ESCAPE FROM GRAVITY

Before a single acrobat took the stage, DIAVOLO founder Jacques Heim gave a brief introduction. The Paris-born choreographer seemed delighted to share his Los Angeles company’s work with Brisbane. What followed was so insanely good that, an hour later, I wanted to sit down and watch the whole thing again.

ESCAPE is physical theatre at its finest. It brings dance, stunts, and acrobatics together in sequences that appear to defy gravity, yet land with impeccable precision. Bodies fly, balance, catch, and collide with the moving structures around them. The timing is astonishing: every shift of weight, every leap, and every catch seems to happen at the exact moment it must.

What makes DIAVOLO’s work especially compelling is the relationship between the performers and the set. These structures feel like cast members. They move, change shape, create obstacles, and offer possibilities. A performer’s interaction with one can turn it from a threat into a playground, or from a piece of scenery into the centre of an entire scene. Watching the company discover new ways to use them is as exciting as watching the acrobatics themselves. Like when the pieces of a platform come together as a round mini stage, only to be lifted onto its side to be become a giant German wheel, the performers bodies transform with the set to a carefully curated score.

There is enormous skill in making choreography this intricate feel alive. The performers’ trust in one another is visible in every carefully timed stunt, but the show never feels like a display of difficulty for its own sake. The athleticism serves the theatrical experience, and the changing structures keep giving the audience something new to anticipate.

I could watch ESCAPE a thousand times and still find another detail to marvel at: a perfectly timed catch, an unexpected use of a set piece, or the split second in which a group of performers moves as one. It is thrilling, inventive, and a reminder of just how much can happen on a stage when imagination meets extraordinary physical ability.

ESCAPE by DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion® is at QPAC’s Playhouse as part of Brisbane Festival until 27 September 2026.