While growing up, many of us threatened our parents with running away and joining the circus if we didn’t get our way.
For Tiffany Warden, a world religions and East Asian studies student at the University of Toronto, the circus doesn’t mean the big top with clowns, tigers and bike stunts. For her, the circus means contemporary circus(also known as le nouveau cirque), akin to Cirque de Soleil.
Tiffany trains and works out of Toronto School of Circus Arts, and tours with its production company Cirque Sublime.
I recently asked her some questions about what it is like juggling her studies and a career in the circus.
Q. Tell us about teaching at the Toronto School of Circus Arts.
A. I teach there two to three times a week, mostly doing what’s called “working the board” on the flying trapeze rig. I’m the one who fishes for the safety lines and hooks the next flyer up and gives the odd tip before they take off the board again.
I also work a lot of corporate groups, which is usually using circus arts to help build morale and team spirit within a business group, or to congratulate the team on a particular job well done.
Q. What is it like being a performer for Cirque Sublime? How often do you go on tour and what do you do?
A. Performing is the most fun aspect of being in the whole circus world, and I work as hard as I do at my various jobs in order to be able to continue to do it! Tours are generally one to three weeks long at a time (because while we’re away, classes at the school can’t run) and happen two or three times a year.
I perform a duo hoop act with my good friend Laura (two girls, one hoop) and I’m debuting an aerial rope act later this month as a solo piece.
Q. Why did you decide to complete your degree part-time while simultaneously working?
A.Not because it’s easy! Circus is like dance or something where you only have a small window of time in which your body can do the things demanded of it by the job. If I had waited to finish my degree, I would have missed some of the best learning years of my circus career. Once you hit late 20s-early 30s, it’s hard to gain things like flexibility; usually a person can only maintain what they have.
Q. Considering all of the things you do (Tiffany also designs costumes for cosplay and renaissance fairs, models, and works another part-time job)–for work or for fun–what would you eventually like to do career-wise?
A. Circus, for sure, is what I want to do, for as long as I can do it. When I start to break down (and everybody does eventually) I wouldn’t mind seeing if I could meld circus with some form of burlesque.
I would also love to combine cosplay and the anime convention scene with circus, creating a couple acts based around certain characters from certain animes, dressing up as them and performing to music from the show. I think fans would eat it up, and I could basically get to go to every convention for free and then some. I may actually try this at the upcoming Anime North here in Toronto.
Q. Anything else I left out you want to add?
A. Just that I was always the super awkward girl at the back of the dance class, so if I can make money doing this, there’s hope for everyone!
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