Splish splash: Zingara’s new high-flying dance of bathtub joy

Amid the soaring temperature of Cape Town’s recent heat wave, there’ve been few better places to be at night than inside the Royal Countess Zingara spiegeltent, currently stationed in Century City, playing host to Africa’s most celebrated cirque show. It’s there that if you’re lucky to have seats at a ringside table, you’re probably going to get wet. The potential baptism by bathwater happens during a new act that landed in the Mother City this month, with a resounding splash — it’s one that has Zingara patrons more than a little fired up.

Apart from the water being sloshed around, there’s also plenty of steam being generated by the toned and talented couple performing in, on and above the rather compact tub that takes centerstage during the exhilarating and at times hair-raising act. The pair in question — Englishman Jonny Grundy and his partner Manuel Artino, who is Sicilian — mix playful physical humour with grace, precision, physical strength and unavoidable sexiness and charm. As Grundy told me after their first rehearsal in Cape Town, if there’s a bathtub full of water on stage, you have to expect a certain level of eroticism.

When they perform at night, with lights, sultry music and a braying crowd, they do it in nothing but a pair of drenched jeans. Their intricate — and raunchy — choreography plays on the natural energy generated by having two hunks using each other’s bodies to achieve a variety of tricks and feats. During their act, the tub is used a bit like a pommel horse, so they dive and roll, twist and turn, contort and tuck themselves into a fabulous array of positions.

[paywall]

Their bodies — muscular, graceful, sinuous, poised and extremely nimble — dance together like they’re yin and yang, as though they’re interconnected by some invisible force. Grundy says the bathtub routine is a riff on a long-established burlesque act; what sets them apart is that they’re two guys performing it. They’re also among few male couples working together in the industry.

While their bathtub shenanigans are an understandably huge hit, the duo do a great portion of their work while suspended in the air. At a certain point in their routine, the act transforms into an aerial straps act, showcasing a range of skills and setting their physiques and strength in a different light. Whether they’re in the water or in the air, though, it’s neither merely clever gymnastics nor inventive displays of muscular dexterity.

Instead, it’s a kind of dance designed to take the audience on a journey: there’s great heart and plenty of levity to go with the awe and splashes. All done with a sense of effortlessness and ease and a bit of a tease. One moment it’s Grundy in a handstand, the next instant Artino has his legs stretched across the top of the tub in the splits.

“For circus artists it’s a running joke that you can do your hardest trick and audiences barely respond,” Artino says. “But if you do the splits, they go wild.” He gives audiences what they want. He does the splits in an array of locations — at one point, it’s up in the air where he’s stretched out along Grundy’s flat, horizontal body, the two of them spinning from the straps.

[/paywall]