The Odd Ones – Finding Flow
co-produced with Circusstad, and Perplx, a circus production hub and workspace for contemporary cirucs in Flanders.
It was a school night, and I was exhausted. My Year 10s have been practising dialogues about turning down invitations, and I had every excuse lined up myself: recovering from back surgery, lessons to prep, books to mark, supper to cook. Only curiosity won.
The title The Odd Ones had me from the start. Circus is full of odd ones, my tribe of free spirits exploring the edges of what’s possible. And there was more: a long-overdue catch-up with Ade Berry, Artistic Director of Jackson’s Lane, and another dear friend, Lucy, a fellow teacher and circus lover who had never yet seen a show there. The promise of a large glass of wine, good company, and something strange and beautiful tipped the scales.
Lucy and I sank into our seats, two weary teachers on a school night, and of course a family of four children settled right in front of us. I nudged Lucy, and she winked as if to say, “So much for our night off!” The glimmer of a grinch was short-lived; the kids were immaculately behaved, eyes wide with curiosity. When their mother turned round to ask what was happening after the show and I mentioned the Q&A, her son’s face lit up. “That’s like behind the scenes?” he whispered, as if I’d handed him the universe’s best secret.
The lights dimmed.
Simon moved first, gliding diagonally across the floor, hands and feet crossing in counterpoint as if rewriting gravity. Perhaps it was knowing his Finnish heritage, my mind leapt northward to Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, to the mulefa, those strange wheeled creatures whose movement is both awkward and sublime. Then came Stasy, spinning serenely, a whirling dervish lost in her own orbit. Cristian followed, hesitant and angular, all elbows and knees, looping a strap round himself until he tangled in a gangly knot. If Mr Bean had studied under Alexander Vantournhout (see post Chapter 129 on Aneckxanderr) this would be his act. Deadpan, elastic, and utterly captivating. The audience chuckled, drawn in.
The opening unfolded through solos and duets, one performer always slightly the odd one out. Cristian’s awkwardness marked him first, but what struck me wasn’t his oddness so much as his awareness of it. Stasy’s otherworldliness offered counterbalance, coaxing him out through quiet grace and warmth. Simon, by contrast, was a storm of cartwheels, flips, and lightning energy.
As the show evolved, their quirks began to echo, overlap, and finally blend. They mimicked, borrowed, and absorbed one another’s movements until difference became dialogue. Cristian’s journey wasn’t about changing who he was but recognising his own power. Stasy grounded the chaos; Simon fractured and reformed the rhythm with impulsive energy that drove the dynamic forward.
I really enjoyed how the show carried the imprint of street theatre and that direct, unguarded dialogue between movement and emotion. Cristian’s breakdancing brought a raw, syncopated energy that made his awkwardness even more expressive, speaking in its own rhythm, a physical language that slipped between vulnerability and humour. He’s an extraordinary physical actor, disjointed yet fluid, comic yet tender, folding the rhythm of the street into the discipline of the stage.
Beneath it all pulsed a score of loops, synths, and heartbeat rhythm. In the Q&A later, we learned the composer Stijn van Strien (see soundcloud - click here) had spent two decades as a DJ, and you could feel it. The music didn’t accompany the piece; it shaped it. The performers moved with and against its current, sometimes gliding in sync, sometimes breaking away into silence. That conversation between beat and body, pulse and pause, became its own choreography.
Cristian and Simon wove through one another, arms and legs interlaced in a human puzzle, pausing in mirrored curiosity as if to ask, “Where do I begin and you end?” Stasy crouched low, testing her balance, then Simon lifted her, placing her lightly on Cristian’s curved back where she hovered in improbable stillness.
Later, the trio sat in a row, legs scissoring like a living Newton’s cradle, momentum rippling down the line. Another sequence had them leaning back, spine to spine, a bendy domino chain. When Cristian, the tallest and least flexible by circus standards, couldn’t find the angle, they simply switched places, adapting and supporting, making space for one another’s limits.
Then came the collision. Simon launched himself full force into Cristian’s arms. It looked aggressive but wasn’t; it was an explosion of energy seeking containment. Cristian caught him with quiet steadiness, and the gesture became a metaphor for community, for how we hold each other’s wildness and create soft landings.
As their bodies found unison, something otherworldly emerged. Their limbs intertwined until they resembled a multi-limbed creature, part Geek Love freak, part Malik Ibheis dreamscape, grotesque yet tender, absurd yet beautiful. It was a choreography of difference refusing categorisation.
