Through the Dante Alighieri and the Consulate of Italy in Detroit, I learnt of an interesting performance taking place on June 19 and 20 at the Top of the Park Summer Festival in my own Ann Arbor. The performers were two Italian acrobats, Luca and Andrea Piallini. Breaking the initial inertia of leaving the house for a 9:30 pm performance on a weekday was not easy, but highly worth it.

The show was fun to watch and interesting to think about. A surprising and fully integrated combination of 2-D, design background on the screen, and 3-D, live acrobats acting as if the 2-D design were real structures and the cop and the robber were limited by the real world. We met the troupe after the show and Andrea, Luca, and their manager Claudia were extremely warm and very welcoming.