Dancer Jonny felt empowered by his circus course experience

Dreams to reality

Training
February 15, 2025•10 min read

Students on a Foundation Course go through the same journey, yet they go through different places to individual destinations. The beauty of a small group of people with a range of skill levels coming together like this is what happens when they witness and experience each other’s highs and lows. Here's how it worked out for the six students on the Autumn 2024 course.

I felt very empowered 

Coming from a theatre and dance background, Jonny had developed a love of silks and joined the Foundation Course to broaden his circus experience. And he came out the other side a different person.

He said: "I've grown a lot in confidence from doing this course. I've learned a lot of skills. I've made a lot of great friends – this circus environment is very empowering and it's very encouraging.

"I learned that I can actually achieve things even though I'm not that young, I’m 31. I felt very empowered that I was like, 'I can do these things that I've not done before with the right practice, with the right teaching, the right exercises, I can achieve it'.

If you've got a good mindset to try new stuff out and put in the work and the diligence, you can achieve anything.”

One of Jonny’s favourite aspects of his time on the Foundation Course was that people were happy to share skills.

He said: “The world of dance is quite cut-throat, it's very competitive. A lot of people might be going for the same jobs and it can feel quite insular sometimes. In circus, it's like an exchange of learning new things from other people.

“Just being in the school, you’d see people having a conversation and trying something just to see what happened. And from that, work could be created or new techniques are discovered. I like that playful element.”

Jonny found circus performance more challenging than theatre or dance.

He said: "With circus, you have to manage that heightened energy of a show, and try to not let it get so much that you might injure yourself.”

The experience of the ensemble performance was immensely satisfying.

He said: "The audience loved it, they were very receptive to us. And that allowed us to just play along, and make a lot of nice discoveries in the moment that we hadn't done before.”

Jonny has gone back to Newcastle and has vowed to return to Aerial Edge whenever he can for weekend workshops and flying trapeze, which he loved.

He said: “I want to do more straps as well. That was something I enjoyed on the course and I'm very passionate for. I want to do develop that, and keep up with the acrobatics.” 

Kat used a mask to bolster her confidence, as she felt she was performing as a different character

You move through your fears

Kat had never done circus before she joined the Foundation Course, and performance was a daunting prospect.

She said: “One of my objectives was to feel that discomfort and move through it. I'm not naturally comfortable being in front of people and I wanted to get past that.

“I had moments of losing myself in performance, and that was lovely. So now it’s just holding on to those moments and they will come more and more.”

Before the course, Kat had done a lot of Callisthenics, yoga and martial arts.

She said: “I was quite strong for pressing, but not for pulling. I felt very much the beginner, and I had a deep-seated fear of heights, so I had some peaks and troughs. One day I was in tears on the flying trapeze platform, the next day I was swinging out of lines.”

Kat’s first performance was a solo at Open Rig Night, around six weeks into the course.

She said: “At first it was a case of picking a song and fit some tricks into it. But I wanted to push myself, so I wore a demon mask, which made me feel like I was performing as someone else, and that helped me lose the anxiety.”

Kat used that concept as a springboard for the bigger challenge of the ensemble show at the end of the course.

She said: “It helped that I wasn’t taking myself too seriously, so I leaned into more playful ideas.

“Producing a show as a collective encouraged me to keep pushing myself, to see improvement. You move through your fears, as you have the focus of having a show which everybody's in. You are part of it.”

Kat is now hooked on circus and is going to continue her training.

She said: “The course was super rewarding, there’s so much to learn. It’s different to the discipline of yoga and martial arts. You have to be disciplined and precise here too, but I’ve really enjoyed the freedom, and the creativity of circus.

“I also met some really interesting people, and I have been doing things I didn't really think I would be doing!”

  

Nick and Kirsten got way more than they expected from the Foundation Course

Feeling the magic of circus

Nick and Kirsten are partners in life and theatrical pursuits and came from America to try circus for the first time on the Foundation Course – and got way more than they bargained for.

Nick said: "We create highly physical theatre together, and we took the course initially so that we could add to the arsenal of shapes that we create and physical techniques that we could include to aid storytelling in our shows. We got way more than we bargained for!”
Kirsten explained: "Acrobalance was something that we thought would be easy to use in our work because we don't need any equipment. Then we're like, 'Oh, silks is really fun’!”

