Meet up with other circus community at local favorite SWEET MELISSA’S to celebrate the closing of the 2024 Hupstate Festival!

Join two of Hupstate’s most popular companies from previous years, Acting for Climate Montréal and Ithaca’s Fern Collective, with guest artist Goddess - for an incredible free outdoor show focusing on nature, the environment, and circus!

For all ages

“Cirque Us Stories” is a thoughtfully curated show that flips through the pages of our troupe’s favorite stories to bring you a touching, thrilling narrative about community and identity.

For all ages - kids tickets are free!

Join us for an evening of performances and connection for our community of artists, audiences, and the circus-curious! We encourage all artists, audiences, and circus fans to come out to party!

Suggested 18+ (we never quite know what will happen at the fundraiser!)

Cirque Kikasse is a breathtaking acrobatic show! An extraordinary mobile circus where trampoline, balances and juggling meet.

All ages

This workshop is focused on finding freedom within a structure.
We will share counterweight vocabulary, weight-transfer techniques to lift them, and tools for exploring contact points with your partner.
The idea is to create a common language in order to expand the possibilities within contact dance and improvisation.

Join Lily Silly and the puppet people for a puppet parade from CSMA to the Press Bay Backlot, traveling through the commons.

All ages

Direct from Sweden, Jay Gilligan curates a unique experience specifically created for the Hupstate Circus Festival in a rare U.S. appearance!

All ages

Find @violetdefiantcircus swinging on her freestanding rig right outside the Cherry Artspace after Trojka and before DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN.

All Ages

"I Think It Could Work" is a contemporary circus show.. Utilizing elements of acrobatics, theatre, and classic games, this show is an experiment in what happens when our lives are decided by chance and our fates are left for the audience to decide.

For all ages

Black Joy is a multi-disciplinary journey through Blackness.

This piece is a duet combining mask work, dance, theatre, poetry, immersive, acrobats, stilt walking, and aerial work in celebration of black lives in ancestry, future generations, and those walking the earth at this time.

Ages 10+

The goal of this workshop is to seamlessly move through the acrobatics. We will begin by teaching the mechanics of the acrobatic movements, allowing the students to familiarize themselves with the floor, the space and their relationship to it.

An evening with Troy and a trapeze. International Lover is the autobiographical tale of Troy Lingelbach's coming into one's self, sensuality, and gender told through aerial dance and performance art.

Ages 18+

DUSK / NIGHT / DAWN is an experimental aerial pole dance work created by Donna Carnow and Gina Alm. Combining aerial acrobatics, visual composition, and [pole] dance, they aim to share human experiences through super-human movement.

Ages 18+

Join this amazing aerial workshop with the People Watching Collective! You'll dive into energizing warm-ups and activation exercises, master dynamic tempos and release moves, explore innovative creative tools and research, enhance strength and flexibility with specialized techniques, and perfect improvisation while seamlessly connecting sequences.

This family friendly show is performed outside under a canopy and is free.

Seats are first come first served.

For all ages

Set in a shifting universe of domestic trappings and interlocking stories, People Watching’s first creation ‘Play Dead’ observes the way we navigate social connections.

Suggested age 16+

This workshop will focus on the building blocks of trio acrobatics and how to use those building blocks to create your own sequences.

This family friendly show is performed outside under a canopy and is free.

Seats are first come first served.

For all ages

This event is a double bill with two different shows

A Circus Journey" (Chile-Ecuador) is a captivating 30-minute solo performance suitable for all ages, presented as a ritual to honor nature and its elements.

Katherine Marino’s "Truth and Beauty is a one-woman clown spectacle that blends absurdity, existential themes, and misguided genius. Expect a journey through art and truth, with a possible cake and a guaranteed banana.

Ages 10+

This family friendly show is performed outside under a canopy and is free.

Seats are first come first served.

For all ages

Try the circus arts! See shows!
All ages welcome - adults too! Multigenerational participation is encouraged.

For all ages

Botanist Coffee Shop (meeting spot)

Join in community to visit Ithaca Falls, one of the over 100 waterfalls in our area, and grab a coffee before or after.

Meet at the local Botanist Coffee shop at 10am and will walk together to Ithaca Falls a few blocks away. The waterfall is spectacular and viewable from the sidewalk, or you can take a 5 minute short hike to see it up close.

All ages

Set in a shifting universe of domestic trappings and interlocking stories, People Watching’s first creation ‘Play Dead’ observes the way we navigate social connections.

Suggested age 16+

Find Violet swinging on her freestanding rig right outside the Cherry Artspace after Trojka and before DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN.

All ages

After three years of studying aerial rope at Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden, Ithaca native artist Simone Stevens presents the premiere of her newest work- a site specific circus performance crafted for the Cherry.

Ages 10+

Treman Marina Loop

Join the acrobats of Acting for Climate for a breathtaking site specific acrobatics performance.

Note: The show formally starts at 12pm, but we are asking audiences to gather at 11:45am so we can ensure you get to the site on time.

COMMUNITY SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND ARTS - Registration Required

With NATASHA PATTERSON, BRIN SCHOELLKOPF, and SABINE VAN RENSBURG of People Watching Collective

This 2 hour workshop is focused on finding freedom within a structure.  We will share counterweight vocabulary, weight-transfer techniques to lift them, and tools for exploring contact points with your partner.  Please note that this workshop requires proximity & close contact between bodies. 

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE: Dance & acrobatic experience / formal training. Must be comfortable moving your body, rolling on the floor etc.

Photo: Cecil Martin

Center Ithaca Atrium

Brave Space is a blanket fort, a hoopskirt, an impulsive congregation in the tiniest of tents. Inspired by the idea of creating community in trying times, it begins as a puddle of fabric and grows to encompass a world of wondrous circus.