Who We Are

We are a collection of educators, artists, athletes, and circus performers who are dedicated to creating the best educational space available!

Katherine Tesch - Executive Director, Performance, Youth Circus, Aerial Acrobatics, Balance

Katherine began her career as a dancer and joined the circus in 2006, spending the next 10 years as a circus performer.  During this time she also began developing her circus and dance education program. She has had the great opportunity to perform and train with a wide variety of companies all over the world giving her a well rounded and strong base to create the curriculum and program that The Circus Academy of Tucson uses. Some highlights are that she has trained and done workshops with Circo Picolino in Brazil, The New England Center for Circus Arts, Pilobolus, Streb, and Air Dance Moscow. She is an active member of the American Circus Educators. She is a current student in the Arizona State University’s Master of Social Work and Master of Public Administration program. Her favorite thing about teaching circus is watching children learn that through hard work and dedication the impossible becomes possible! 

Annie Mielke - Aerial Acrobatics

Annie Mielke is an aerial dancer and circus artist with 20 years of aerial training and performance experience. She began performing at a young age with nationally recognized youth circus program Circus Juventas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She began teaching alongside Katherine in 2012 and helped found The Circus Academy of Tucson after graduating with a Business Degree in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from the University of Arizona. Recently, she spent two years in Austin, Texas, working with aerial dance company Blue Lapis Light. Her love of circus stems from the mix of creative expression and athleticism it involves, and she loves sharing these aspects of her art with her students!

Sierra McClean- Aerial Acrobatics, Juggling, and Stilts

Sierra was one of our youth students who grew up through the program in middle and high school. She went off to get her degree in graphic design and trained and performed with the Bellingham Circus Collective. She’s back in Tucson working as a designer and teaching with us!

Marissa Richards - Youth Circus, Camps, Aerial

Marissa started her aerial experience while living in California in 2021, shortly after the pandemic. She then moved to Tucson in 2022 and has been training at our studio ever since! Primarily training in silks, she has done multiple showcases and performances. She is passionate about working with children, and enjoys coaching both youth circus camps and aerial classes, as well as instructing at birthday parties and other events. She loves the community at the studio and getting to know everyone who comes in the door. Marissa is continually pursuing to expand her knowledge of all circus skills so that she can share the joy that they bring to her with others!

Maria Collins - Youth Circus, Trapeze, Aerial, Stretching, Performance

Maria’s circus journey started in 2018 at The Circus Academy of Tucson. In her elementary years, she enjoyed acrobatics and dance, which led her to try circus arts in her early teens. She found a passion in dance trapeze and has been working hard towards starting a career as a circus artist. She has competed at Vivafest, performed with the adult troupe in the Tucson Fringe Festival, and with the teen troupe at the Tucson Festival of Books. One of her favorite things about teaching is seeing the joy and motivation that kids and adults find in the circus studio.

Assistants and Interns!

Mari, Willow, Hazel, Sasha, Lucia, Grace, Auggie, and more!

These talented ladies and gentlemen are our advanced students and interns. They bring their unique athletic and education backgrounds and talents to assist in all of our classes and help nurture our students development with more one on one in class instruction. 

In addition to our regular instructors we have guests and alumni that come through on a regular basis who include Rachel Walker of the National Circus School in Montreal, Liam Halstead: box juggler extraordinaire, Ariella Gladstein, Ren Carter-Tucker of NECCA and more!

Hiring! We are always looking for ways to strengthen out program! If you teach a skill we don't offer or have an idea for an awesome new class, always feel free to reach out with proposals and resumes! We are currently looking for a tumbling teacher. One of our goals is that this program will support three full time teachers/partners. If your passion is circus education and you have a goal to do that for the long term and live in one city, reach out, we'd love to talk about partnership opportunities. This person would have strong skills in juggling, acrobatics, tumbling or balance skills.

Non-Profit Board of Directors

Clare Lorring - President

Clare grew up in Chicago, travelled a lot, and settled in Tucson over 20 years ago. Being part of and building community has been a big part of her experience here, from creating space and connections for new parents at El Rio Birth Center/Midwifery to participating in her kids’ school communities. Her family has been a part of the circus family from the very beginning. They feel lucky to have watched it grow and be a part of it for over a decade.

Sarah Morales - Vice President

Julia Fisher - Secretary

Julia has been doing aerial arts since 2012 and started training with the Circus and Aerial Academy of Tucson in 2015.  She competed in lyra in the adult student category at VivaFest in 2018.  She loves to move, especially in the company of good people.  She works at the University of Arizona as an assistant research professor and statistician with a focus on the development of statistical methods for brain imaging data.

Rob McLane - Treasurer

Rob McLane is an electrician and solar installation technician in Tucson. He followed his daughter into circus arts training, but she has outlasted him. Now he enjoys CAAAT by serving on the Board of Directors and doing maintenance tasks around the studio. He has served on the board of the Food Conspiracy Cooperative in Tucson, and then served for three years on the founding board of the employee-owned cooperative solar company he currently works for. Rob appreciates CAAAT because of the creative community of teachers and students that currently support its existence, and all those who will do so in the future. Though he can not do aerial acrobatics at present, he still enjoys trail running and playing soccer. 

Ariella Gladstein

Ariella is a research scientist at Embark Veterinary, where she develops algorithms to determine a dog's breed ancestry. Since earning her PhD from the University of Arizona in 2018, she has been away from Tucson. However, Tucson—and especially CAAAT—will always hold a special place in her heart. Ariella credits her survival through grad school to the countless hours she spent at CAAAT and the supportive community she found there. Ariella began her circus arts training at CAAAT in 2012, where she also taught and performed. Although she has moved around and been part of many circus studios since leaving Tucson, she still considers CAAAT her circus home. She is delighted to serve on the Board of Directors to continue supporting the CAAAT community.

Clare Gastineau

Clare is a pediatric speech-language pathologist/feeding specialist and has spent the past 15+ years supporting Tucson children and their families. After growing up dancing, she found rock climbing and then aerial. CAAAT became and continues to be an important part of her ‘village’. She is excited to serve as a board member of CAAAT and to continue supporting the Tucson community.