido and Aeneas, and have taken on music from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to Beethoven’s Ninth – all serious business.

Duck Pond is, on the surface, a less serious proposition. The name is a parody of Swan Lake and it borrows from the famous ballet – shards of Tchaikovsky’s score feed into Jethro Woodward’s soundtrack – and also from another fairytale, the Ugly Duckling. So we get a love triangle of sorts between a prince, an ugly duck and a vivacious black swan. The conceit might seem to promise a more conventional narrative, but it delivers something a little different. The mood is understated, classy, colours of black and gold, a clan of performers in shimmering velvet catsuits. The music is a constant underscore rather than a game of set-ups and climaxes.