Poetic Movement Arts Collective is an Okanagan-based collective of multidisciplinary artists creating, performing, and teaching through circus, movement, physical theatre, dance, and visual art.
We bring artists together to create original performance work, share creative skills, and develop opportunities for people of all ages to experience and participate in the circus arts.
Our work lives at the intersection of performance and education. We believe circus is both an art form to be experienced and a practice to be explored, and we are passionate about creating opportunities for artists and communities to do both.
Our Collective
Poetic Movement was created to provide a space for artists to collaborate beyond the boundaries of individual disciplines.
Our collective brings together circus artists, performers, teachers, choreographers, designers, costume artists, visual artists, builders, and other creative practitioners to develop original work and share their skills with others.
Some projects begin as an idea for a performance. Others begin with a desire to teach, collaborate, or introduce someone to a new discipline.
At the centre of all of them is movement.
Creating Original Performances
Our artistic practice focuses on original contemporary performance that brings together circus, physical theatre, dance, movement, visual art, and immersive design.
Our productions can incorporate aerial arts, acrobatics, hand balancing, cyr wheel, dance, puppetry, character work, object manipulation, costume, installation, and other forms of movement-based performance.
Rather than working within a single format, we allow each project to develop its own visual and physical language.
A movement can become a character.
A costume can become part of the storytelling.
A circus skill can become a theatrical moment.
An entire environment can become part of the performance.
We create work for theatres, festivals, alternative performance spaces, schools, and other environments where audiences can experience performance in unexpected ways.
Circus Arts Education
Circus is more than something to watch.
It is a hands-on art form that encourages creativity, physical literacy, collaboration, communication, confidence, perseverance, and self-expression.
Through classes, workshops, school programs, and community-based programming, Poetic Movement creates opportunities for people to learn circus arts in a supportive and creative environment.
Our educational programming is led by working artists who bring professional performance experience into the classroom. We believe that connecting students and community members with practicing artists creates a meaningful connection between learning, creativity, and the professional arts world.
We are particularly interested in making circus arts accessible to new audiences and creating pathways for people to discover movement-based disciplines they may not otherwise encounter.
Supporting Artists
Artists are at the centre of everything we do.
Poetic Movement is built around creating meaningful, professionally compensated opportunities for artists to perform, teach, collaborate, develop skills, and contribute to the creation of new work.
Our projects are designed to put resources back into the artists and creative practitioners who make them possible. Through performances, educational programming, workshops, and artistic development, we aim to create sustainable opportunities for artists to build careers through their creative practices.
We believe a strong arts community depends on artists having opportunities to do meaningful work, develop their practices, and be fairly compensated for their time and expertise.
Building a Circus Arts Community
Based in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Poetic Movement is committed to contributing to the region’s growing arts and cultural community.
We want to create more opportunities for people to encounter circus arts, whether that means sitting in an audience, stepping into a workshop for the first time, discovering a new physical discipline, or working alongside professional artists.
By connecting performance, education, and artistic development, we hope to contribute to a stronger and more accessible circus arts community in the Okanagan and beyond.
Our work is rooted here, but our ambitions extend beyond our region. We aim to develop original productions and educational programs that can be presented in communities, schools, theatres, and festivals throughout British Columbia and across Canada.
Why “Poetic Movement”?
The name reflects the foundation of our work: movement as a form of expression.
Circus, dance, physical theatre, and visual art can communicate ideas without relying solely on words. A gesture can tell a story. A body can become a character. A collection of moving bodies can create an entire world.
For us, movement becomes poetry when physical expression carries meaning beyond the movement itself.
That is the space we are interested in exploring.
Poetic Movement Arts Collective brings artists, audiences, and communities together through performance, education, and the shared language of movement.
