The comparison to Cirque de Soleil is unavoidable when describing Studio Festi, but this really is the only way to try to convey the sheer scale, vivid colour and imagination of the large-scale outdoor performances this Italian troupe pulls off. On the opening weekend of the Night Festival, a sizeable audience was wowed at the National Museum and SMU campus with a spectacle of grace and style. Stamford Road was cordoned off and earlier drizzle had petered out by showtime, giving Festi free rein to stage a delicately beautiful, virtually indefinable two-part humdinger that combined surrealism, magic, music, circus spectacle, pyrotechnics, romance and art in roughly equal measure. Never knowingly understated, in the Museum’s irrefutable neo-Palladian grandeur Festi were gifted the ideal backdrop for their latest creation, the aptly titled extravaganza The Dancing Sky.

A vague narrative thread ran through part one – a couple meets, falls in love, is forced apart – but Studio Festi is, in quintessential Italian fas

hion, a triumph of style over logic, and by far the best way to enjoy The Dancing Sky was to gaze up at the aerial acrobatics, absorb the breathtakingly pretty set-pieces and swoon. A trapeze artist danced around a white piano; elegantly clad ladies dangled off giant balls into the crowd; a sailing ship slid across the Museum façade; weird brides on wheels wore oversized dresses as they cut a balletic dash several metres up: such was the utterly lovely, slightly barmy stuff of part one. The bemused audience shifted over to the campus green for part two. A strange fellow dressed as a pioneering explorer climbed onto a podium with his telescop

e. As we stood in the darkness waiting for the dénouement, anticipation grew. Whatever were they going to pull off in this small space? Oh yes, obviously: a fabulous dance routine in and around a giant ba

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ub; a magnificent slideshow of classical-art images illuminated by water jets (how did they do that?); fire-spinning performers twirling their torches to a throbbing techno beat. Words don’t do justice; n

or do pictures, even. You had to be there.

Kudos, too, to the event organisers for shepherding the click-happy throng efficiently, though never heavy-handedly, throughout. Stylish presentation aside, this was hardly the seamless display perfected by Cirque de Soleil; but protracted delays and occasional longueurs notwithstanding, this made for sumptuous stuff. The total price of a fantastic night out? Twelve dollars and 35 cents, all of which went on the taxi ride home. Now that’s magic.

Jonathan Evans