A circular stage sat beneath the domed ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall as the first acrobat entered the ring. Kooza by Cirque du Soleil, photographed on 4 January 2015 in London, returned to the company’s traditional circus format, combining high-wire, wheel of death and clown-led narrative within an intimate in-the-round setting.

Photographing the production required precision at height and speed. As a UK performance photographer, I focused on peak extension during aerial sequences, balancing wide frames that revealed the circular staging with tighter images that captured expression mid-flight.

The scale was grand, but the configuration kept the performance personal, framed by the architecture of the hall itself.