Elena Stanciu

Around About Circus • 28th August 2026

Imago Mundi: the speculative minimalism of SYMBIOSIS

Interview with performing arts company Symbiosis. 2026

Around About Circus • 11th August 2026

Things we need in times of crisis: a throwback to the 2026 UP - Circus & Performing Arts Festival

A review and op-ed on contemporary circus and performing arts, as hosted by UP Festival in Brussels, 2026. Published by Around About Circus.

Around About Circus • 16th May 2025

The Great Dreams of the Grand Danois

Cirkus Grand Danois This article is part of the CIRCUS FROM THE NORTH series in which we engage with this rich and exciting region and its emerging aesthetics within circus creation. What is a circus dream? Is it the promise of freedom and...

Around About Circus • 28th September 2024

On Nordicness and Contemporary Nomadism: Interview with Jakob Jacobsson

The Nordic Council is a trio of artists from Finland, Iceland, and Sweden (Merri Heikilä, Bjarni Árnason, and Jakob Jacobsson), who have been creating contemporary circus shows about Nordic identities and Nordic themes since 2017. The aesthetic and...

11th September 2024

DYNAMO Magazine #4: Process, Practice, Perspective - Spark and Origin in Contemporary Circus

What should we make of invisible traces of artistic process? How do we (or should we) differentiate between the work of art and the work of the artist? How does a piece of art come to be - what was the initial spark? What is the first idea? And what...

Around About Circus • 14th August 2024

UP Festival 2024: the Ethos of a European festival

Thanks to Visit Brussels and our involvement in the INCAM network, from 26th to 29th March Around About Circus participated in the biannual Festival UP PROS days led by the eponymous circus creation centre in the quarter of Molenbeek. If one of the UP...

Around About Circus • 30th May 2024

Joyful Juggling Frenzy: Wes Peden in Rollercoaster

An interview with Wes Peden about his concept solo show [by Elena Stanciu and Valentina Barone] Early in 2024, we saw Wes Peden with Rollercoaster at SMELLS LIKE CIRCUS in Gent. On the stage of the Theaterzaal at VierNulVier, Wes Peden’s inflatable,...

Around About Circus • 29th May 2024

Entanglements, Kinship, Clown and Politics

A conversation with Laura Murphy and Nicole A’Court Stuart[by Elena Stanciu and Valentina Barone] Blending clown, performance art, spoken word, autobiographical storytelling and aerial acrobatics, Laura Murphy (Contra Productions) creates work that...

Around About Circus • 27th May 2024

Smells Like Clown Spirit

In its seventh edition, the festival is organised by a partners’ consortium, VIERNULVIER and Miramiro, in collaboration with CAMPO, KOPERGIETERY, Circuscentrum and Cultuurcentrum Evergem. The proposed theme of the clown and clowning, allowed space for...

Circus Publication/Editorial Work • 26th December 2023

DYNAMO Magazine #3: Speaking of Circus

Third issue of DYNAMO Magazine - an independent circus paper publication. The aim of the project is to champion the creative disciplines of contemporary circus, and create a space where we can dwell longer on an artistic moment.

Circus publication/Editorial work • 26th December 2023

DYNAMO Magazine #2: Spaces of Circus

The second issue of DYNAMO Magazine - an independent circus paper publication. The aim of the project is to champion the creative disciplines of contemporary circus, and create a space where we can dwell longer on an artistic moment. This issue was...

Circus Publication/Editorial Work • 26th December 2023

DYNAMO Magazine #1 - No Definitions, Just Circus

The first issue of DYNAMO Magazine - an independent circus paper publication. The aim of the project is to champion the creative disciplines of contemporary circus, and create a space where we can dwell longer on an artistic moment.

Around About Circus • 16th July 2023

The Duck Review

What happens when you enter public space surrounded by the borders of a performance? The Duck Performance by Marija Baranauskaitė uses circus and performative interventions to explore the limits and negotiations that define human encounters in urban...

Around About Circus • 11th July 2023

What do chairs really want?¹

Our human wishes and desires dominate our relations with inanimate others that surround us. How can we rethink and design anew the world, so domination may give way to more care-based models of living together with objects? In PLI, Viktor Černický...

11th August 2020

Why We Climb. Notes on 'Sisyphus Ascending'

Sisyphus Ascending is the beautiful tale of an office clerk, twisting, turning and wrestling with his daily routine. Every day ends with attempts at escape into an elevated plane of his existence, only to see him regress and, like the eponymous Greek...

3rd February 2020

From A to B and the Space in Between. Pendulum by Kallo Collective.

Why do we laugh? Why exactly is our mind being tickled by actors in a play tripping over intentionally rumpled rugs, spilling drinks, or mistaking a tea bag for a monocle? What makes us laugh even harder, when the same happens again and again, at...

8th November 2019

A Love Song to the Absurd - W/hole by Rapid Eye

‘W/hole’ is a moving performance, beautiful in its simplicity and what to the untrained eye may read as prop scarcity – buckets, shovels, stones, sand, planks of wood. The mundanity of the material is unglamourizing – nothing shines, nothing colourful...