Acrobats give grounded performance | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

REVIEW

Recently, the Ieto Company, as part of La Fete, the Thai-French cultural festival, gave a Thai audience a night of pure entertainment and left some of us on the edge of our seats at Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts at Chulalongkorn University. The performers of the company, made up of Fnico Feldmann and Mosi Espinoza, performed Ieto, a playful display of acrobatic feats revolving around the idea of paradoxes: the serious Feldmann and the lighthearted Espinoza scaled and tumbled on seesawing wooden benches, springing from one trick to another.

Although the word acrobat may bring up ideas of impossible tricks and superhuman skills, Ieto presented a grounded, human side of acrobatics. Having specific characters as a base, the performers established themselves as normal human beings with emotions and flaws: Espinoza spun into countless cartwheels and stepped out of them in a daze and Feldmann wavered and tensed as he balanced high up on a bench that stood vertical. Although many of the displays of effort were affected, as we all know Feldmann and Espinoza to be trained and highly skilled, the fact that they performed and highlighted these human characteristics showed a desire to connect with the audience. I enjoyed this aspect of Ieto because it took the superhuman quality out of acrobatics.

Feldmann and Espinoza opened the performance by showing off to each other with a series of spins and twists on the floor and in mid-air. In one scene, they flipped around one another while their intertwined arms kept them attached to each other. When the friendly competition cooled off, they commenced their interactions with the long benches, climbing up almost to the top of the standing benches and jumping off them as the heavy length of wood started to fall. Several times, the men allowed a bench to fall flat onto the ground with a loud, satisfying thud. Other times, the men caught one with their legs while lying right beneath it.