Pine Hill alum performs with circus

Popcorn, peanuts, and clowns on parade. It’s always a good time at the big top. And not just for the crowd enjoying the show.

Circus Smirkus, a touring youth circus company, left Milford this weekend to continue its big top tour. And among its performers is Keiran Sass of Wilton.

Sass got his first taste of the circus as a student at Pine Hill School in Wilton, where circus training is part of the curriculum.

He quickly got hooked. Now he is a part of the Flying Gravity Circus, a youth circus group based in Wilton, and he plans to pursue circus after high school by training at a circus school in Canada. And this year, he is touring with Circus Smirkus.

“I like that it’s not competitive,” said Sass in a recent interview with the Ledger-Transcript. “You’re not trying to do better than everyone else. You’re working as a team to put out the best show that you can.”

This is the first year that Sass is participating in Circus Smirkus, after auditioning and failing to make the final cut last year.

“That really motivated me to work a lot harder,” said Sass of last year’s disappointment – but it also made making the troupe this year that much more satisfying.

This year, Circus Smirkus’s Big Top Tour theme is “Up, Hup & Away: the Invention of Flight.” Sass is involved with several acts in the show, including one that incorporates partnered acrobatics, which he considers his favorite skill or specialty.

“At the end of a show, when you get a standing ovation, that’s the best feeling in the world,” said Sass.

Last weekend, Sass and the rest of the Circus Smirkus tour brought the show to Milford, where Flying Gravity Circus presented four shows in what is, by far, Flying Gravity’s largest fundraiser of the year.

Circus Smirkus has four more stops on their big top tour, at Freeport, Maine, Newbury, Massachusetts, Montpelier, Vermont, and back at the Circus Smirkus home base in Greensboro, Vermont.

“The show is always growing and changing,” said Sass. “We’re always improving it. It’s a completely different show than it was when we left Greensboro.”

Tickets to any of the Circus Smirkus shows can be purchased by calling 1-877-SMIRKUS or on the Circus Smirkus website.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com.