New circus is a fascinating genre. It’s a showcase for a bunch of fabulously talented gymnasts doing exciting, beautiful and dangerous things and almost always aspires to be more than that.

It can come close to being physical theatre or even contemporary dance, artforms that bring the expectation that ideas will be explored and emotions tapped rather than just sensations stirred.

Adelaide-based company Gravity & Other Myths isn’t alone in the new-circus world in wanting to explore the human condition through extreme action but in The Mirror, as so often in this sphere, GOM comes up against new circus’s greatest conundrum. When pitted against mind-blowing fabulousness, how can meaning assert itself?

Gravity & Other Myths: The Mirror. Photo © Daniel Boud

The theme of revealing and hiding oneself is posited early as black curtains go up and down and are pulled back and forth while performers in monochrome costumes strike poses and are seen in surprising situations.

Singer and composer Ekrem Eli Phoenix wanders about in pristine white undies singing Summertime, the lavishly gifted young Dylan Phillips swirls and tumbles about and the living is delightful.

A second theme of exposure via...