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Angus MacKechnie, Jacksons Lane’s Creative Director, attended the National Centre for Circus Arts final graduate show…

Graduation shows in any art form are strange and rather wonderful things. Of course, they mark the end of training, but they are really about beginnings: that moment when technique, discipline and endless repetition become something more personal, and we begin to see what kind of artist each graduate might want to be.

Watching this year’s graduating students at the National Centre for Circus Arts in The Embarking (NCCA, Combustion Hall, 2–4 July 2026), I was struck by the amazing range of worlds we travelled through in a single evening. Domestic family tenderness, Greek mythology, grungy farmers, toxic masculinity, cheeky burlesque and the aftermath of a plane crash. We met a bloodied sheep biting a red rope, a glowing bucket full of feathers and a toddler calmly watering plants while perched atop an acrobatic three-high human tower.

It’s what a graduation show should be: a place to show skill, try things out, push ideas and discover what works. There was no shortage of imagination here and certainly no shortage of skill.

Some of the strongest moments came when image, skill and personality found each other. White roses fell around an assured straps performance, with movement flowing naturally out of the circus vocabulary. A Cyr wheel gave way to aerial in a piece whose consciously pretty aesthetic disguised considerable complexity. A wounded Icarus figure, initially robbed of their wings, eventually took flight on the Chinese pole.

I found myself thinking about the relationship between circus skill and authenticity in performance. Story, costume, music, character, choreography and theatre can open up new possibilities, but they can also become a lot to carry. Sometimes an extraordinary physical act really does need very little else. Equally, when all those added elements genuinely belong together, the result can take us somewhere that skill alone cannot.

For a group of graduates entering an unsettled world, there were pieces reaching for anarchy, comedy, beauty, coolness, provocation and tenderness. Some arrived feeling fully formed, while others gave us tantalising glimpses of where an artist might go next.

The opening acrobatic piece, with its plants, family life and improbable human towers, was warm, funny and endearing. A sly static trapeze solo, complete with gold lamé bodysuit, emerged from a group of dancing couples and found a playful connection with the audience. Away from the sparkles, a grungy trip to the farm involving aerial hoop and a glowing bucket of feathers reminded me that sometimes an unexpected image is enough to make you wonder what on earth is going to happen next.

There were also moments when I wanted more – and this was, after all, the first performance – whether that was more confidence, more danger or simply more connection with us. These are artists at the beginning of their professional lives, and part of the excitement is seeing the possibilities before everything has been neatly resolved.

This is a graduating year full of diverse instincts, aesthetics and ideas about what circus can be. Some voices already felt clear and confident. Others are beginning to emerge. But there was curiosity throughout, and a real willingness to play with the form, language and possibilities of circus.

That seems a pretty good place from which to begin a professional journey – and I hope that journey brings some of this young talent through the doors of Jacksons Lane before too long.

The Company

Vida Blenkhorn
Tamsin Bowles
Leah Cash
Alanna Clay
Macy Fenwick
Rosa Fox
Lauren Gibbs
Katie Jenkins
Alex Kyriacou
Niamh Mason-Butcher
Walleska Moran
Rhiannon Murphy
Rachel Raynes
Amelia Rosier-Denton
Johannes Siven
Millie Turley
Rosa Wilm

Angus MacKechnie | Creative Director | Jacksons Lane