Wild Horizon festival plants a flag for circus performance in Philadelphia

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

If you’ve ever wanted to run away and join the circus, Cherry Street Pier can give you a taste of what that might be like this weekend.

Wild Horizon is a free, two-day festival of circus and play, ranging from performances involving circus physicality to workshops giving audience members a chance to learn basic circus skills.

“There are also performative interactive experiences that are not quite a workshop and not quite a performance but invite you to play along,” said producing director Ben Grinberg, of Almanac Projects. “There is performance of all kinds that embraces the concept of play and encouraging us to play more in public space.”

Wild Horizon was created in the wake of the announcement that Germantown-based Circadium, the only accredited circus school in the United States, will shut down on June 1 due to changes in federal funding policies made by the Trump administration.

Last year, Circadium organized the inaugural Philadelphia Contemporary Circus Festival, and, in previous years, it worked with FringeArts to present the annual Hand to Hand circus festival. Both of those festivals have been discontinued.

FringeArts, which will host Circadium’s final graduation performances on May 26 and 27, programs occasional circus-based performances year-round. About 10% of the more than 300 productions in the annual Fringe Festival are circus-based performances, according to CEO and producing director Nell Bang-Jensen.

Grinberg, who served on the faculty of Circadium, wanted to demonstrate that Philadelphia is still a circus town, despite setbacks.

“There are so many artists who live and work here, and so much amazing thinking and experimentation that comes out of Philadelphia,” he said. “Even though Circadium is closing, we really want to keep Philadelphia on the radar as a center of circus innovation.”

Even students in the Philadelphia School District learn circus skills through an after-school program run by Rebel Arts Movement. The company will bring some of its middle school students to the Wild Horizon festival to operate four stations on Cherry Street Pier to teach children and adults fundamental circus skills.

“When we think about a festival based on play and imagination, and bringing a spirit of play and freedom back to public space, who better to look to than young people who have not forgotten how to do that,” Grinberg said. “As many adults have.”

The weekend following Wild Horizon will see the arrival of one of the most popular circus companies in the world, Cirque du Soleil, with the local premiere of its new show, “Luzia.” The festival on Cherry Street Pier could act as a primer.

“Sometimes you watch circus, and you’re, like, ‘Oh, yeah, that was kind of cool,’” Grinberg said. “But when you’re just coming from the experience of having tried to do something pretty basic, you’re like, ‘I actually know how hard that is, now.’”

Wild Horizon occurs all day Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3, at Cherry Street Pier. Several events will recur both days while others are one day only.