The theatre's technical director, Rohan Cutler, says he's had his fair share of challenges in 10 years of working there - for example, ice shows and pyrotechnics - but this production offered something unique. For the first time, there will be a 360-degree view of the show, with 214 seats on the stage in addition to the 1244 on the floor surrounding the four-metre-wide round stage.

Some audience members will even enjoy food and wine during the show.

Le Noir's director and choreographer, Neil Dorward, began his career as a dancer, coming to Canberra with Spirit of the Dance in 2000 ("I loved it!") before moving to choreographing and directing musicals and revues, including the magic show The Illusionist, and, eventually, circuses.

Dorward says Le Noir began a few years ago after he and producer Simon Painter had worked on Adrenaline - Le Grand Cirque.

"It was a big, thrilling stage show and we wanted to do something different, bringing a show into a small, intimate space so the audience was very close up to the acts."

The show began in Japan. playing in Tokyo for 12 weeks before embarking on a tour of Asia and then going further abroad, including to the US and, last year, Australia. Now, it's finally coming to Canberra, so local audiences can experience its spectacle, sensuality and sweat.

Dorward says the show's intimacy enables audience members to see the perspiration glistening on the performers, all of whom are "strikingly beautiful".

Le Noir, he says, has "the most choreography of any of the circus shows" and says it is "very elegant, but also very funny".

The show's full title might be a cheeky nod to the Canadian troupe Cirque du Soleil - from which a number of the performers come - but Le Noir is not the same thing, Dorward says, with no pretensions of a storyline or deeper meanings, just a show full of skills, thrills and laughter.

Despite the titular "noir" it also isn't just "black". It's divided into three sections, each represented by a different colour, providing some thematic guidance, says Ashley Jane McCready, aka Platinum. She is a dancer, the dance captain, and the assistant resident director in Le Noir.

McCready says the "white" section of the show focuses on fragility and beauty - delicate aerial silk acts, for example - while "red" ramps up the energy to become both "a little scarier" and "upbeat and fun" - here's where the aerial trapeze acts are featured.

"'Black' is more sexy. Everyone is dressed in black lingerie and corsets ... and there are more death-defying acts," McCready says.

The Wheel of Death, aptly enough, appears here, and so does the gravity-defying Rolla Bola balancing act.

She says, "We have literally the best circus artists from around the world doing what they do best. You'll never see a show that has this many of the best artists at one time on stage."

The show is full of feats of balance, contortion, stamina and aerial artistry, including skaters who spin at breakneck speed while performing daredevil stunts just metres from the audience, strong men, a shape spinner, acrobats and comedians - 24 acts in total - accompanied by a live DJ and lighting effects.

McCready, 25, is one of two Australian artists in the show; the rest come from around the world including Canada, Bulgaria, Russia, Mexico and Ukraine.

She says that as a child growing up in Brisbane, she always had something of the performer in her - "putting on little shows for my parents in the living room".

She started to study dancing when she was eight. While that might seem late compared to some children who begin dancing from a very early age, McCready made up for any lost time, starting with jazz and moving on to ballet and tap. She applied herself and, within weeks of finishing school, landed her first professional job at 17, singing and dancing in a casino in Macau.

Since then she's had a variety of jobs, such as playing Marilyn Monroe at Warner Bros Movie World and regular, ongoing stints as a live Barbie in a Mattel stage show. She's danced in shows for musicians Boy George and Bob Sinclar in Hong Kong and played Bloom in a Winx Club show in Singapore.

But for the past three years, she's spent half the year in Le Noir. And she's been with the show "since day one" when it began in 2012.

Another original Le Noir cast member is Gediminas "Geddy" Pavlovicius, 29, who performs the Rolla Bola act. He's been a performer for 18 years and was born into the business: his parents, Alex and Audrion, were circus performers and emigrated to the US from Lithuania when Pavlovicius was nine. He worked in a comedy circus act with them but eventually turned his attention elsewhere.

"I saw a guy doing the Rolla Bola and it caught my eye. I thought, 'I'd like to do that."'

It took him a couple of years of practice to become good, but he says his parents let him take his time.

"I wasn't like other circus performers' kids, where the parents are really hard. My parents were lenient and now I wish they had been hard on me at some point - it would've been better."

Still, he's not doing too badly, he acknowledges and, as he says, "I got to enjoy being a kid".

Pavlovicius works as a subcontractor with Le Noir, performing one routine with it and another when he works elsewhere.

"In other shows there's a different character, different music, different choreography. This one is fun."

He has also worked for a Cirque du Soleil show, Wintuk, for the past four years, but while he enjoys what he does and hopes to do it for as long as possible, he knows it can't last forever. His parents have retired from performing and he already has a second career in mind for himself: auto mechanic, drawing on his love of driving and modifying rally cars.

"Why can't I turn my hobby into my work?"

When he's not touring, Pavlovicius calls Las Vegas home and says, "The number one rule is, if you live in Vegas, don't gamble."

He's seen too many people lose everything to be tempted, he says.

"I don't even go to the Strip any more."

But he enjoys hanging out with his friends, both in the performing and car worlds.

Dorward says Rolla Bola is one of the most hazardous acts in the show for both the performer - who's always teetering on the brink of disaster - and the audience, into whose laps he might easily fly. And while some of this might be put down to hyperbole - the talking-up of acts has always been part of the circus trade - the performers know what they are doing and have practised long hours to do it well. Indeed, there is a very real element of risk that is and always has been very much part of the appeal of the art of the circus.

Le Noir - the Dark Side of Cirque is on at The Canberra Theatre from May 6 to 10. Tickets $69-$109. Bookings: canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 62752700.

The Canberra Times is a sponsor of Le Noir.