Georgina Ilona Cassels (1992) is a circus artist educated at Michael Hall Steiner School (2011), the National Centre for Circus Arts (2013-15) and Gravity Circus Centre (2017) and is currently based in Budapest.
2017: Spent three months working with the Palestinian Circus School as a volunteer aerial instructor.
2018: Moved to Budapest and has since performed for Firebirds Circus and collaborated as part of an aerial rope duo alongside Gaia Santuccio creating ‘Rollmeknot’ researching innovative duo techniques and teaching workshops and performing across Europe.
2019 & 2022: Organised and co-hosted the Budapest Aerial Meeting alongside Reka Zetelaki.
2021: Co-founded One Thousand Faces ♡
2022: Collaborated with Emily Aoibeann in artistic residency to artistically contribute to a conceptual piece “A Year of the Heart”.
Since 2023, Georgina has been collaborating on a Croatian project ‘Konstrukt’ led by Dora Komenda/Cirkus Kolektiv which was selected as a CircusNext finalist of 2023 which will premier June 2024. She was an artist in "Together Circus Invitation", under direction by Albin Warette in Hungary. She is a fellow of the New Horizon’s Leadership Program EU of 2023-24 led by Cirkus Syd, DYNAMO, and Rigas Cirks and is currently under the mentorship of Maartje Bonarius, Artistic Director of Tall Tales Company.
Georgina’s first aerial performance was at the age of 14, performing both solo and duo trapeze and throughout her life has mastered various aerial disciplines from rope, duo-rope, straps, silks and multi-corde. Her approach to aerial dance, influenced by her previous ballet and dance training and admiration of work by Martha Graham and Joseph Pilates, is focused on an ethereal and timeless quality of movement blending strength and elegance in which she transfers across all disciplines she works on. As a certified Pilates instructor, Georgina fuses both Pilates and aerial elements into her personal practice and teaching having researched how to bring core control into the air and aerial technique to the floor. Within all her performances and creations, it is her priority and ambition to provide an emotionally resonant experience that provokes contemplation and introspection among those who watch.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
From Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, an extract that strongly resonates as an artist striving to bring a bit of beauty into the world.
