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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.
Ben Grinberg, at Fidget Space in Fishtown, co-founded the Cannonball Festival in 2021, in part to provide a space for experimental dance. (Peter Crimmins/WHYY)
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.”