Forget the top-dollar, corporate spectacle of Cirque du Soleil. The pleasures of a cozy, intimate circus experience are far more rewarding - and much more affordable.

Taking a cue from the superb small circus troupes such as Cirque Eloize and 7 Fingers, the San Francisco circus arts center AcroSports has developed City Circus, its performance arm, into a hip, happening showcase for its students and resident artists.

This year's City Circus show, "Kamikaze Heart," has the great advantage of being written and directed by Tim Barsky, one of the Bay Area's most unique performers. Barsky is a beat-boxing, flute-playing storyteller with a truly original take on theater. He doesn't exactly re-invent the circus here, but he certainly infuses it with some welcome zest.

To structure his show, Barsky has concocted a wild fairy tale involving a boy with a golden mechanical heart, his love of a beautiful grant writer, the wars in the Middle East, a B-boy competition, creatures from the moon and an ending that says, "They had each other, and maybe that's as happily ever after as anyone ever gets."

Unless you read the chuckle-inducing fairy tale in the program, you're probably not going to follow much of the story, and it doesn't matter once the acts start rolling, leaping and flying across the stage.

The first gasp comes from Melanie Minor, who dances with a crutch and does a phenomenal back flip, landing on the crutch. The second arrives a little later with contortionists Nicolas Torres-Labarca, Nancy Kate Siefker, Julian Dishart and the amazing 11-year-old Allton Vogel-Denebeim. Performing to the song "I Melt with You," this quartet bends, twists and morphs in ways that defy human physiology.

You can't have a hip circus without hip tunes, and "Kamikaze" has a potent combination of live music composed and played by Kevin Carnes and Brandi Brandes and a recorded soundtrack that includes Britney Spears (warbling "Circus," of course) and Barsky's beat boxing and flute playing.

Not all of the acts rise to the level of, say, the powerhouse break dance crew of Jodi Power, Ed "B-boy Black" Johnson, Bobby "Finesse" Vicario and Shawn "Iron Monkey" Hallman, or Chloe Axelrod's gorgeous spin on the aerial hoop. But when the 16-member cast assembles, and the pulse of the music melds with Dustin Snyder's flashy lights and Shannon Gaines' dynamic dance choreography, it's like the circus goes to Burning Man, and this "Kamikaze Heart" finds an explosive beat.

E-mail Chad Jones at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle