Our Story
Every trick
deserves
a name.
CircusConnect was born from a simple frustration: two circus artists trying to communicate about their own craft, discovering the language didn't exist yet.
Born from duo
We were doing the thing —
we just couldn't name it.
It started when we began training duo together. Duo is one of the most communication-intensive disciplines in circus — every movement requires precise coordination between partners, and the difference between a clean sequence and a dangerous one often comes down to a shared vocabulary.
But we kept running into the same wall: we didn't have names for half the things we were doing. And when we searched for them, we found that names weren't consistent either — the same move might be called five different things depending on where you trained, who your coach was, or what country you're from.
Circus is an art form built on trust and timing. But without a shared language, even that trust becomes harder to build. Teaching, learning, and progressing all slow down when you can't clearly say what you mean.
"If you can't name it, you can't teach it. You can't reference it. You can't build on it."
So we set out to build the resource we wished had existed: a community-driven knowledge base where every trick, every discipline, every name gets documented, debated, and agreed upon — together.
The vision
But we saw something
much bigger.
A trick directory was just the beginning. The circus world needed more than names — it needed a home.
Circus is fragmented by apparatus, by school, by country. Practitioners train in relative isolation — reinventing the same progressions, recovering from the same preventable injuries, debating names that should already be settled. The knowledge exists. It just isn't connected.
We want CircusConnect to be infrastructure — the shared knowledge layer that every discipline benefits from. Not a product. Not a database. A living commons that the community owns, maintains, and builds on.
That means documenting not just tricks but the pathways between them. Not just schools but the coaches, mentors, and traveling artists who make community possible.
Open by default
Anyone can contribute. Every correction, addition, and debate makes the resource better for everyone.
Cross-disciplinary
No apparatus gets left behind. Aerial, ground, object manipulation, and everything between.
Community-owned
No single voice, no single school, no single country. The consensus belongs to everyone.
Standing on shoulders
Inspired by what
came before.
We're not the first to attempt this. Trapeze Net (flying-trapeze.com) built an invaluable resource for the flying trapeze community — documenting tricks, terminology, and technique in a way that served many, many flyers. Their work showed us it was possible and necessary.
Our goal is to extend that spirit across every circus discipline — not just one — and to build the collaborative, open-source infrastructure that makes it sustainable and self-correcting over time.