Wolf is an intimate, never-at-rest percussive circus performance

Though billed as a “circus,” Wolf, the Cultch’s season-opener for 2025-26, is hardly a family-night extravaganza, but rather more of a subtly interesting date-night for anyone who enjoys thinking. If Canada’s own Cirque du Soleil presents a grandiose, focus-group-tested, almost symphonic Big Top take on “circus,” Australia’s Circa’s Wolf offers a far more nuanced chamber ensemble version.

The intimacy of the production is further enhanced by setting the performance in The Cultch’s boutique York Theatre on Commercial Drive, rather than the ~700-seat downtown Vancouver Playhouse, which hosted Duck Pond, a previous engagement here this past January.

The performance evolved on-the-fly as an organically workshopped collaboration between its 10 ensemble acrobats, its choreographer/director (and Circa CEO) Yaron Lifschitz and Israeli DJ/composer Ori Lichtik.

Wolf can be described as many things, but genteel isn’t one of them. Lichtik’s music wraps as snugly around the acrobats as costume designer Libby McDonnell’s stripey black-and-tan mesh-lycra body stockings. The sound thumps, clacks, squeals, clangs, chimes and clatters non-stop at top volume and brisk syncopation throughout the 90-minute show (except for the 20-minute interval). 

Ushers at the York doorway offer entering ticketholders the optional balm of foam earplugs. Don’t use them except in case of dire medical necessity, lest you miss the full mesmerizing, almost trancelike musical impact.

Unremitting as it may be, however, the percussive pulse of the show is anything but monotonous. Never really at rest, the 10 members of the acrobatic Wolf pack skirt the edge between disciplined physicality and feral, raw energy as they gyrate aloft on ropes, silks or trapezes in gravity-defying solos. 

Some of their swirls and swings require one acrobat to go deadweight limp as a cantilever to a partner’s manoeuvre, only to snap back the instant the pivot is completed. Even amidst the dazzling displays, they remain impervious to the crowd, never missing a beat as they lope through their paces with the opaque stares of uncaged beasts in the wild. 

Af the end, the stage brightens blank white as the 10 stars line up for repeated standing ovations. And for the first time all evening, they seem to take note of us and flash us their well-deserved smiles. 

Do take in Wolf at the York to cheer them on.