About the Festival

FringeArts and Circadium School of Contemporary Circus present the sixth annual Hand to Hand circus festival May 31st—June 2nd in the FringeArts theater. The 2024 Hand to Hand lineup celebrates the remarkable skill and artistry of local circus performers over the course of a weekend of thrilling events for the whole family. Get ready for juggling, aerials, acrobatics, clowning, and more.

About Begin Again

Friday, May 31 at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 1 at 3pm + 7:30pm

Begin Again is a contemporary circus show created by the Circadium students under the direction of Ty Vennewitz. Taking inspiration from the book Einstein’s Dreams, they have reimagined time through the lens of circus. What if time went backwards, cause was not related to effect, or there was no time, only images. Witness a movement palindrome, a human clock, acrobatics of relativity and a dash of comedic…timing.

Artists

Artistic Director Ty Vennewitz
Thomas Miller, juggling
Four Dillon, contortion
Hailey Van Nyhuis, trapeze
Harley Quigley, aerial sling
Nyla Welsh, handbalancing
Bailey Luk, aerial straps
Ava Gowanloch, contortion
Mx Battles, acrobatics
Galus Hosford, acrobatics
Reagan Needham, lyra
Acacia Trimble-Carlson, acrobatics
Arianna Caiola, acrobatics
Maggie Marko, contortion

Ty Vennewitz  grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He graduated from WWU with a BA in Dance, performed in the Portland Opera, A-Wol Dance Collective and a dental commercial as a ballet-dancing-molar.  Ty’s obsession with circus took him to the National Circus School in Montreal, where he donned the world’s smallest mask, a red nose, and studied clowning… seriously.  He has performed for Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize, Creativiva and numerous others. He currently lives in Ashland Oregon where he founded the Levity Circus Collective with his amazing wife Maureen.  

Program

All quotes are from Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

Fireflies
Performed by Acacia, Arianna, Galus, Maggie, Mx, Reagan
Music: Polyghost by Bonobo

“Suppose that time is not a quantity but a quality, like the luminescence of the night above the trees just when a rising moon touched the treeline.” 

Cluggle Dance   
Performed by Ava, Bailey, Hailey, Harley, Nyla, Thomas
Music: Shadows by Bonobo

“In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.”

Thomas’s Talks
“In the long, narrow office on Speichergasse, the room full of practical ideas, the young patent clerk still sprawls in his chair, head down on his desk. For the past several months, since the middle of April, he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. But the dreaming is finished. Out of the many possible natures of time, imagined in as many nights, one seems compelling. Not that the others are impossible. The others might exist in other worlds.

The young man shifts in his chair, waiting for the typist to come, and softly hums from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.”

Acro River
Performed by the whole cast
Music: Beyond Beliefs by Ben Bohmer 

“There is a place where time stands still…As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly.”

Four on the Floor
Performed by Four
Music: Begin Again by Ben Bohmer

“In this world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a passing breeze. Now and then, some cosmic disturbance will cause a rivulet of time to turn away from the mainstream, to make connection backstream.”

Image-In-Pacro
Performed by Acacia, Arianna, Galus, Maggie, Mx, Reagan
Music: Hunting Bears by Radiohead

“Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.”

Trap Time
Performed by Hailey & whole cast
Music: Time by Pink Floyd

“Inside the temple, twelve pilgrims stand in a circle around the Great Clock, one for each hour mark on the huge configuration of metal and glass.”

Hardly Slinky
Performed by Harley
Music: Canon Cancrizans by Bach

“For in this world, time does pass, but little happens. Just as little happens from year to year, little happens from month to month, day to day.”

Type, Juggle, Repeat
Performed by Thomas & Acacia

Not Con Trio
Performed by Ava, Four, Maggie
Music: Tres Hermanos by Los Hermanos Gutiérrez

“For in this world, time has three dimensions, like space.”

Slap…STICK!!!
Performed by Arianna, Acacia, Bailey, Galus, Mx, Thomas
Music: Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven

“Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first.”

Bacrobatics
Performed by Ava, Hailey, Maggie, Nyla, Reagan
Music: Polkism by Laurent Dury

“In this world, time flows backward.”

Groupoop
Performed by the whole cast
Music: Halcyon and On and On by Orbital

“For time is like the light between two mirrors. Time bounces back and forth, producing an infinite number of images, of melodies, of thoughts. It is a world of countless copies.”

Hoop, Type, Juggle
Performed by Thomas & Acacia

Triangel
Performed by Harley, Bailey, Reagan, Mx, Galus, Nyla
Music: Experience by Ludovico Einaudi

“At some time in the past, scientists discovered that time flows more slowly the farther from the center of the earth.”

Recap River
Performed by the whole cast
Music: Time Is On My Side by Irma Thomas

Special thanks to WPM Typewriter Shop.

About Circadium

Begin Again was produced by Circadium, the country’s only accredited higher education program for circus.  As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Circadium relies on donations for this work. 

And thanks to our generous supporters, no student pays the full cost of a Circadium education. Your contributions help expand our capacity, keep tuition affordable, and launch the next generation of circus artists.  www.circadium.edu/donate/