Phoenix Academy of Performing Arts of Pennsylvania will host its first live circus arts production with three performances this weekend.
Cirque Phoenix, the organization’s circus arts production company, will offer an original performance of “Within A Dream” at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday in the academy’s new facility at 118 Hawbaker Industrial Drive in Patton Township.
Tickets are $12 for adults and $6 for kids 13 and younger and are available through the academy’s website.
Phoenix Academy opened its new facility in November, offering instruction for children, teens and adults in gymnastics, dance and, for the first time in the region, circus arts.
“This area has never had a space dedicated to the performance and teaching of the circus arts and this first production is a way to show the skills we are teaching our students to learn and perform,” Dmitry Myers, circus arts program and creative director, said.
Myers, who has been a circus arts performer for 10 years and opened the academy with former Nittany Gymnastics instructor Finda Reichert, will be featured in the performance along with Kai Phoenix and student artists Benjamin Sidore, Emily Kirsten and Brielle Long.
Circus arts combines dance, theater, gymnastics and aerial acrobatics, Myers previously explained. The academy offers circus arts classes for kids and adults, including aerial apparatus, tumbling acrobatics, handstands, flexibility and alignment.
“The number of adults and kids that want to learn circus is amazing,” Myers said. “The thing about the circus is that it comes into town, and it disappears. You set up for five, six days, maybe a week and then it packs up and goes away. How do you learn to do that? How do you get that knowledge? Circus has never been done here, other than Ringling coming, Cirque du Soleil coming and doing a show. There have never been circus classes here.”
Myers was a competitive gymnast and is professionally trained in ballet, with performance experience in all forms of dance in productions around the country. He’s also a professional circus artist who studied at the National Circus School of Canada and Circus Warehouse, taught at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts and has extensive experience in the flying trapeze.
He had been training at Nittany Gymnastics since he was a young child growing up in State College and was a teacher and coach there. Reichert was a gymnastics instructor at Nittany for a decade and coaches a champion USA Independent Gymnastics Club team that was based at the gym.
When Nittany Gymnastics closed in 2020, the two friends decided to strike out on their own, taking what they learned at Nittany Gymnastics and adding their own twist. After a year of planning, as well as some stops at temporary locations, Myers and Reichert opened Phoenix Academy in November at the former Wesco Lighting property, just off of North Atherton Street.
For more information about Phoenix Academy, visit its website at www.phoenixacademystatecollege.com.
