The giant silver dome in Waitangi Park could belong to an observatory, except there is no aperture for a telescope. Our entry into the interior, between bulbous inflations, is positively carnal and the ambience within may best be described as ‘inner space’.

A haze hangs in the air, illuminated above our heads with horizontal light. Once supine in our deck chairs, it’s as if we’re completing the lower curve of the globe itself. And we’re suitably located ‘down-under’.

When, in silence, bodies fall slowly into the light, caught gently by a membrane which springs them back into darkness above, its as if they are trying to enter our part of the world. Or maybe we inhabit the Underworld of Greek mythology and these are souls in danger of gaining entry for eternity. And to be pragmatic, if the net wasn’t there, they would.

The Les Arts Sauts show is called Ola Kala which is Greek, I am told, for all is well (and is also, my sources tell me, the origin of the colloquial OK, used by immigrant wharfies in California to mark loads ready for shipment). In the absence of a programme, not even that information is available to the audience. The experience is therefore open to interpretation by all who come.

As a death-defying spectacle, we may well feel all is well when extraordinary feats of aerial ballet are executed without casualties, thanks to the aforementioned net. Beyond that, we may conjure with notions of angels cavorting in the heavenly spheres. Or maybe, for some, it simply demonstrates the human capacity to achieve great things beyond the limits of ordinary life.

Fifteen aerial artists use platforms, cross-bars, fixed swings and trapeze swings to make this air space their playground, soaring, catching, spinning, tumbling, diving and climbing to the accompaniment of a live band and a singer, also aloft. My abiding memory is of a blonde boy being passed about, forward, back, upward, downward and sideways … And miraculously all the artists avoid collision with each other and the equipment including their landing stages until, with tremendous velocity, they do alight on a platform.

For the watcher the dance between left-brain and right-brain perception replicates in miniature the equilibrium these performers must find between exacting technique and limitless artistry.

The fifty-strong collective, formed a dozen years ago, talks of disbanding in 2007 so this may well be their last visit to New Zealand. Catch them if you can.

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