Cover Image: Promotional artwork for Gasha, Cirquework’s high‑energy Japanese‑themed contemporary circus show. Image supplied.

GASHA – by Cirquework, Japan
ICF: WAREHOUSE at the Ice Cream Factory
Fringe World, 31 January 2026

The experience of seeing Gasha is a bit like a foreigner savouring their first Japanese meal – several dishes laid out with exquisite aesthetics, but the content slightly insubstantial to a bon vivant used to eating one big hearty meal.  

This show, billed as ‘a new wave of Japanese circus’, holds much promise. What’s not to like about an upbeat quintet of performers, each a skilled and precocious wooer of audiences? There’s the bearded big guy who rides his oversized metal hoop like a scooter, his mock samurai-outfitted body spanning the hoop’s circumference comfortably as he rolls around the stage. Then there’s a kimono-wearing femme fatale who catwalks her way towards us, only to shimmy sensually up a pole and hang there before performing a kind of airborne striptease. 

My favourite was a blond crackerjack with ponytailed hair. She blows kisses to the audience like an adolescent schoolgirl in a Japanese mangacartoon while she spins hoola-hoops off every limb. She then ascends a billowing red circus drape and playfully wraps it around every conceivable part of her body as she hangs in midair.

The various performances are held together by a mischievous musician wielding electric guitar, Japanese shamisen and taiko-type drums, with a loud, pulsating sound mix of Cirque de Soleil-style aural pretension and Ninja playfulness. 

You’ll notice I do not name the performers, much as I would like to. Therein lies the mystery of Gasha, which seemed to lack its full quorum of performers on the night as well as any basic information about the mainly Anglo-performers in a Japanese-themed show. 

The bare details online tell me GASHA “is a bold evolution beyond YOAH — where tradition collides with the future.”  Right. So what’s YOAH? “A critically acclaimed 60-minute contemporary circus show by Japan’s Cirquework, blending traditional Japanese elements with cutting-edge digital technology, acrobatics, and electro-beats.” 

I get it. And for a few moments at least, our hardworking artists – especially the sparky schoolgirl – conjure up magical moments, like the four-parasol stack-a-thon balanced on one reclining individual’s tippytoes. And for those of us who have watched Diary of a Geisha, a kimono-clad courtesan takes a couple of languid walks around the stage – probably more practical as fill time (enabling the tech crew to reset props in the dark) than particularly gripping to watch.   

For all its obvious drawbacks, I warmed to Gasha and its cheerful kitsch take on Japanese culture, past and future. And having lived in Japan, I reckon my Japanese mates would get a giggle out of it too.

GASHA is running at the Ice Cream Factory Warehouse venue until the end of Fringe World, 15 February 2026. For more information or tickets, visit:
https://fringeworld.com.au/whats-on/gasha-fw2026