How I Ran Away With the Circus & Ended up Starting My First 6-Figure Business

Music, Creation, Legacy, & the Art of Creating Something Larger Than Oneself

At the Grammy’s last night, something big happened. 

Luke Combs & Tracy Chapman did a stripped-down duet of her song from the 80’s ‘Fast Car’, which he had recently done a cover of, boosting it to the top of the charts again, 36 years after its original release.

Why is this so big you might ask? 

In an increasingly polarized country, this moment brought together both sides of the country around a song that speaks to the American Dream, pulling on our heartstrings as we were carried along for the ride. 

Through the music & lyrics, we viscerally experienced the desire to leave behind small-town life, poverty, addiction, and lack of opportunity dreaming of a better life.

This song moved me to tears….again….as it has been doing most of the times that I’ve heard it over the years.

I too grew up in a small town in central Vermont, the oldest daughter of 5, raised by a single mom who struggled to support us financially, but always found ways to barter for food, classes, and opportunities to educate us & let us experience the richness of creativity & the arts in our community.

My 4 siblings and I were mostly homeschooled throughout our early childhood & we weren’t allowed to watch TV or listen to much mainstream music.  We had a record player and stacks of old records, many picked up at yard sales including classical music along with artists our mom approved of like Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, & Peter, Paul, & Mary.

We grew up singing, farming, and reciting all the lines from the few Hollywood movies we were allowed to watch as we weeded long rows of carrots or peas.

We got the opportunity to at least try dance, gymnastics, pottery, languages, and theater along with our everyday pursuits…bike riding, kickball with the neighborhood kids, tree climbing, and building forts in the woods up the street from our house.

Our homeschooling curriculum included lots of reading, writing, & research, especially in whatever areas we were drawn to and wanted to dig more deeply into.  I am truly thankful for the education I received and the lessons I learned that are distinctively different than those taught in a conventional classroom.  I learned to trust & follow my curiosity without judging or questioning where it was leading me.  I was a voracious reader and enjoyed the process of researching a subject deeply and writing about it afterward…all skills that have served me very well on my life path.

Many of the lessons I learned from my childhood came from watching the people around me.  Vermont draws an interesting mix of artists, creatives, political thinkers, farmers, lovers of the outdoors, traditionalists, & intellectuals…along with the working-class people who were born there & grew up there for their whole lives. 

There are common threads that connect these different community members. One of these was a deep love and respect for the land, for the mountains, rivers, and trees.  Another was a desire to leave a legacy, whether it was by building, growing, or leading music groups, writing songs, or recording albums. 

A desire to diverge from the beaten path & do something new….to be a part of something bigger than just oneself.

There were lots of examples of ordinary people who created something extraordinary & touched the lives of thousands of others. 

Ben & Jerry’s is one Vermont company I’m pretty sure everyone has heard of.  They started their small ice cream business with nothing but a $5 correspondence course from Penn State in ice cream making and a dream of creating an incredible new ice cream experience in an abandoned gas station in Burlington, Vermont.

Bread & Puppet was another inspirational fixture of Vermont life.  We attended their ‘Domestic Resurrection Circus’ weekends almost every summer of my childhood.  This was a unique event drawing thousands (& later hundreds of thousands) of people into tiny Glover, Vermont to partake of all kinds of music, performances, arts & crafts, political theater, speakers, free German sourdough bread & garlic aioli baked by volunteers and given away all weekend, & of course, the main event, the Domestic Resurrection Circus which contained giant puppets, music, political comedy & satire commenting on issues of the day, and a ritual where they burned a giant man at the end of the show (precursor to the giant Burning Man Festival of today)

And of course, I was strongly influenced by my music mentor, Larry Gordon, founder of Vermont Harmony, which became Village Harmony and many other offshoots for teens and adults.  He helped revive the Shape note music of the 1700s-1800s and led choral groups that performed and traveled all over the world which I had the opportunity to be a part of. He touched the lives of thousands of people by sharing this rich music tradition, making it accessible to everyone, and bringing people together around this music that he was passionate about.

Much of the future trajectory of my life was shaped by the experiences I had and the lessons I learned in those years of touring with Larry.  I got to experience my first travel abroad when I went to England & Scotland in the 1990s with his Village Harmony teen group.  We stayed with families in each village or city that we performed in, so we truly got to experience what life was like in each of these places…not to mention seeing cathedrals, castles, Hadrian’s Wall, & many other historical landmarks.

After I graduated (early) from high school, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, so I deferred my college acceptances and embarked on a journey of exploration to help me decide where I fit in in the world.

First, I traveled cross country visiting friends at various stops on the way from the East Coast to the West Coast and then spending a few months at the Evergreen State College in Washington & trying out the experience of dropping into classes with friends, dabbling in art and music, and experiencing my first psilocybin vision quest which I’ll never forget out in the magical rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula.

Then I rejoined Larry with another group he led, Northern Harmony, a group of adults where we traveled and performed across Europe, visiting a host of different countries including Iceland, the Faroe Islands, England, Scotland, Germany, Italy, & Croatia.  I thrived on this experience of connecting with many different types of people, seeing what life was like in many other countries, with the beautiful thread of music weaving us together and helping us to touch the lives of others across the world.

