Emily Hughes began her circus explorations as an 8 year old at HarbourKids circus camp in Toronto and has been immersed in the evolution of Contemporary Circus ever since. While pursuing her BFA (2007) in Theatre Performance: Acting at Ryerson University, Emily solidified her passion for storytelling and creating characters through (acrobatic) movement. In 2009 she co-founded Hercinia Arts Collective as a means to combine her passions into creative, multi-disciplinary circus work. As a creator/performer, Emily is most interested in work that hovers on the borders between circus and theatre. She has focussed most of her career and personal explorations in pursuing aerial arts as a physical language; a means of communicating a story, theme or emotional journey through the body suspended in space. As a performer, Emily has performed internationally in Dubai, Belgium, Berlin, Costa Rica, Bermuda and throughout Canada and the US. Her work has taken her from circus performance installations in a casino to a political rock opera on a travelling tall ship, but her biggest highlights have been in fusing physical theatre and circus to create weird characters and interdisciplinary performances. Highlights include Underneath (aerial silks with live projections, co-created with Evan DeRushie for Balancing on the Edge, produced by Girl in the Sky Productions/Thin Edge New Music Collective), Weird: The Witches of Macbeth (circus theatre with Articus Productions), and The Stupendous Silver Sisters (street theatre with Hercinia Arts Collective).
Recently Emily has dove into the world of Pochinko clowning after completing her Baby Clown (2018) at the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance and is excited about the new pathways she is discovering through this work. She is currently in development on two exciting new circus-theatre projects, REST (inspired by the 1892 novella The Yellow Wallpaper) and Goodbye Esther (an original aerial and acrobatic clown saga), thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts.
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