La Ronde – Spiegeltent, Aotea Square: March 5, 2026 (Auckland Arts Festival Review)
La Ronde holds the drama of extraordinary beauty and sensuality — a celebration of the human body and how good it looks when its doing its thing. Five-time festival favourites brought their brilliance again — aach international performer delivering something spectacular, hovering in the balance betwixt circus and cabaret, between athleticism and sensuality.
From the opening act we were amazed. How could it have got better , we wondered, than hair-hanging artist Polina Karvovskaya spinning from her locks. It seemed like the girls were doing it tough, having to do it all in high heels but ,no, the guys got to camp it up and strut their stuff in impossible shoes too!
We were wowed by Australian acrobat Adam Malone’s striptease. (Truly, wow!) When he hoolah-hooped to “born to be wild” we all had our motors running and were going along for the ride.
Young aerialist Svyatoslav Rasshivkin was drop-dead gorgeous. Appearing in the second of the two short acts, he did have the advantage of a build up. With freshness and energy, his flirting with the beauties in the front row was authentic. He carried that suspicious scent of something vulnerable, or that cabaret sense of fun.
“What good is sitting all alone in your room?
Come hear the music play”
The Spiegeltent offers that feeling of fun from the moment you arrive. As much for the regular returnees “(because its so cool”) as for our next-seat-neighbour’s 14+ year-old old son with his first time. He looked far too young to be seeing all this raunchiness ( but I’m sure progressive parenting has its upside). So I had to ask what he thought of the show. “There’s a lack of clothes,” he deadpanned.
Other punters, overheard after the show, said “quite good, no boobs, a lot of butt”. Fair comment. But …outstanding butts. They don’t look that amazing without a lot of work.
La Ronde may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Some may say the format lacked the emotional connection that comes through character and narrative development, but I was happy to bask in the gorgeousness of it all. Just like a cup of tea (“wink”) I like mine hot and strong with sugar and, why not, just a bit of spice!
Like all good circuses it was the clown, Sam Goodburn, that gave us that connection to character and the frailty of the human condition. For a moment of suspended reality, he gave us the faith that we could bumble through tapdancing on roller-skates on the verge of falling over and still rise up. The deliciousness comes from realising how clever and athletic he was to keep those tricks coming and end up juggling knives while pogoing with 9-inch heels, while somehow weaving in a gender transformation. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is real talent.
La Ronde was a wonderful dazzling night of entertainment. The show as a whole was more than a sum of its parts — and most of those parts are in sequined jock straps. The world is a scary place right now. The power of the theatre and the Auckland Festival is that it takes us out of our rooms, away from our screens and allows us to connect on a more fundamental and this case visceral level.
It’s real but fabulous. Come to the cabaret.
By NRG
Info and tickets here at the Auckland Festival website.
Video here.
