Circus Integrates All Types Of People Connecting Each Of Their Individual Skills To Create Community, Support And Lift Each Other Up To Create Something Marvelous.

When I first joined the circus I was seventeen. Originally I had been taking a serious path towards a dance career although the dance school I went to was unheard of by anyone who didn’t live in the small town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where I grew up. After getting a knee injury that forced me to take a several month hiatus from dance, I was approached by the founder of GravityWorks, Nisha Ferguson. An immensely creative and larger than life woman from Canada who had moved with her family to Mexico to chase the warm weather and lighthearted way of living, told me to drop my teenage attitude and discover what ripping the skin off my hands, getting consistent bruises and laughing hysterically all of the time was about. This fun and joyous woman stomped around town with cowboy boots and sewn dresses she herself made, recruiting people that she deemed unique, respectful and silly enough to join her in her circus lifestyle.

With my dance background I first approached circus trainings with a strict ballet mentality. Since our trainings ran long hours and consisted of a lot of body strength and lifting, I assumed we all had to be a certain body weight and have a certain look. I assumed a leotard uniform making us robots to look like everyone else was the key to success and professionalism. I was wrong when it came to circus. I was so wrong. Rainbow colors splashed everywhere in the studio and I’d find glitter sticking onto me just by proximity. Everyone was a different height, weight, color and age and we were all just laughing and having a good time.

As I got to know the other circus troupe members I realized that I was the youngest one there. In the dance world, once you are twenty five your career is considered over, but at GravityWorks, everyone was between the age of thirty and sixty! I’d look up to these people dangling off a trapeze who were much stronger than me and fearless in a way that I could only dream of. Each member had their own unique life story and came from different countries. Some of them have extensive dance training and others have no dance experience at all. Most had a hard and troubled up bringing and healing was an everyday struggle, but at circus training, we were all working together lifting each other up, literally.