Who We Are

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

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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. Her favorite thing about teaching circus is watching children learn that through hard work and dedication the impossible becomes possible! 

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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!

Britney Shufelt - Youth Circus, Aerial, German Wheel, Contortion, and Tumbling

Growing up in Massachusetts, Britney trained as a gymnast at a young age and started competing in her early teens. In her 20’s she began her yoga practice while living in Hawaii. She then traveled around the world and took a yoga teacher training in Thailand. After traveling she settled in Easthampton, MA where she joined SHOW Circus Studio and was coached by Margaret Butterfield and others. She then moved to AZ and went on to train at Circus Academy. She is certified in German Wheel through Wolfgang Bientzle and Kintortion Level 1 founded by Anya Shevelyuk. Currently she trains contortion under her coach Ash Rexford of San Francisco Circus Center. Britney is pushing the limits to what she thought was possible.

Assistans and Interns!

Savan, Mari, Maria, Hazel, Zarya, Grace, Marissa 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

Sarah Morales - Vice President

Julia Fisher - Secretary

Rob McLane - Treasurer

Ariella Gladstein

Clare Gastineau