I decided to go to Oberlin College with help from several different Oberlin alums who were a part of these musical experiences.  I was drawn to the history of the college, how it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad and had been the first college to admit women & black people back in the days when these populations were excluded from higher education. 

I loved the idea of the ‘Co-op’ programs where you lived cooperatively and collectively shared the tasks of shopping, cooking, & cleaning up after meals instead of eating in the dining halls.  I knew Oberlin had a colorful history of music, arts, and theater, and at the time I was interested in studying Environmental Design, and their program came highly recommended.

Of course, if you know anything about me you know I didn’t end up in the Environmental Design field (small department, one male professor/department head, and I was unable to get into the classes I needed to continue past ES 101)

However, the education and inspiration that I got from my time at Oberlin organically led me onto the start of this path that I’ve been following for the last 15 years. 

During my second year, I got drawn (not surprisingly) into the Department of Theater & Dance, especially enjoying my classes in Modern Dance, Contact Improvisation, Anatomy, and Choreography. 

I took a year in San Francisco, studying at the then San Francisco Center for Circus Arts, taking classes in Corde Lisse (Aerial Rope, my first love), Static Trapeze, Contortion, Hand-balancing, & Acrobatics.  I suffered through my first major heartbreaks, I made friends with other aligned humans (some of whom I am friends with to this day), and we inspired each other through our diverse set of interests, passions, and creations.

Although I had planned to move to San Francisco after graduating, my sister Elizabeth convinced me to try out LA instead.  She had moved there six months before me and had already made some connections in the circus scene.  She suggested that with the potential of Film, TV, and Commercial work available there, Hollywood was potentially a better place for work than the weird artsy San Francisco circus scene.

Perhaps we were also influenced by those early years of only being allowed to watch a few movies that we memorized so that we could entertain ourselves by reciting as we weeded. 

Perhaps all those years of performing & being a part of something larger than ourselves had inspired us to want to join the hordes of aspiring artists and performers who are drawn to HollyWeird to try to make it in the largest entertainment capital of the world. 

At any rate, I succumbed to the comfort of moving to a place with a few work connections and someone I already knew, and although I never would have imagined being in Hollywood forever, it has been over 15 years now.

After my sister and I split ways as a Circus Duo (she went on to leave the Circus world & become a successful established Stunt Performer) I struggled to redefine myself as a solo performer.  I had never actually wanted to be a soloist.  Some people shine when they’re all alone in the spotlight, and I can create as captivating of a solo act as anyone and have done so many times.

But my real love is for working together with others.  For the feeling of creating something larger than the sum of the parts.  For bringing together all the different elements that we draw from as Artists…music, movement, shapes, levels, interaction, & connection and creating a narrative or a journey that draws the audience into the experience & makes them feel like they are a part of the performance too.

Like Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs, I desired to transform the world with the work that I was creating.  I desired to find a way to draw different types of people together into a shared experience.  As I had seen in the life’s work of Peter Schuman, the creator of Bread & Puppet, or Larry Gordon, my music mentor, I longed to get my views and ideas out to a wide range of audiences and to allow them to question the commonplace narratives that we are delivered. 

I wanted to show them the grander, more mysterious possibilities that exist when we follow our passions with curiosity and open-mindedness, when we bring people together when we use our art to ask questions that have fascinated humans for centuries…Why are we here?  What is this life all about anyway?  Where is my place in the world?

I started to teach Aerial and Contortion, and soon started the Circus Collective that would eventually become Dream World Cirque.  It started small, with just a duo adagio partner, a few exceptionally talented students, and a dream to share our experiences and stories through the language of Acrobatics and Aerial to help bring magic, new ideas, and new possibilities into the sphere of our audiences. 

We performed at Corporate Events, County Fairs, School Fundraisers, Gala events for non-profits, Private parties, Theme parks, Nightclubs, College Campuses, even the Playboy Mansion…and many more live events.  I learned as I went about the art of providing exactly what your client asks for in terms of colors, vision, theme, & music, while still trying to include a little bit of added depth through the characters that we created & the connections we built.

We showcased the spectacular potential of the human journey through daring acrobatic feats while still delving into the range of human experience from disconnection & desolation, to love, passion, loss, and connection, and re-discovering again the magic of life when we open our hearts to the wild kaleidoscope of the mysteries of life.

Through the process of exploring, creating, & creating content with others, my intent wasn’t to build a 6-figure company & a network of hundreds of artists we could draw on in our performances, but that’s what ended up happening. 

With our goal of exceeding the expectations of our audiences, we established a wide array of companies, venues, and planners that came back to us year after year, and we were always creating new ideas, storylines, content, and creations for the different events that we performed at.

Most importantly, in the process of creating my company, I created a community.  Most of my closest friends are performers with me in my company, and we’ve shared so many adventures and experiences that have made our relationships stronger, deeper, & more powerful.

Through music, art, and creation we created our living, vibrant world & invited our audiences in.  The arts truly have the power to bring people together and let them feel how we are all connected. 

In the fractured reality of these times, I am proud and grateful to have traveled this winding road with so many aligned artists and to have had the privilege of creating such a far-reaching body of work.  I look forward to more magical adventures and connections along the path.

For more information about Dream World Cirque you can find us at:

www.DreamWorldCirque.com

www.instagram.com/dreamworldcirque/

www.facebook.com/DreamWorldCirque/