Circus as a Spiritual Practice

Part 2: Ever wonder what it takes to be an aerialist in the circus?

Hannah Griffith on the trapeze.

For Flynn Creek trapeze artist Hannah Griffith, circus is a physical and spiritual practice, overcoming bodily and emotional limitations to obtain the freedom of flight. It's a kind of shamanism, performative magic in transcending physical limitations and earth-bound gravity.  Circus performers take a journey of risk, survival, and emergence in their acts; the audience lives adventurously and vicariously through them.

Griffith relates it fundamentally to playing on swings as children, heightened exponentially, with the familiar weight of gravity when moving downward contrasted to the floating feeling when swinging upward.  Amplified on trapeze, that “flow moment” frees the body, using the space of weightlessness at the top of the arc in which to turn, spin, flip, catch.

Trapeze has been Griffith’s life for more than 13 years, yet it retains aspects that remain both terrifying and liberating. On a YouTube video, she offers a meditation on letting go. She begins with light stretching and breathing exercises to center the mind, then guides the imagination to standing vertically on a trapeze bar, then to drop one's heels and release the ropes holding the bar. 

 One is falling, of course, and hands will need to go where feet had been, but in a conceptual shift the body glides down to meet the bar as if the bar is coming up to greet the hands, rather than hands grasping at the bar as the body plummets past. The bar offers safety, actual and psychological.

In the meditation exercise, and for Griffith actually, the velocity of the next movement enables the legs to be tucked back between the arms and over the body, hooking back over the bar to return to a sitting position for the next trick, again a return to safety and stability, even while moving in midair.  She suggests by analogy that anyone may seek the flow moment within the motions of daily life. 

Griffith appreciates that she is one of only a tiny number of people among the mass of humanity who have flown on trapeze, but reflects on the effort to get to those moments. Every act, she relates, started small and progressed as skills grew. Basic skills can be learned, with the astonishment of “I can do this!,” but it’s only the beginning of a journey.  Mastery takes years of training; for Griffith, three years in San Francisco, five years in Montreal, and more than a decade of refinement of her act in performances across five continents.  

She is an enthusiastic fount of information about circus history going back into ancient times and cave-painting evidence of performative arts in prehistory. Her hands are not so much calloused as toughened to the hard smoothness of sanded wood. A five-minute performance may take five hours of preparation on any given day: inspecting the equipment, rehearsal, stretching and breathing and meditation to center herself, makeup and costume, and waiting to go on.

Circus is a supportive community, she said, akin to such spiritual groups as a Buddhist sangha. Further, circus engages socially and spiritually with the audience, exchanging energy and uplifting inspiration.

Many of Flynn Creek’s performers came to circus from dance, gymnastics, and traditional sports; others were born into circus or other performing families. Other circumstances presented different challenges. Anastasiia Popsulys was born and raised in Ukraine, was a professional rhythmic gymnast and then graduated from the Academy of Circus and Variety Arts in Kiev, developing a handstand and magic act. She left her home due to the war, made her way to the United States, and to Sebastopol through Flynn Creek.

Aerial rope artist Eka Malboeuf began with nothing more than desire. She had no experience, other than imaginary plays by herself as a child, no background nor even any aptitude whatsoever, when she happened upon a small local circus school at age 19.  At the time, she was unable to go upside down, do even a single push up, or climb a rope. She just “really” wanted it, and kept at it persistently, day after day, year after year.  She is now in her third year with Flynn Creek, a strength coach, and costume designer.   

Blaze Birge, one of the co-owners of Flynn Creek Circus, was one who started with little experience other than dance, but with curiosity and a sense of adventure. On the night of her high school graduation, she impulsively joined a travelling carnival that had set up across the street. She returned to complete college, then went to Europe to apprentice with a fifth-generation Romanian circus in a support role, then was allowed to train as an aerialist.  

Birge has said that each show is the product of the amount of time it takes to master the craft and the residue of all the failures to get to that success. “What you’re seeing is somebody’s will, somebody’s passion, somebody’s absolute determination.”  

Hannah Griffith calls it “transcendent joy.”  

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Flynn Creek Circus shows at the Sebastopol Grange run two hours, with a 15-minute intermission. They begin with a Family Special show Thursday, Aug. 3, at 7 p.m., and run through Sunday, Aug. 6, at 4 p.m., with two shows on most days and the “Adults Only” show playing once each on Friday and Saturday evening. Tickets are available online and at the door and range from $18 to $185. Check out the ticket, seating and concessions options here.