“Circus festival marks SANCA’s 10th anniversary”
Seattle’s School for Acrobatics and New Circus Arts celebrates its 10th anniversary with a Summer Circus Festival, Aug. 15-24, 2014, that highlights its move in professional circus production. The school also maintains its commitment to serving youngsters from every background.
By Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times arts writer
Ten years ago, Seattle’s School for Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA) opened in a 1,100-square-foot warehouse space in SoDo. In its first few weeks, it attracted a dozen or so pupils.
By 2013, SANCA — the only all-ages circus school in Seattle offering instruction in a wide variety of disciplines — had expanded to a 25,000-square-foot campus in Georgetown, with 3,300 registered students.
That makes it, by some estimates, the largest circus school in the country.
To celebrate that amazing trajectory, SANCA is holding its first Summer Circus Festival, Aug. 15-24. David Crellin, better known on the local vaudeville circuit as emcee Armitage Shanks, is directing the festival, which features Acrobatic Conundrum, IMPulse Circus Collective and numerous other talents.
Also being celebrated: the completion of the first year of SANCA’s professional training program.
“Seattle has actually become a major circus town in the States,” says Crellin.
But when SANCA co-founder Jo Montgomery came up with the idea for the school in 2003, she didn’t have professional circus possibilities in mind. She simply wanted “to keep people moving,” she said in an interview last month.
Montgomery, then 44, was a nurse practitioner at Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, where she still works three days a week. There she kept encountering kids who, she says, were struggling with “being inert and overweight and not having the money to go to cool places, camps or sporting clubs.”
The circus idea came from an adult gymnastics class Montgomery started taking in 1999 that, she says, was “feeding my soul like crazy.” In that class she met members of Circus Contraption, a Seattle troupe that ran from 1998 to 2010. Their brand of “new circus” offered theatrical shows focusing on human skills, without any animals involved. Until then Montgomery had only been familiar with traditional Ringling Brothers-style three-ring circuses.
Her instructor Chuck Johnson, a 50-year-old former high-school gymnast and lifelong circus enthusiast, impressed her so deeply that, four years later, she invited him to be SANCA’s co-founder.
One thing they agreed on: No kids would be turned away from SANCA’s doors for lack of funds.
“If kids can’t pay,” Montgomery remembers thinking, “we’ll have a scholarship fund.”
To make that possible, the two of them took no salary for the first years of the school’s existence, relying instead on income from other jobs.
“I was so naive, but I was determined,” Montgomery says, adding, “We balance each other. Chuck has great vision, and I’m a tightwad.”
It was never their goal, Johnson says, to be the biggest circus school in the country. Instead, it expanded as demand for classes dictated.
SANCA’s new professional-track program evolved naturally from that expansion, Crellin says. While the school was grounding its students thoroughly in “the athletics of circus,” it wasn’t providing them with instruction on stagecraft, character development and other theatrical essentials. The task of Crellin, a co-founder of Circus Contraption, was to work with students on “actually making shows.”
Aiding in that effort are Acrobatic Conundrum and IMPulse. Most members of these two performance-troupes-in-residence are coaches at SANCA. Some are former SANCA students who literally joined the circus.
Case in point: IMPulse co-founder Arne Bystrom, who started taking classes at SANCA at age 16, went to circus school in Quebec City and now is a dazzling professional juggler.
Given the students’ passion for circus, Crellin notes, it made sense to create a program where they could do “intensive training with an eye towards performing.”
The festival is part of that performance agenda, and Crellin hopes it sets the template for “an in-earnest circus festival” featuring local and itinerant talents.
Johnson and Montgomery’s commitment to younger students remains firm. SANCA’s student body is roughly 75 percent kids and 25 percent adults. It has 10 full-time staff and 40 part-time coaches.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about SANCA is the way it accommodates special-needs kids.
“It wasn’t in my thoughts at the beginning,” Montgomery says. “Then I was approached by someone who said, ‘My son has spinal bifida. Will you work with him?’”
Another of her students is a young man who’s blind. “He came to me for a physical. I asked the parents, ‘What are you doing for exercise?’ And they looked at me like I was crazy. I was like: ‘What? There’s nothing wrong with him except that he can’t see.’ And he’s very good.”
Safety is the number-one priority, Johnson says. “All of our staff believes in a philosophy of safety — emotional safety — and in cooperation. And we have key words that we never use.”
Among those words are “can’t,” “don’t,” “bad” and “wrong.”
If a child says, “I can’t,” the response will be: “Well, you can’t yet.”
“Circus,” Montgomery concludes with a smile, “is very adaptable.”
Michael Upchurch: [email protected]
I began to learn and see the great and superior potential within this beautiful work. I became more driven and filled with fortitude than ever. What an honor it was to be in a school where kindness, humility, discipline and hard work were all strongly encouraged. Shortly after I began training at SANCA I began teaching as well, SANCA became my second home and now as I am always many, many miles away I still feel that closeness.
Now I am finishing my time at l’ecole nationale de cirque de Montreal. I have had experience with Cirque du Soleil, and have performed at international performances such as the 2010 Olympics Opening Ceremony in Vancouver, B.C. I am now preparing for the 32nd Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain opening spectacle. I credit SANCA for starting my career. I would not be who I am today, or experienced the success I have if it were not for those welcoming doors and the people at SANCA who accepted me into their space. SANCA will always have a special place in my heart, and because of SANCA, I will never stop dreaming.
We are Ben Wendel and Rachel Nehmer, trapeze artists known professionally as Duo Madrona. We have performed our trapeze number locally at a variety of venues including the Moisture Festival, nationally with Circus Flora and Teatro Zinzanni, and internationally at Le Cirque de Demain. We have been proud members of the SANCA community since 2004. Over the years we have filled the role of student, instructor, camp counselor, volunteer, office personnel, van driver, tarp stretcher and birthday-cake baker at SANCA.
Fast-forward to January 2008, Paris. We waited anxiously behind the curtain, poised to present our act at the 29th Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain. The festival is one of the top venues for new artists to show their work to the entire global circus community, and only 25 acts are chosen worldwide from thousands of applicants. Nervous, dizzy and disoriented, we struggled to hear the emcee above the pounding of our hearts. Such a mixture of terror and thrill, nausea and elation can make one feel quite alone. However out there in the audience, somewhere in that vast 3,000-seat circus tent was our SANCA family, including founders Chuck Johnson and Jo Montgomery, who had flown from Seattle to Paris in the winter to support us. In fact, this same family had been there for us at every single step, from our first days at the school as disaffected scientists discovering the joy of circus arts, through all the long hours in rehearsal, to representing SANCA as professional artists on an international stage.
For the entirety of our career, SANCA has been our most important resource, the center of our artistic community, and our home. SANCA nurtured us as we made a great leap of faith to follow our dreams and become trapeze artists, and they continue to be a vital force in the community and in our lives personally. Without SANCA we would certainly not be the successful artists we are today.
During my time with SANCA I was a student, instructor, and outreach coordinator. I taught circus classes to students ranging from toddlers to adults, helped to organize and orchestrate their blooming school outreach program, turned screws and bolts where needed, and constantly continued my own personal acrobatic training under the tutelage of Chuck and Jo. I loved my job, and my new circus community. My students were amazing, and the training I received as an instructor was invaluable.
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