His company provides one-on-one coaching to prepare an actor for a specific role. Peter Andrew Danzig is an actor and personal trainer, as well as the founder of Theatrical Trainer, a Philadelphia-based company designed to condition actors, dancers, and circus professionals to enhance their performance. Doing something like circus speaks to that.” Peter Andrew Danzig, founder of Theatrical Trainer. “The play and the sense of adventure and creating a character hits on a deep childhood thing-everyone has an aspiration to be a famous performer. “What I find is that people have muscle memory from years of play and putting their butt over their head,” Anderson continued. “He developed biomechanical theatre, which is a physical representation of complex internal emotional concepts, and he built these crazy sets with slides and intense physical work activities. “The genesis for all of this comes from Mummenschanz and Vsevolod Meyerhold, a contemporary of Stanislavski,” he explains. One such performance is the cycle of the Hindu Creation Myth, or another piece, Day in the Life Mechanica, about how circus can liberate you.” His shows feature silk elements and aerials, as well as hula hoopers and spinning fire staffs.Īnderson studied mime and theatre in college and was inspired to create his acrobatic mime troupe in the late 1990s. He continues, “Once we have mime, we tell stories. “The responses to these exercises are mental, physical, and emotional.” “What does an angry face/sad body look like?” Anderson asks rhetorically. Anderson’s theatrical work includes teaching mime to show how a face or body moves when it is happy or sad. He firmly believes that “everyone deserves circus.” Unable to compete with Cirque du Soleil with its huge sets, costumes, and music, Anderson and his DIY circus create workshops for ordinary people to participate in activities ranging from pole dancing to acrobatics and human pyramids, to programs where parents can learn to “fly” their kids properly. Jeff “Tree” Anderson is a coach, choreographer, and director who cofounded Clan Destiny Circus, a circus theatre in Asheville, N.C. This growing trend has created a demand not only for practitioners of circus arts, but also trainers and directors who specialize in these arts from all over the country. Circus arts organizations are popping up everywhere, and everyone from established theatrical troupes to fringe performers are incorporating acrobatics and circus arts in their work and creating theatrical spectacles.

These days, though, no one has to run away circus is becoming more of a possibility in one’s own backyard. Once upon a time, so the axiom went, everybody wanted to run away and join the circus.

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