And so it went on with each discipline, their enthusiasm growing along with their curiosity about new things to try.

The pair were excited to perform duo acts together in the end-of-course ensemble production, Six Dream. 

Kirsten said: "Mark suggested a doubles trapeze act within the show, with me and Nick on one trapeze and Kat and Luna on another. We already had training on solo trapeze through the course, so we picked things up quite quickly. It was really nice to have some big moves in the doubles."

The success of the show blew them away.

Nick said: "There were parts when I felt the support in the room of everybody...that there is something that's really magical about circus, for lack of a better cliche. 

"But there really is something magical about it! People are sitting there saying, 'I'm going to watch you do something that not many people can do or have chosen to do, and I'm going to just be here to support you'. And there's something really giving about that, which I love.”

Kirsten agreed, saying: "I felt the audience was behind us, whether it went well or whether the trick didn't work. There was a sense of rallying as you were attempting the thing.”

Trapeze became Luna's first love among all the circus arts she learned on the Aerial Edge Foundation Course

The group dynamics were wonderful

Luna faced an unusual challenge – she learned so many arts on the Foundation Course that she was proud of, she wanted to perform them all in the show, including her new juggling skills.

And it was all possible thanks to the mutual support and encouragement among students and Aerial Edge team, which is part of a shared experience as a group goes through the course together.

Luna said: “I am the kind of girl who has difficulties choosing! I'm a theatre director, performer and teacher…but circus is a whole different level.

“We came with the idea of how fun it would be if we did the show in a dream world because then everything's possible. It was pretty organic after that how everything came together.

“The group dynamics were wonderful. We were all very clear in what we wanted, and very driven.

The first three days of the course were most intense, emotionally and physically, but especially emotionally, because I moved to Glasgow from Holland to do the course, I didn't know anyone.

“You have to do all of these things all of a sudden that you're not used to. But time went by so fast, and I think we all helped each other in some sort of way.  You saw other people progress, and celebrated their achievements.

“It was perfectly fine that we weren't all at the same level. We were offered different techniques, which we all found were challenging in our own way. And eventually it came together. Some people succeeded more in some things, other people succeeded more in different things. So I feel we grew as a group as well as individuals.

“It helps because you all experience the same things, even though some people might take different classes than you do, but you're all in it together and give some mental support so you feel that you're not doing it alone.

“The Aerial Edge teachers have so much knowledge and there’s also the other students – everyone shares advice and tips and you can just take whatever you want from it.

“Now that I've done this whole course, I'm much more aware of how circus and theatre could amplify each other and could make each other better instead of having to do one or another.”

Luna returned to Holland after the course, enriched with experience to take into her role as a theatre and youth circus director.

She said: “All things must come to an end but it was good that it came to an end by working towards a show. If it just ended and you went home, that would be even sadder.”

 

Emer loved the character work involved in act creation

I loved the character work

As a Youth Circus student who’d just left school, Emer was the youngest student on the Foundation Course yet the one with the most circus experience. The biggest boost for her was what she learned about performance.

Emer said: “Throughout the four months, we had loads of act creation work, focusing on what we wanted to convey, and how to interact with the audience.

“I loved the character work. It's nice going on stage as someone else, rather than just, ‘I'm Emer, here are the tricks I can do’.”

Everyone else on the course had come from a theatre background, and Emer had no experience of that.

She said: “It was actually really nice being thrown into that – they were so open to everything, they were just so used to it, so it made me feel like I could get used to it too. It made me much more confident.

“That’s 100% about being a small group going through the course together. You all bond.

“I think because it's all day, every day, and everyone has their strengths and everyone has their weaknesses. We all helped each other, together. We were all happy when someone got good at things.”

Emer really flourished when it came to the preparation for the end-of-course ensemble show, working with artistic director Michelle Ross.

After building her skills, and learning from Michelle and the other students on her course, she put in a confident and professional performance which included rope, flow, acro and flying trapeze.

And there’s one more big takeaway for her.

She said: “I've learned loads of tricks but I feel like one of the biggest changes is that I have so much more stamina and general strength because of the conditioning part of the course. Before, I wouldn't have been able to perform for the length of our show.”

Photos by Max Crawford

Are you ready for full-time training?

There are three levels of full-time training at Aerial Edge: the four-week Circus Intensive Course, the four-month Foundation Course in Circus Arts, and the one-year Professional Development Course. The start dates are:

 

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