Discover the animal in you

The wolf has an image problem, and there is no sugarcoating it. Little Red Riding Hood eaten, little goat devoured, sheep's clothing and werewolf horror – most people probably don't have more positive associations with this graceful predator.

But perhaps this is not only due to the stubborn legacy of the Brothers Grimm or weird films with Jack Nicholson (“Wolf – The Beast in Man”!). It is also because we humans have generally become too tame and shy away from the animalistic side of ourselves. “What if we try to break out?” asks Yaron Lifschitz, artistic director of the Australian company Circa. The saying goes: What if we let the beast run wild?

Ten acrobats provide the answer on the stage of the Chamäleon Berlin, where the premiere of the latest Circa production “Wolf” is being celebrated, which will be playing at the theater in the Hackesche Höfe over the next few months. It is a very special premiere evening because the Chamäleon is also celebrating 20 years since its reopening in 2004. And 20 years of Anke Politz's directorship, to whom the entire staff – dressed in “Thank you Anke” T-shirts and each with a flower – are giving a huge bouquet to collect themselves.

A beautiful setting for the “Wolf” show, which marks the seventh collaboration between Chamäleon and Circa, between Berlin and Brisbane, where the company originated. The Australian circus stars now perform halfway around the world with several large ensembles.

The ensemble undertakes an inner breaking of the bonds

The first Circa work in the Chamäleon was the smash hit “Wunderkammer”, followed by productions such as “Circa's Peepshow” and most recently “Humans” – these were also about human-animal differences and affinities (to which Yaron Lifschitz said the beautiful sentence at the time: “Everything we can achieve physically surpasses a well-trained monkey with ease”). “Wolf” now, however, plays much more with the attractive-threatening potential of the topic. The first part of the evening is based on the motto “discover the animal in you”, which should not be imagined as an easy exercise. Not everyone is born to be wild.

Under Lifschitz's concentrated, perfectly timed direction, the ten-person ensemble undertakes an inner breaking of bonds, which is expressed in correspondingly instinctive choreographies.

The acrobats attack each other, throw themselves on each other's necks (or backs), and engage in rough pair-forming fights – with a lot of contemporary dance in the movements and constantly fueled by the darkly seductive beats and soundscapes of DJ Ori Lichtik, who began his career at techno parties and raves in Tel Aviv and is a member of the famous LEV Dance Company of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar.

Longing for community

Lichtik's great music injects a very special tension into the evening, which is also carried over into the acrobatics. They are artistic, as you would expect from Circa, especially on the rope and in the hand-to-hand or shoulder-to-shoulder performances of the ensemble – with highlights such as a dance while climbing on top of each other, or a 360-degree turn on the shoulders of a colleague in the lofty heights of a human pyramid. The numbers here are integrated into the overall narrative in a remarkably organic way, even by Circa standards.

This leads to a longing for community. In the second part, the pack has found each other, man has become man's wolf, but not in the sense of mutual destruction. Circa offers the utopia of living together in solidarity without repressed desires. This does not seem entirely harmless in the final wolfish growl. But it is fascinating to watch.