Theaterhaus, Stuttgart
June 29, 2025
It was Canadian journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell who popularised the ‘ten thousand hour’ rule. That is, that it takes that long to achieve mastery of a skill. It’s catchy, easy to remember. It’s also more or less complete bunkum. What is true is that it takes time, and sometimes a lot of time. In Ten Thousand Hours, Adelaide-based company Gravity & Other Myths play with that number, and the learning process, in a show that brings together dance, improvisation and acrobatics.
But while acrobatics are wonderful, the show wouldn’t be what it is without its easy-going, low-key, relaxed approach when compared to many acrobatic groups. It’s this that makes Gravity & Other Myths stand apart from other ensembles.
Photo Darcy Grant
It’s evident even as the audience walk in to find the performers busy setting up, stretching and just getting ready while a huge digital clock counts down ever faster from 10,000. During the show itself, there’s a lot of smiling, irreverence and poking fun at each other. It almost feels like play. You just know they are having a good time too. It even extends to afterwards, when they surprised the audience by greeting them as they exited, thanking them for coming, agreeing to selfies and so on.
Improvisation comes early. Shani Stephens’ warm up is repeated several times in the style of whatever live percussionist Nick Martyn decides. Things really get fun when the audience are asked for suggestions. Stephens was not terribly keen on ‘elephant’ (an acrobatic dancing elephant would be something to see, though), eventually choosing mouse, then cheerleader.
As the show goes on, there is a lot of taking to the air, working as an ensemble, and it’s here that gravity is really put aside. They fly, balance, climb and carry each other on their shoulders. They swing each other across the stage. They build human towers that then collapse so gracefully, the topmost performers caught and sent on their way with such ease. And all the time, they make it look so effortless.
Photo Darcy Grant
A few times, they show the audience how repetition is needed to perfect things. And things do occasionally go wrong. But it’s just part of the show.
There’s even time for a bit of audience participation, one individual being invited to draw stick figure pictures of performers in various poses, that the other performers then had to recreate from her drawings, sometimes very successfully, sometimes rather less so.
How good it is to see the other performers pause at one point to give Martyn his own deserved moment in the spotlight with a great drum solo.
It was a super way to spend sixty minutes or so on a baking hot Stuttgart Sunday afternoon. And, remarkably, the performers did it all again a couple of hours later.
Ten Thousand Hours was presented as part of the Colours International Dance Festival, which runs to July 13, 2025.