Made familiar with these forms of touch, spectators are taken along step by step. In searching for balance together. In standing on each other’s shoulders. In lifting someone up, carried by many hands. Before you realise it, you whirl around together with the acrobats. For a while, the difference between the audience and the professionals fades. Until the speed is increased and the acrobatic team takes over. Then we are treated to a virtuoso show, with human constructions, spectacular balancing acts and bodies thrown through the air.

For fifteen years, the Flemish makers’ duo Hanna Mampuys and Toon van Grambergen, with There There Company, have been creating circus performances in which partner acrobatics take centre stage, with a focus on the beauty and the vulnerability of physical contact, and about mutual trust. Through the carefully thought-out and built-up audience participation of Hugs & Handshakes, spectators can experience this for themselves.