Index
Circus — Every Article, Guide and Directory Listing on CommunityCircus
Everything published here, in one place.
The site divides into two halves that are maintained quite differently. Reference material is updated as organisations move, change focus or close, so it is intended to stay current. The articles are written pieces that stand on their own and are revised only when something in them stops being true.
What this index covers, and what it does not
The scope of this site is deliberately narrow. It covers circus as it is actually performed and taught in New Zealand: the organisations that do it, the disciplines they teach, and enough background to make sense of both of those. Anything that changes weekly is left with the organisation that owns it.
That means no timetables, no term dates, no prices and no touring schedules anywhere in the index. Those are exactly the details a directory gets wrong first, and getting them wrong is worse than omitting them, because a stale figure reads as authoritative right up to the moment somebody acts on it.
It also means that individual coaches and one-off workshops are out of scope entirely. They appear and disappear faster than any listing can realistically follow, and a reader who finds one dead entry quickly learns to distrust the live ones alongside it. Established organisations are the unit this index tracks.
What is in scope beyond the directory is the explanatory layer: what each apparatus family demands physically, what a first term actually involves, and where the art form here came from. Those pieces change slowly enough to stay true, which is why they sit alongside a listing that does not.
The result is a site you should be able to read once and then act on, rather than one that quietly rewards returning to it every week. If a page here sends you off to an organisation and you never come back at all, the index has done exactly the job it was built for.
How the coverage is organised
The reference half is arranged so that a reader can start from either end. If you already know which city you are in, the class listings narrow things down first and the discipline guides answer the follow-up question. If you know the discipline but not the venue, the same material works in reverse.
That two-way structure is deliberate, because the two questions arrive in roughly equal numbers from readers. Somebody who has already decided to try aerial silks needs a quite different route through the same information than somebody who simply wants to know what is available within a reasonable drive of home.
The articles sit apart from that structure. They exist to answer the questions that come before any booking: what circus actually is in this country, how it arrived, who performs it now, and why the international company most readers have heard of looks so different from a touring tent show.
Nothing on the site is gated, paginated or held back behind a newsletter sign-up. Every page listed here is a single self-contained document that can be read once and acted on, and this index exists precisely so that none of them depends on the reader having found the previous one first.
Articles
- Nine Facts About Cirque du SoleilWhat the company is, where it came from, how it casts, and why its scale cuts both ways.International
- New Zealand’s Homegrown Circus CompaniesThe touring tent shows and the contemporary theatre-makers, and why they rarely overlap.Companies
- The History of Circus Shows in New ZealandFrom colonial touring troupes and the origin of the ring to the companies working now.Background
- Welcome to CommunityCircusWhat the site covers and the quickest route to the part you came for.Start here
Directory and guides
- The circus directoryEvery school, trust and company operating in New Zealand, grouped by region.
- Circus classesHow a beginner term works, and what the first weeks actually involve.
- Auckland circus classesThe largest choice of schools, city and North Shore.
- Wellington circus classesA central training base and a youth specialist in Porirua.
- Christchurch circus classesA community centre and an independent school.
- Circus skillsAerial, object manipulation and balance — three unrelated families.
- Aerial silksWhat a first term covers, and how the strength is built.
- Hula hoopChoosing a first hoop, and the tricks that come first.
- JugglingLearning the cascade, and what to practise with.
- UnicycleThe steepest entry in circus, and the sharpest breakthrough.
- Cirque du Soleil in New ZealandHow the company tours here and what its shows are like.
- Social circusCircus skills used for participation and inclusion rather than performance.
- Circus glossaryApparatus and technique terms, defined plainly.
Questions people ask
What is covered under circus here?
Everything published on the site: the directory of schools and companies operating around the country, guides to each of the individual disciplines, the glossary, and longer background pieces on the history of the art form here and on Cirque du Soleil as the international reference point that most readers arrive with.
Where should a first-time reader start?
With the national directory if what you want is a school to attend or a show to watch, and with the circus skills guides if you want to understand what a particular discipline actually demands before committing a full term and a term’s fee to finding out the hard way.