More than 55 performers, stagehands, and staff from Sarasota, Florida traveled to the National Mall over Labor Day weekend to show Washington audiences what actually goes into staging a circus. Inside the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building, the Circus Arts Conservatory presented three days of free programming built around a simple idea: the circus is not just what happens under the lights, but everything that happens to get it there.
A Sarasota Institution Takes the National Stage
The program, called Artistry, Education, and Labor of Circus Arts, was presented by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as part of its Labor Day weekend lineup at the Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall, according to Cleveland 19 News. Visitors watched juggling acts and displays of flexibility, but the program also pulled back the curtain on hand-crafted costumes and the traditions stagehands rely on when working with one another backstage, the station reported.
Jennifer Mitchell, who leads the Circus Arts Conservatory, told the outlet that the Sarasota contingent was proud to represent its hometown craft on a national platform. “More than 55 of us came up from Sarasota, Florida, and it's a privilege and an honor to showcase circus here in our nation's capital,” Mitchell said, per the station's report. Mitchell became President and CEO of the Circus Arts Conservatory in late 2024, after co-founders Pedro Reis and Dolly Jacobs stepped down from executive leadership, according to Your Observer.
More Than a Performance
Betty Aquino, also quoted in the same report, said the showcase was designed to honor everything that supports a circus act, not just the act itself. “The circus is not merely just performance. There are so many parts that make up the circus, and we're here to celebrate every single aspect of that,” Aquino said. She added that the small rituals stagehands share with one another are themselves a form of folklife worth preserving and presenting to the public.
Circus arts serve as a lifetime career craft for the performers involved, and the program's design reflected that reality by opening backstage areas to the audience rather than keeping the labor hidden. An interactive physics lesson was also built into the program, explaining the science behind circus performances, so that visitors left with an understanding of the engineering as well as the artistry involved.
Roots Going Back to 1927
The showcase carries extra weight given Sarasota's history as the self-described Circus Capital of the World, a reputation the city earned after John Ringling relocated the winter quarters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus there on Christmas Day in 1927, according to WUSF. That relocation let performers train year-round and turned the city into a lasting cultural hub for circus families.
The Circus Arts Conservatory itself grew out of that lineage. It was co-founded in 1997 as Circus Sarasota by aerialist Dolly Jacobs, daughter of famed Ringling clown Lou Jacobs, and former trapeze artist Pedro Reis, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. The organization later folded in Sarasota's Sailor Circus Academy, founded in 1949 as a Sarasota High School gymnastics class for children of Ringling circus performers, which remains the longest-running youth circus program in the country according to Your Observer.
A Building With Its Own History
The Smithsonian program also carried symbolic weight for the venue itself. The showcase took place inside the Arts and Industries Building, which opened on the National Mall in 1881 as the first United States National Museum, per the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Circus arts had appeared on the Mall before, in a 2017 Folklife Festival that erected a full big top tent featuring performers like the Flying Wallendas alongside youth training organizations, according to the Smithsonian Institution.
According to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, its 2017 “The Three-Ringed Life” series explored the lives of circus workers and their experiences on the road. The Smithsonian’s 1996 Festival of American Folklife also invited visitors to look behind the scenes and meet Smithsonian workers in every field, according to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The Smithsonian says the Arts and Industries Building opened in 1881 as the country’s first U.S. National Museum and is the institution’s second-oldest building. Smithsonian Institution Archives records show that the 96-year-old Art and Industries Building was set to reopen on May 10, 1976, after partial restoration.
This year's edition landed within the Smithsonian's broader Culture Of, By, and For the People programming, which is marking 250 years of American history through living cultural traditions, Your Observer reported. Sarasota's Circus Arts Conservatory was featured in Sarasota culture coverage last year as well, underscoring its ongoing role in the city's arts scene even as its performers now travel far beyond Florida to tell their story.
