A combination of French and British acrobatic groups, the show promises to be full of live, original music, acrobatics, breakdancing and BMX cycling.  K’Boum is part of Collectif AOC, a French group with several acrobatics troupes. Oversees is part of a British experimental circus theatre group called Barely Methodical Troupe (BMT).

Oversees commences the show with an eight-minute performance set to live flute music that brings to mind Yann Tiersen. Two simply-dressed men appear to use the stage as their playground, dancing, leaping and bounding in synchronisation. One man is the support and the other jumps, tumbles and flips from the support’s hands or shoulders.  The choreography is youthful and lucid, a sort of brotherly play fighting. 

During K’Boum’s forty-minute set, Bertrand Landhauser provides the music score, a unique mix of hip-hop and soul; he plays the trombone live, beat boxes and plays percussion. The structure of the set has a similarly unique and also spontaneous feel. The set commences with a purely hip-hop breakdancing scene in half-light on the stage. Before the lights come on, the music changes and the rest of the group marches onto stage, one by one. There are four men in the group, all sporting moustaches and brightly coloured t-shirts. They look like a seventies football team. Their entrance onto to the stage resembles Tetris blocks; they march slowly, only walking in straight lines. Occasionally, they stop and break out into a breakdancing or acrobatic routine.

Their introduction is an impressive moment; three of the men form a human pyramid, before the fourth member of the group throws a microphone up to the top. The leader of the group speaks with a hilariously thick French accent and introduces their theme, which is that of an old-fashioned telecommercial, complete with background elevator music and their own jingle. He ‘sells’ a BMX bike, demonstrating its uses for tricks, before breakdancing and BMX tricks erupt. A particular favourite was when the acrobat ‘surfed’ the bike in a circle by standing on the handlebars and the seat. The group also recreates a scene from ‘ET’ on stage, the BMX rider in a hoodie with a covered basket on the front of the bike, held up by two members of the group while a spotlight is the moon. The audience erupts into laughter at this spontaneous throwback. 

The next item that the leader ‘sells’ is one of the members of the group as a male, acrobat and break-dancer who can bend, stretch and carry heavy things. This scene is hilarious, the leader introducing the ‘item’ as “neither an inflatable swimming pool nor a carrot peeler”; the leader is thrown and tossed by the ‘item’ to demonstrate his abilities. The acrobat being sold is the main breakdancer of the group, plus the base of all the tumbling and acrobatics. He has an impressive scene, where the audience sees a gymnastic battle on stage between his breakdancing and the tricks of the BMX rider. 

Both sets are comical and inventive, creating charmingly youthful performances that are full of character, as well as acrobatic prowess.