Gymnast

The show begins with audio reciting a selection of the young gymnasts’ personal stories, which helps you to feel engaged with each performer as their inner thoughts and dreams are played to you whilst you watch them watch warm up. One audio of a young girl tells you that she feels as though she is “flying” when she is completing her routines. These recordings allow you to enter the performers’ head spaces as you watch them execute their routines and exercises.

The audio teamed with the gymnasts stretching before you also allows you to gain an understanding of everything that makes up each performer, and what they go through to be able to do what they do so fantastically, as they talk you through their daily warm-ups and exercises.

After the personal stories, a choir took their place on the floor, interspersed through the gymnasts, which helps the warming-up seem more dramatic and energetic. The choir’s harmonies were all beautiful and set the tone of the show perfectly, as the choir’s songs worked to, in a way, explain the processes each gymnast was going through, and the emotions they were experiencing as they took to the floor or their equipment. The use of a live choir, rather than a pre-recorded sound track, makes the show feel more three dimensional as they worked perfectly in time with the gymnasts and their unbelievable movements.

Another fantastic thing about this choir was that people of all ages, sizes and genders could be a part of the show in some way and everybody on the floor had an active part, whether it be producing wonderful harmonies or elegantly throwing their bodies around the equipment before you.

The youngsters’ flexibility was unbelievably entrancing as they moved about into positions which many can only dream about. It felt as though you were perhaps watching highlights from the GB gymnastics team at London’s 2012 Olympics last year. The standard was fantastically high.

You could clearly see how hard the whole team have worked together to make the show look slick and effortless. The perfect unison of the gymnasts and each singer in the choir allowed the show to progress without (seemingly) any mistakes or slip ups.

This show was professional, intriguing and exciting, as the beautifully elegant and majestic routines hooked you, and made you hold your breath at the flips, spins and turns across the space, which seem, to someone who’s never done gymnastics, dangerous and exciting. All of the performers have an absolutely amazing talent which should be highly celebrated and praised.

Gymnast played at Mayfest Bristol.