Wilton-based Flying Gravity Circus is offering online circus skills classes for children after in-person classes and practices disbanded due to the COVID-19 emergency.
“Since everything’s closed, we’re going online,” after school program director Meghan McClure said. Teaching circus skills online is different, but not impossible, she said. Kids might not be able to learn tumbling, unicycle, or rolling globe remotely, but there are plenty of other options.
“We do a lot of juggling,” she said, something that kids can do with common household items like plastic bags – although she’s adjusting her teaching style so most practicing occurs between online classes. “In person, you can have the kids fool around for 15 minutes, online it seems stranger to be just sitting there and having them juggle,” she said.
“We’re still figuring out the switch,” she said, but that she sees potential for instructing students on how to come up with performance sequences, clowning, making their own props, or even optical tricks that work well on video screens, like pretending to walk down a staircase. McClure has had to adjust her teaching style for the online courses.
Online classes are designed to work on a rolling basis and are divided by age group, McClure said. Enrollment was low the first week she offered the program, McClure said, with four kids comprising her largest simultaneous group. There are new faces in the online classes as well as some returnees from the circus’s other programs, she said.
Many of McClure’s ideas come from the circus’s other coaches, including Executive Director Jackie Davis, who wrote the book “DIY Circus Lab for Kids” a couple years ago.
In the past, McClure said she’s worked with area schools including Dublin Consolidated School and the Well School in Peterborough. The circus’s studio typically hosts on-site sessions in Wilton for middle school and high school students, and Saturday morning classes for kids ages 2 through sixth grade. Online classes run from 3:30 to 4:40 p.m. Classes for kids ages 6-7 are on Mondays, ages 8-9 on Wednesdays, and ages 10-12 on Fridays. Classes run on rolling eight-week sessions and cost $95, financial aid is available.
Visit www.circusafterschool.com for more information, or call (603) 801-2825.