Compania Finzi Pasca’s response to Dalí’s surrealist vision needs to take a few things off.

The State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
January 21, 2016

The circus isn’t what it used to be, and for the most part, that’s a wonderful thing. Artists like French mime-pioneer Philippe Decouflé, grandson of Charlie Chaplin James Thiérrée, and, of course, the international juggernaut of modern circus-theatre, Cirque du Soleil, have elevated this quirksome entertainment genre to a finely honed and respected art form. These sophisticated shows are as far away from the provincial, traveling big-top of yesteryear as a country barn dance is from Swan Lake.

But it takes a great deal of precisely judged theatrical acumen to transform a circus curio into a bonafide artwork, and Compagnia Finzi Pasca’s La Veritá, which arrived in Melbourne this week after a short season at the Sydney Festival, is still lingering somewhere in between these two paradigms.

This show’s inspiration is high-brow enough, drawing on the symbolism and iconography of a recently rediscovered scrim – a theatrical backdrop – created by the indomitable Spanish surrealist, Salvador Dalí. Painted in 1944, it conjured a strange and startling world for the obscure ballet,...