Afrique en Cirque by Cirque Kalabanté.

Cirque Kalabanté founded in 2007 by Yamoussa Bangoura bring an enthralling performance to the Southbank Centre stage inspired by the daily life in Guinea. Afrique en Cirque combines tribal dancing, acrobatics, music and an extremely flexible contortionist to give the London audience a display of their talents.

It is a multi-sensory experience for the audience and I must admit I found some of the positions the contortionist moved into very uncomfortable to watch and felt a pang of fear that at any point he might hurt himself and I saw several people look away.

The music was led by one of the cast using a traditional Kora which looked rather complicated. The sounds and music played by this instrument were impressive and I haven’t personally heard of one before.

Cirque Kalabanté uses the performance to highlight every day in Guinea from the fishermen dangling their fishing rods out into the audience, the fishing net cast out across the stage to the grinding of local food performed by the two female cast members.

The bright colours of the costumes were eye-catching. The females wore two different bold patterned matching body suits and looked incredible. The patterns changed each time they performed another move and stood out no matter where they were on the stage, an example of this can be seen below.

Overall the performances are superb throughout the show. Captivating the audience with some jaw-dropping acrobatics especially when one of the tower of acrobats appears to be free falling towards the stage!

However, the finale of the show appeared to be unnecessarily drawn out. There’s a point when they all finish a scene and the lights go out which makes for a superb finish and then it begins again, which doesn’t work as the audience becomes restless afterwards and the energy level drops.