According to the Cirque Surreal press release, "Circus is dead - vive le cirque!"

It's an appropriately surreal concept, given that cirque is the French word for circus. I couldn't help wondering, though, if the slogan might betray a certain sense of embarrassment on the part of the producers, a lack of courage in their circus convictions.

They've certainly gone to great lengths to enhance and broaden the circus experience - fabulous lighting and costumes, dancers from around the globe, "surreal"

design (in the form of the Dalíesque backdrop) and what they claim is a strong dramatic theme.

Dress it up how you like though - a circus is a circus and it stands or falls on the quality of its acts.

On this basis, fortunately, Cirque Surreal stands very, very tall.

Highlights are hard to pinpoint, as there are so few lowlights, but I'll have a go. There's Desire of Flight, a Ukrainian duo who soar balletically through the air, defying death and/or horrible injury on the aerial straps.

From Bulgaria come the Silfodilini, who stop the hearts of the watchers far below as they gambol blithely around the Wheel of Death. Then there are the seemingly impossible achievements of China's Lui Jai Jai and Miao Chang Wei. Ballet is clearly hard enough as it is but it's even more impressive if you can do a pirouette while standing on your partner's shoulder - or even head.

My personal favourite, though, was the clownery of the Frères Taquin, from Belgium, in particular their music box routine, which harnessed laughter to physical precision and threw in just the tiniest shudder of spookiness for good measure.

Like most of their colleagues, the Frères Taquin do their work with a pleasure and a pride to which you can not help but warm. I heard someone say, the other day, that work is only work if there's something else you'd rather be doing. On that basis, the performers at Cirque Surreal must consider themselves to be doing far more than just a job.