WEEK A: July 28 – August 1, 2025
Circus as a Verb Curiosity as a Medium (All Levels)
9am-12pm. Week A. FFP Studio 2.
Ages 13+. $380.
Prerequisites: All levels. Openness and willingness to explore, both in solo, partnering, and group contexts. movement or aerial background of any capacity recommended, but not required.
Tomatoes, Aerial Dance, Legs. When defining, how do we start? It’s easy to define through exclusion. Tomatoes aren’t vegetables; Aerial dance isn’t Circus, leg isn’t butt. We see things, their differences, and then we categorize things into nouns. It’s how we make the world make sense. But it doesn’t always. Do tomatoes feel like fruit: What really is the difference between Aerial dance and Circus; Is butt legs? Maybe it’s useful to think about things less as what they are, and more as what they can do. We don’t always use a tomato as a fruit, so why do we need to know that it is one? Maybe Circus isn’t Aerial Dance, but why did we need to separate them? Does it change how we move on a trapeze if we think about our weight as on our butt or our legs? These questions may not change what things are, but it can change what we do.
WEEK B: August 4 – August 8, 2025
Choreographic Games (All Levels)
1:00-2:30 pm. Week B. Dairy Gordon Gamm.
Ages 13+. $190.
Prerequisites: This class is open to all, regardless of movement background. Comfort with physical contact, both in partner and group settings is recommended, but all structures are designed to take differences in comfort level in mind.
Building upon, but not requiring attendance of the Circus as a Verb immersion in Week A, this class will leave the denser theory behind and focus instead on play. Demonstrating a range of choreographic games, we will seek to foster the curiosity central to “Contemporary Circusing” (as well as Aerial Dance), and through participatory structures demonstrate the potential this curiosity allows. Structures will be demonstrated on the ground, with an optional transfer to aerial exploration on spanset loops, once systems are embodied.
Bring a laptop, tablet, phone. or something to take notes and clothes that can be moved in.
Sculpting Theatricality: Lights, Camera, Actions (All Levels)
5:30-7:00 PM. Week B. Dairy Gordon Gamm.
Ages: 13+. $190.
Prerequisites: All levels. There will be components featuring recorded video components, so comfort with direct light in the eyes is recommended
We come into Aerial Dance with our apparatuses, but what other instruments do we have at our disposal? Our bodies and apparatuses may be our primary medium, but what else can we use as we create? We are familiar what happens on our bodies (makeup and costume being familiar territory), but our medium also includes what happens around us. For this class, we can call that Theatricality. Light, sound, tech, space: so often afterthoughts, can also be an integral part of how we create. We are limited by the spaces we train in, but it doesn’t require a theatre to think theatrically. This class will take accessible tools and equipment, and explore how we can integrate them into our process, both on and off stage, as well as on both sides of the camera. We will be moving on the ground or in spanset loops but any body/capacity/practice is welcome, as the focus will not be on physical techniques, rather in environmental effects on our movement perception.
Issac Endo née Koji, is a Boulder grown creator working in the arts. Initially trained as an interpreter of circus and dance, they were invited to become the National Circus School of Montreal’s first student of direction and dramaturgy under the guidance of Howard Richard. Graduating in 2019, their work focuses on environmental/scenic realization and the exploration of objects/spaces. and the ways we can move between the two. Creating props, costumes, scenography, and aparatuses, Issac investigates ways we can inform and shape how people interact with, inhabit, and blur the distinction between performer/spectator and object/subject. Ongoing projects include: the Valby Ruta Project, a film circus collective; Le Academie de Cirque, a Montreal circus studio; A Safer Space, workshops exploring group dynamics and nonverbal communication; Warm Up, an immersive movement jam; and most recently Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance, their home away from home.