Each performer spoke a different language - parkour, ballet, breakdance, clowning, mime - but over time those dialects merged. Mimicry became empathy. By the end, there was no longer an odd one out. The friction and laughter had given way to flow. What began as three distinct bodies became one evolving rhythm. The Odd Ones turned out not to be about strangeness, but connection.
Creation and Conversation
you? If I try that again? Slowly, a pattern began to breathe.
The piece evolved over eight weeks between September and May, shaped by three “outside eyes.” One explored teamwork and trust, another, coming from a street theatre background, focused on emotion and how it’s carried through movement, while the third refined choreography and light. The use of lighting praised by audience members in the Q&A.
Stasy, clearly an introvert, admitted she was more comfortable moving than talking, yet she spoke with the same quiet eloquence she brings to her body. She described how they built sequences that showcased each performer’s strengths while transforming their weaknesses into points of connection. Cristian spoke of trust, of how exaggerating real interactions onstage revealed truth through play. Ade picked up on that thought, noting that adulting consists in (re)connect to that the inner child.
Simon agreed. “The choreography might not change,” he said, “but we do.” Each night they inhabit the same structure yet find new selves within it. That evolution, he added, came in part from asking their parents about childhood quirks and folding those memories back into their characters.
This morning, reading Philippa Perry’s latest on Substack, I found her reflection on annata, the Buddhist idea of “no fixed self”, echoes that same philosophy.
“The self isn’t a solid, unchanging thing you can pin down once and for all. Instead, you are a flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings, and memories that come together in this moment. You don’t have to uncover one perfect, authentic self and defend it forever. You can allow yourself to change and to keep discovering yourself.”
That is precisely what The Odd Ones celebrates: belonging without erasing difference, and identity not as a fixed point but as something found in motion.
Afterwards we all decamped to the pub. It was a joy to meet Simon, Cri and Stasy, exhausted yet energised. It was great as well to meet Charlie Holland in person, former juggler and one-time programme director at Circus Space, now circus historian, writer, and reviewer of London shows for Kate Kavanagh’s The Circus Diaries. He is also the biographer of The Marvellous Craggs, soon to be published.
Together we raised our glasses, kippis, to the odd ones everywhere.
A Teacher’s Eye
With both parent and teacher hat on, I recognised the personalities on stage instantly. Stasy’s gentle introspection, Simon’s impulsive curiosity, Cristian’s shy clown.. I see that spectrum every day: daydreamers adrift in thought, ADHD whirlwinds unable to sit still because the world moves too slowly, anxious thinkers threading their way through the noise, my classroom in motion.
Circus understands that world. It gives permission to be fully human, to fidget, to fail, to connect.
Simon mentioned that in Sweden, the state shares half the cost with schools to bring performances like this to students. How I wish that were possible here. The Odd Ones would speak to my students, not just those with identified needs, but every teenager caught between Who am I? and Where do I belong?
The next morning, still glowing from the night before, I brought trailer and discussion of The Odd Ones into my Year 10 Spanish lesson. I wrote them a short dialogue for translation inspired by the evening that dovetailed neatly into their current topic; we laughed and talked about what it means to take risks and be seen.
With our World Languages Day coming up, celebrating over a hundred heritages, I’ll remind them of this piece, how Italian, Swedish-Finnish, Estonian, and Dutch performers can move together seamlessly, switching between languages of body and speech. My own Swedish and Italian students in year 7 were glowing that morning too when I showed them the clip, proud to see their cultures, as well as natures, reflected. They stayed behind at break for an encore!
Coda:
I came to Jackson’s Lane for the play, but also because I knew Ade is leaving after eighteen years as Artistic Director, and that is a fact he mentioned in the Q&A. Ade has been instrumental in forging international circus links, travelling the world and building bridges, especially with the Finnish Institute. Those connections have shaped my own life: from seeing Ilona Jäntti dancing in the woods, to learning “kippis!” from Sakari Männistö and marvelling at the whole Gandini juggling; to Onni Toivonen bringing the house down in the first Shhh! cabaret ( see post: click here - thanks to Hamish Tjeong for the introduction) that I curated for Jacksons Lane two years running; to the warmth of acro-duo Sasu Peistola & Jenni Lethinen and the sublime Hanna Moisala, from shibari to tightwire. And of course, the Moomins, I will get to Jacksons Lane for that Christmas show! Through it all runs a thread of oddness, maybe the very thing that drew me, Little My. While really I was too caught up in its flow with Ade and Lucy, pictured below, to feel maudlin at the time, there was a certain poignancy. A wondering. Will that connection remain? Watch this space...
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