I have made my career as a dancer, physical theatre performer, director, and teacher. In 2005, I joined Salpaus Circus Artist Education (SaSaK), a vocational-level circus school in Lahti, as a teacher for dance and expression. Since 2005, SaSak has included contemporary dance and expression in its circus training curriculum. Witnessing the latest results of combining the two artistic forms has made me consider that this current form of physical expression could provide a new direction and opportunities for both circus and dance.

Today’s circus students seem to enjoy contemporary dance classes because for many of them, it has brought another, perhaps more artistic and personal way of expressing themselves. One reason for this could be that circus today does not solely aim at presenting circus tricks in a traditional entertainment style, where the primary objective is achieving the “wow” moment of usually the final or most dangerous trick. Circus today more often looks towards contemporary dance for tools with which to work, in order to restart or reshape the idea of the traditional circus act. There is now a need to develop a moving body with its own individual movement-based virtuosity, combined with a type of dramaturgy that escapes the stereotypical order of creating and presenting circus tricks. As Sean Gandini, co-founder of Gandini Juggling, stated: “In circus we are imprisoned by our skill much more than in other disciplines”. Gandini has found methods to escape those limitations...