Open Ring Circus is an arts and entertainment company based in Philadelphia, USA. Our productions incorporate contemporary acrobatic dance-theatre and dynamic aerial artistry with original music, interactive sets, and inventive lighting design, resulting in truly visionary immersive experiences. Open Ring Circus collaborates with a diverse collective of performing artists, musicians, and visual artists to create works that captivate and transport audiences to new realms of exploration and possibility.
Open Ring Circus’ current project honors the history and implications of the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944, which claimed the lives of 167 audience members during a live Ringling Brothers show. This production explores social constructs of public safety, humanity and emotion in the face of unthinkable disaster, and traces the roots of today’s Cirque Nouveau movement back to the traditions of one of America’s oldest artistic institutions…finding meaning and cultural parallels within the cycles of death, rebirth, and evolution.
This production is currently in creation at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts, and will be touring the US in summer and fall 2019.