Workshops at JaJa Circus

Day 1: Rope Manipulation 

Day 2: All Roads Lead to S-wrap + Into The Science of Loops and Lassos 

Day 3: Exploring Rope Through Weight + Floor Rope

Day 1: Rope Manipulation  A 5-hour workshop

Rope Manipulation is an approach to aerial rope practice Gaia has been developing since her MA research at SKH in Stockholm. It is built around five core methods that together form a framework for investigating the rope as a relational and thinking partner.

In this session, we will work primarily through Speaking Knots, alongside Sensing and Self-Development. The workshop is structured as a series of improvisation tasks, each one creating a confined space of research within which you are free to experiment on the apparatus.

The central idea is to live knots as opportunities for pathways. To speak the language of knots is to navigate through movement and intuition.

The work asks you to slow down, listen, and make conscious choices. We are expanding technique through personal experience. The aim is to develop body intelligence: the capacity to think through movement, to notice, and to be present with what is actually happening in the rope.

Day 2: All Roads Lead to S-wrap + Into the Science of Loops and Lassos A 5-hour workshop

The first half of this session dives into the physical mechanics of the second half of roll-ups, building gradually from the floor to the air. Understanding what the body needs to make it happen, and how to guide it rather than force it, is the foundation everything else grows from.

From there we explore back balance: what it physically takes to hold a position where the rope is taut against the lower back, and the many variations that single relationship can generate. Gaia shares discoveries from her own repertoire as a starting point for your own exploration. It turns out that many of these variations lead to S-wrap. Rather than treating it as an endpoint, we explore through her repertoire some of the creative possibilities that open up around it. We will end the first half of the workshop with a small space for personal exploration.

The second half moves into loops and lassos. We investigate how loops are made, what mechanics drive them, and how lassos emerge as a natural evolution when the conditions are right. A central thread throughout is the Three Knots Technique, a foundational tool of the Rope Manipulation approach. We explore loops as spatial opportunities: spaces that can be entered, shifted, transformed, while following how they can become something else entirely.

Gaia draws from her ongoing research and shares repertoire as a window into the process.

Day 3: Floor Rope + Exploring Rope through Weight A 5-hour workshop

The first half is dedicated to Floor Rope: an investigation into the interplay between rope and ground. We explore the floor as a partner, both technically and creatively, working from the understanding that ground and air melt into one another and continuously inform each other. As part of this, Gaia shares her Floor Rope repertoire as a window into how a personal movement practice develops.

The second half moves into weight and the role it plays in movement exploration on the rope. Through a progression of tasks, we explore the rope as our new ground, making space for understanding gravity in relation to both floor and apparatus, and weight as a guide: how shifting weight is a form of listening, and how a pause is not a stop but a moment to relocate before continuing.

This workshop is for anyone interested in deepening awareness and learning to listen to the body through the apparatus.