My Journey
The journey of becoming the person who I am today started out with artistic gymnastics at the age of five. I continued training and competing across Canada and internationally before ending my life-long gymnastics career at the age of fifteen. My favourite discipline was the balance beam! At the age of thirteen, I became a certified artistic gymnastics coach under the National Coach’s Certification Program and continued coaching until I was eighteen.
Between the ages fifteen and eighteen, I found a passion for dance and theatre. I had been playing piano since the age of six and had just obtained my Grade 10 Certification from the Royal Conservatory of Music and I was curious to see where I could go with that. I trained a variety of styles including ballet, jazz, hip-hop, contemporary, lyrical and acro. Despite training all of these styles, I chose to only compete in acro – mainly because it was the only style that I wasn’t completely bad at. For two years, I had won first place winnings across Western Canada and enjoyed performing on stage doing what I loved. Out of all the styles of dance that I had trained though, ballet has definitely been the one that has saved me through many instances in circus.
Immediately after graduating high school, I went straight to university to get my Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies. During this time, I decided to join my university’s Level 6 Co-Ed Varsity cheerleading team to keep up with my tumbling skills, learn new things and help keep my mind off of my stressful classes. My team had won multiple competitions across Canada and the United States, including the Collegiate National Championships. While I was a cheerleader, I had the opportunity to coach tumbling for a Level 2 All Stars team. The athletes were so hardworking and their parents were very supportive towards me. I can’t say that I love the sport of cheerleading as a whole, however, some of my best memories come from my years as a cheerleader and I’m thankful for them everyday.
To keep up with my flexibility, I decided to try out rhythmic gymnastics. I was pretty terrible at it, but I loved the coaches, my teammates, and the welcoming atmosphere that the gym brought. I never competed the sport, but the training would be the highlight of my week. By the end of university, I had competed cheer for four years, rhythmic gymnastics for two, and ended up with two B.A. Honours degrees in International Studies and Political Studies as well as two minors in Economics and Geology.
After graduating university, I decided to give circus arts another go. I had previously trained circus arts between the ages of thirteen and fifteen at l’École nationale de cirque, however I wasn’t ready to let go of gymnastics at the time. I moved to Montreal to get back into hand to hand, hand balancing and contortion. Despite not training any circus disciplines for nearly seven years, I surprisingly still had most of my skills. Through fate, I met my wonderful contortion partner, Amy Goh, and we started training duo contortion together. We have been inseparable ever since. Together, we train, run workshops and coach together.
My passion as a circus artist and coach is to share my knowledge and experiences and let people know that anything is possible if you put your time and effort into it. Trying new things can be daunting, but the results are worth the fear that you face. As long as you have the desire, dedication and determination, you have what it takes to do whatever you wish.
Ready to learn more? Feel free to explore and indulge in my blog articles!
There are currently no posts to display.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Caylin Leia 