Metro Weekly

Editor’s Pick: Air Play By Acrobuffos

Performers set in motion common objects and materials, from swatches of colorful silk to packing peanuts.

Air Play: Moby -- Photo: by Florence Montmare
Air Play: Moby – Photo by Florence Montmare

The circus-oriented artists and physical comedians who perform together as the duo Acrobuffos have clowned around in performances all over the world.

As a couple, Seth Bloom, a former juggler, and Christina Gelsone, a former ballerina, “met at a circus in Afghanistan, became engaged while street performing in Scotland, married in China, and occasionally go home to New York City,” to quote the couple’s illustrative official bio.

On Friday, April 22, Acrobuffos will drift down the Appalachians range to perform the genre-bending Air Play in Frederick, Md.

Characterized as “part-comedy, part-sculpture, part-circus, and part-theater,” the hour-long wordless adventure sees the performers carrying out precisely devised, gravity-defying physical and aerial stunts by setting in motion common objects and materials, from variously sized latex balloons to large swatches of colorful silk to repurposed packing peanuts.

Developed in collaboration with kinetic sculptor and stage designer Daniel Wurtzel (Broadway’s Finding Neverland, Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna), and realized with fellow Cirque du Soleil alum West Hyler as director, Air Play is touted as a playful, evocative work of sculpture and visual comedy “transforming ordinary objects into uncommon beauty” and “a breathtaking homage to the power of air.”

Friday, April 22, at 6 p.m. Weinberg Center for the Arts, 20 W. Patrick St., Frederick, Md. Tickets are $16.75 to $31.75 with fees. Call 301-600-2828 or visit www.weinbergcenter.org.