Pedagogical Project

“Circus is a silent concatenation, the art of performing without words, anti-theater. It is a great and demanding school. The profession of doing twenty jobs at once.”
Charlie Chaplin

The Cirko Vertigo Foundation boasts decades of experience as a center of excellence for training in the circus arts and as an international center for the creation and production of shows and events, as well as a venue for artistic residencies. Its educational activities, therefore, begin as a professional training course and culminate in the recognition of a three-year university degree. The creation of a university program in Contemporary Circus Arts is a momentous turning point for Italy, filling a significant gap compared to Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, and France. The Foundation is now a point of reference for hundreds of students and a residence for young artists from around the world who are embarking on a journey aimed at developing a career in live performance.

The Academy’s primary mission is to train contemporary circus artists through:

• The acquisition of physical qualities, artistic flair, creativity, and personality;
• The transmission of skills for managing one’s professional career, including fiscal, administrative, and legal aspects.

The school does not intend to provide students with a standardized, predefined training program; rather, it aims to discover each individual’s artistic individuality and to enhance, through the quality of their work, the individual universe developed during their training, within the widest range of expressive possibilities.

The program developed during the three-year program aims to enable each student to achieve the educational objectives of the degree program, which are formulated based on the requirements of the professional world.
These objectives are:

• To offer students the opportunity to master artistic, technical, and expressive tools through which they can best develop their personality, their body awareness, and their role within a group or community.
• To train circus artists who are able to both practice their art and adapt to the evolution of contemporary circus by creating new expressive languages.
• To recognize and develop each student’s artistic abilities and qualities as performers/authors.
• To enable artists to acquire and enhance the skills necessary to build a professional career.

The training program aims to convey the following values ​​and pedagogical intentions:

• Expressing oneself through one’s body and accepting exposure to others
• Practicing observing the work of others and providing constructive feedback
• Encouraging the search for one’s own role within the arts of contemporary circus
• Knowing how to evaluate oneself objectively
• Developing motor skills and building body language
• Stimulating curiosity, openness of expression, and technical boldness
• Learning through trial and error by using the effects of one’s actions
• Learning to plan one’s actions before carrying them out
• Adopting ethical and responsible behaviors towards the environment and health through a reasoned, knowledge-based approach
• Mobilizing various resources (physiological, biomechanical, psychological, emotional) to act effectively and safely
• Repeating a gesture to stabilize it and make it more effective
• Creating an artistic project
• Acquiring specific techniques to improve efficiency
• Promoting the lifestyle habits necessary for physical well-being and mental
• Managing performance anxiety
• Learning to cope with fear, fatigue, and pain
• Develop critical, constructive, and personal thinking
• Be open to corrections and be able to evaluate them
• Be open to the diversity of artistic practices and cultures
• Respect shared space, tools, and materials
• Develop the habit of direct and professional communication
• Respect others, rules, and the shared life of the community, and learn to adapt

In a curriculum where the body is the primary means of expression, to ensure its protection and maximum efficiency/control, students are introduced to various techniques and are guided and supported in developing an appropriate methodology to explore their creative field.

The disciplines studied are divided into:

• Basic preparation disciplines (e.g., physical preparation and flexibility)
• Specialty disciplines (from aerial disciplines to juggling and balancing)
• Theoretical, research, and creative subjects

More than twenty disciplines are studied throughout the program. Theoretical subjects include the history of circus, theater, dance, and film, anatomy and biomechanics, sports psychology, communication, marketing, and entertainment economics. Practical subjects include floor acrobatics, costume and makeup techniques, theater, classical and contemporary dance.

For the complete program, please write to accademia@cirkovertigo.com

Masterclass

Each year, the Academy organizes masterclasses for students in various disciplines with external guest instructors. This study opportunity aims to deepen methodologies, enrich, and suggest new work/learning approaches.

Open stage

The program includes Open Stage sessions held periodically in the Chapiteau. Students can voluntarily present to their classmates and instructors an idea in progress, one that has not yet been developed and transformed. This is an instinctive performance whose outcome is unknown, an exercise in free expression through movement, improvisation, and the connection between all the techniques acquired.

Curricular Internships

The internship is a training program designed to practice the profession of contemporary circus artist in all its many facets. It provides experience within circus production and training organizations, performances in general, circus and social theater, and socio-educational services and associations located nationally and internationally. The 12 students are involved in both the performance and the various phases leading up to and following it: promotion, setup of structures, training and rehearsals, dismantling structures, sound and lighting, training, organizational, and community activities. Each year, the two-year students, monitored by their tutor and the faculty, will complete 360 ​​hours of internships, alternating their training.