TO Sammy Moynihan, live programs officer at Belconnen Arts Centre, we are all living in a world of crisis, so the circus world of thrills, chills and spills is an apt metaphor for a time of universal calamity.

As Belco Arts enters what it calls “the business of risk” with a circus performance, “L’entreprise du Risque”, to launch its newly-opened blackbox theatre, the centre is also playing with words.

“The world is in is a risky place and we wanted to dive in and explore what risk meant to people, particularly in the circus world,” Moynihan says.

His preferred translation is “risky business”, something artists know all about, but if you reverse the words to commonplace French usage and make it “risque d’entreprise”, it means business or corporate risk, something the rebranded Belco Arts will be thinking about very hard.

Moynihan, who has been at Belco Arts since late last year, is thoroughly relieved that the Stage 2 theatre is now open, although he used the COVID-19 period – ”a really interesting time” – to facilitate a creative development between emerging circus performers and two seasoned circus professionals.

The resulting show, which he can justly claim as a Belco first, has been mentored by French-born Bernard Bru, a veteran in his home country and also a well-known circus teacher in Sydney, working with groups like the Movement Academy and Umbilico Circus School and a practitioner with many groups, including Aerialize, Sydney Aerial Theatre.

Bru has been working with emerging circus artists from Warehouse Circus, Clare Pengryffyn and Imogen Drury exploring the space, the lighting and the new stage and will be performing in the show too.

Does Bru’s French ancestry explain the French title of the production, or is an homage to Canada’s Cirque du Soleil?

“Bernard is the chief rigger on the show and has designed some of the aerial apparatuses, so we wanted to honour him with the title ‘risky business’,” Moynihan says.

Some of his specially-designed devices in the past have included an aerial kimono, an aerial skate board, an aerial train window, an aerial moon and an aerial tree, but as they say in showbiz, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The new theatre, which Bru, Pengryffyn and Drury are testing out even as this interview takes place, is perfect for the exercise, with 6.5m high lighting catwalks giving easy access for Bru’s magical mechanisms. With retractable seating for just over 200 people and movable seating for another 200, Belco can get around 70 people in per show.

Risk will be the underlying theme of this premiere production for Belco Arts.

“Each artist will have his or her moment to shine and the two girls will be exploring their own perspective on risks through the eyes of teenage girls looking at social risk,” Moynihan explains.

They should know. Both students at Dickson College, they met at Warehouse Circus half a dozen years ago and have progressed to a high level of skills, especially in aerial work, making them perfect matches for Bru. As well, Drury is a very able contortionist.

In contrast, the fourth member of the “L’entreprise du Risque” team, Jack Silvestro, though also a Warehouse Circus alumnus, is essentially an acrobat, whose repertoire of skills includes tumbling and handstand chair.

Unusually, he is an artist across two fields, circus and visual arts, with an ANU School of Art and Design degree majoring in printmaking. With this degree of versatility it’s no surprise to learn that Silvestro will participate in some of the aerial performances as well.

What exactly will happen on stage is hard to predict, Moynihan says, even as we are talking some of the show is still in creation.

“It’ll be a series of traditional and non-aerial elements, with acrobatics, gymnastics and Jake using Cyr Wheel,” he says.

The individual performers have chosen their own music, but although the artists have been working on discrete pieces, eventually they will all come together, “so it will feel like an ensemble; they’ve been working together to fill the gaps”.

Certainly the costumes by freelance St Petersburg-born designer Olga Dumova, who specialises in clown costumes, will unify the look of “L’entreprise du Risque”.

The costumes are described as both “very circusy and at the same time very edgy and unexpected” and the stage is full of imagery, with stop signs and caution signs that all signal risk.

“Working in the space right now, the most exciting thing for me is the urgency,” Moynihan says.

After all, as Belco Arts’ publicists are saying, quoting American author Leo Buscaglia, “The person who risks nothing, does nothing”.

“L’entreprise du Risque”, Belconnen Arts Centre, Emu Ridge, Belconnen, September 9, 10 and 11, 1 hour, no interval, Suitable for ages 8+. Book at belcoarts.com.au/risque