Three of Brisbane festival’s eight world premieres come from some of Australia’s most exciting companies – and their takes on circus couldn’t be more diverse

It has all the tropes of contemporary dance: taut sprawled bodies; grey nondescript uniforms; a box, in which the cast is claustrophobically trapped inside; electronic music. There is even a running scene – in which the runners get nowhere.

If these devices sound familiar, that’s because they are: it’s been done before, (some might say done to death). Yet Circa’s En Masse, which had its world premiere at Brisbane festival last week, is not dance. It’s circus.

For years, circus was little more than popcorn entertainment: it was where you went, kids in tow, for tricks and clowns and a dusting of sequins. No more. Circus today – if this year’s festival is anything to go by – has a darker side.

In En Masse, tenor Robert Murray – dressed as an old, weary wayfarer – sings Schubert’s The Winter’s Journey, alongside a live pianist, the brilliant Tamara-Anna Cislowska, and an electronic score by Klara Lewis. The dystopian despair that creeps in is set up by an opening quote: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

En Masse courts discomfort: one contortionist twists her body into malformed shapes before walking on bent toes, transforming herself a grotesque ballerina. If the goal was to create a sense of menace and unease, it succeeded: at times I had to look away.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘En Masse courts discomfort’: tenor Robert Murray sings in Circa’s new production. Photograph: David Kelly

Circus using performing animals, now restricted in 43 different countries, is dying out. It has been replaced by three different sub-genres, according to Brisbane festival artistic director David Berthold. First, is the Cirque Du Soleil approach: big, ballsy, and cinematic (essentially traditional circus without the tigers). Second, is blockbuster cabaret that contains high circus skills (think the down n’ dirty Blanc de Blanc). The third is what Berthold calls “art circus”.

Brisbane-based Circa, which was founded in 2004, falls firmly into the latter category; indeed, it pioneered it. Under artistic director Yaron Lifschitz’s watch, Circa produces pieces that are akin to jazz: emotionally raw, physically gutsy, with a palpable sense of ebbs and flows. Lifschitz told me in 2015 that this comes down to the fact Circa isn’t “afraid to be a bit posh – to have an aesthetic inspired by contemporary dance, to make it a bit high-brow rather than carny.”

So what separates En Masse from contemporary dance? For Berthold it’s the level of danger involved. This is particularly apparent when three men form a human tower: they then fall forwards, simultaneously, onto the hard floor, finishing with a flourish and a roll. After each terrifying feat, the audience claps, something unheard of in other types of theatre. As Berthold puts it: “You could hear it... people doing the ‘Arghhhh!!!’ stuff you hear in circus but not in dance.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ‘Arghhhh!’ factor separates circus from dance, says David Berthold. Photograph: David Kelly

A second world premier this week is Man With the Iron Neck by Sydney-based physical theatre company Legs on the Wall.

In the show Aboriginal boy Ash, dealing with the grief of losing his best friend to suicide, becomes obsessed with 20th century stuntman The Great Peters. Known as the “man with the iron neck”, he famously survived hanging off a bridge, supported by a single rope around his nape.

The action revolves around a banged-up old washing line, where performers do aerial stunts. “The subject matter we are dealing with often defies words and literal explanation,” says co-director Gavin Robins, who created the show alongside fellow director Josh Bond and writer Ursula Yovich.

“The trauma of suicide, the pain of loss and the desire to hold on and cling at all costs to life is something that speaks to our very being and core. We are looking to ... represent the extremes of the human condition and what better way to do this but draw from the lineage of circus technologies and performance traditions.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Legs on the Wall’s new work, Man with the Iron Neck, deals with grief, trauma, suicide, and ‘the extremes of the human condition’. Photograph: Legs on the Wall

In stark opposition to En Masse and Man with the Iron Neck is yet another world premier, this time intended to attract the crowds in the rowdy and raucous Spiegeltent: Life – The Show.

Hailing from Strut & Fret, the Australian creators who delivered Blanc de Blanc and Limbo Unhinged, its tagline is the Elbert Hubbard quote: “Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”

The cabaret/burlesque show follows a (very) rough narrative of the marriage – including dating, sex, and child rearing – of an ordinary Joe, played with hilarity by Dutch clown Goos Meeuwsen.

Yet the usual circus tricks, when they happen, are turned into something profound and poetical. Most noteworthy is a duet performed by aerialists Tim Kriegler and Elke Uhd, which takes place inside a giant transparent tube hanging from the ceiling. Sure, there’s a silly joke (the tube is shaped like a condom), but there’s also strange beauty to the scene: to me, their writhing bodies looked like eggs travelling up a fallopian tube or twins developing in the womb.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ‘strange beauty’ of Life: the Show. Photograph: Atmosphere Photography/Justin Nicholas

All this circus is tied together by one common theme: physical extremes. Yet watching it, one thing struck home: that circus, too, can be gut wrenching in its emotional as well as corporeal impact. Perhaps that’s due in part to its very nature. As Lifschitz once told me: “Everything in circus is painful. I’m not super interested in the easy way out.”

• The Guardian was a guest of Brisbane festival, which continues until 29 September.