Tchaikovsky Walked So These Athletes Could Fly: Duck Pond
- Ben Sorensen
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
What happens when Swan Lake grows, evolves and decides to sprint, somersault, and wink directly at the audience. It’s ballet’s grand romantic silhouette re-drawn in circus ink: faster, cheekier, and surprisingly tender when it counts - that is the energy and vibe of Circa’s Duck Pond.
This Melbourne outing at the Princess Theatre (14–25 January 2026) feels less like “a clever concept” and more like a fully-earned evolution—storytelling delivered through bodies that appear to have been engineered for expressiveness and controlled chaos.
What makes Duck Pond work isn’t just that the performers are jaw-droppingly skilled (they are), but that the movement is doing the actual narrative labour. The acrobatics don’t sit on top of the show like decorative garnish; they are the language. Characters are built through balance, trust, timing, and the kind of athletic precision that makes you realise your own knees were designed by a committee with no ambition. You’re watching “circus skills,” sure—but also watching emotion translated into momentum.
And then there’s the delicious, Brechtian troublemaking: fourth-wall breaks and theatrical nudges that stop the piece from getting too precious about its own beauty. It’s a smart release valve. Swan Lake has a tendency to drown in its own symbolism; Duck Pond hands you a towel, cracks a grin, and then, crucially, still lets the romance land. That balance of light and dark, sincerity and satire, is where the show’s confidence really shines.
Design-wise, the production feels dialled in rather than merely “big.” Yaron Lifschitz directs and designs the staging with a clean sense of focus, letting the bodies and spatial compositions do the heavy lifting. Jethro Woodward’s score/sound design has the effect of a familiar dream re-sounded in a modern register—echoes of the classic without being museum-like. Libby McDonnell’s costumes lean into theatrical personality (not just aesthetics), and Alexander Berlage’s lighting shapes the emotional temperature with a showy restraint that circus doesn’t always bother with.
The pacing is also a gift: a tight 75 minutes, no interval, no bloat—just a brisk, buoyant flight path. It’s the kind of runtime that makes you leave energised.
Who should go?
If you love dance, you’ll admire how movement tells the story without constantly stopping to translate itself.
If you love circus, you’ll get the thrills. It''s clean, confident, and woven into something with heart.
If you don’t love either, this is still a strong “conversion show” because it refuses to be reverent in a boring way.
Bring your sense of wonder and sinply enjoy.
Duck Pond is Swan Lake with feathers ruffled, ego punctured, and joy turned up. It’s romantic without being corny, funny without being smug, and spectacular without forgetting the point of spectacle is to make you feel something, not just applaud it.
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