For the past two decades, I have risen each morning and thought I am the luckiest person in the world. I lead a company, Circa, that I love, doing work that I love with great people.
Twenty years ago, building on the stubbornly hard work of the previous seventeen years of Rock n Roll Circus, I changed the name of and cemented a new direction the company. Circa. It was contemporary, uncompromising, elusive, and strange. Much misunderstood, heavily doubted and somewhat under loved, it was a perfect platform for voyaging into the unknown. Circus that moves the heart, the mind and soul, the company was dedicated to reimagining the future of circus.
I was blessed with great collaborators and good luck – enough breaks went our way for us to develop. From an ensemble of three, we are now around thirty, from a base in Brisbane we now have additional homes in Cairns and satellite bases around the world, from work that perplexed and confused we make work that connects and moves even if it still challenges and sometimes perplexes. Our classes offerings have matured into the Circa Academy and Circa Cairns now gives proud opportunity and voice to First Nations-led circus. And every year our team creates, delivers and performs around 300 shows across fifteen or so countries.
It is my life’s creative work, and I am immensely proud of the shows we have created, the artists we have helped develop and the emotional and intellectual contributions we have made to what is possible in circus. I often reflect on what I’m still doing here and I recall Ann Carson’s line that “existence will not stop until it gets to beauty”. For me the beauty of circus is its ability to present powerful truths and ephemeral states with the thrill of the embodied – it contains within it the charge of true revelation. Circa will not stop because such beauty is as rare as it is inexhaustible and I look forward to the next decades of hunting it.
Yaron Lifschitz
Artistic Director and CEO