CAST & CREW
Stacey Strange
Producer, Performer
Stacey Strange is a quintuple threat. A multidisciplinary circus, musical, and visual artist, she often combines art forms to create transportive entertainment rooted in meaningful storytelling. Her creations include aerial short films, touring circus productions, and the occasional novel. Her work has been called ‘As smart as it was entertaining—and it was very entertaining indeed.’ (The New Haven Independent)
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She studied creative writing, classics, and film at Vassar College, tempered with four years in the school’s recreational circus club. She made it two whole months into graduate school in New York City before realizing she hated New York (she already knew this) and that she didn’t want to go into academia (she already knew this).
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She swapped a closet-sized bedroom in Brooklyn for a blocks-long abandoned warehouse in Connecticut, and academia for studying aerial fabric primarily at the New England Center for Circus Arts. Though she’s never looked back, she has moved into a legally habitable dwelling.
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She is the founder and creative director of Air Temple Arts in Connecticut, one of the largest circus studios in New England. A dedicated coach with over a decade of experience, she has taught myriad circus arts to hundreds of students across the United States. In 2018 she founded an aerial fabric teacher training program and expanded on the success of that program with a bar apparatus training in 2022.
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Most recently she won a silver medal for her performance at the Hubei Chutian Star Guzheng Competition in China, which sees thousands of competitors. She has been featured on the national PBS show START-UP, had her photography published in the New York Times, and has the most expressive feet one YouTube commenter has ever seen.
Dani Bobbi Lee
Performer
Dani is a multidisciplinary circus artist that currently specializes in diabolo (Chinese yo-yo). She stepped into the circus portal by the means of a hula hoop, which was introduced to her at one of the many music festivals she attended in her twenties. Hoop dance became a mode of expression and therapy for her and she taught hoop dancing classes all over Connecticut. Along the way, Dani picked up other circus skills such as poi, juggling, partner acrobatics, aerial arts and her all-time favorite, clowning! Over the years, circus has gifted her a sense of connection, control and patience.
Performing as been a part of her life since she was a child. She finds a natural rhythm and inspiration being in front of an audience and the stage feels like home to her. In 2020, she co-directed and performed in her first Air Temple show, Time After Time, and the year after she starred as Sarah Graves in Air Temple’s production, Heaven or California. She featured an aerial clowning act for the studio’s staff show, posing as a Martian who ingested human behavior in order to better understand them.
Her philosophy in circus (and life) is to never stop learning and plans to be a student forever. She continues to attend various circus workshops and intensives, including an intensive on the Jacques method of the Neutral Mask under the direction of world renowned clown, Emmanelle Martin.
She began taking aerial classes with Air Temple in 2018 and soon became a coach after attending the Paper Doll Militia teacher training. She came on as a part owner of Air Temple in 2021.
Dani has a proclivity towards comedy and believes it is one the best ways to connect with others, on and off stage. A rule she gave herself when she became a professional circus artist was take your art seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously.
Nicholas Strange
Performer
Nick has been involved in circus arts of one kind or another for over a decade. He started riding unicycles as a way to cross train for freestyle skiing in high school, but was soon addicted to riding on one wheel just for the fun of it. Since then he has taken up juggling and prop manipulation, partner acrobatics, hoop diving, and Chinese pole as major areas of interest.
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In addition to those traditional circus arts, Nick is an accomplished fire and sideshow performer. From 2009 – 2013 he was the head of Safety for Wildfire, a fire arts retreat. He studies Chinese pole at the New England Center for Circus Arts.
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His past performance highlights include juggling alongside Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band, repeating (on location) a suspended straight jacket escape first performed by Harry Houdini, and entertaining audiences between sets at the World/Inferno Friendship Society’s annual Halloween shows, performing as one half of the circus duo Soviet Bloc Party, and performing in the full length shows Missed Connections, and SPECIAL RELATIVITY.
In 2017 he went on tour with Circularity’s production of Sherlock Holmes and the Sapphire Night as one of the lead roles, and performed a partner acrobatics duet, hoop diving, and a solo on Chinese pole.
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When not teaching or performing, Nick is putting his Mechanical Engineering expertise to good use as Air Temple’s resident rigger. He has been responsible for designing, building, and maintaining all of the points at all studio locations. In addition to studio work, Nick heads up rigging for Air Temple performances and is available for freelance rigging design.