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Down to earth

From high-flying performer to entrepreneur, AnaÏs Guimond has built Atlantic Cirque into a thriving business.

Standing in the middle of a gargantuan blue mat inside a Burnside Business Park warehouse, Anaïs Guimond reminisced. Looking up into the rafters at the web of ropes and ribbon, she recalls spinning and tumbling high above the ground in Las Vegas. As her hands shuffle through vibrantly coloured costumes, she’s reminded of a time when the elaborate attire used to ornament her vigorous body during performances.

It’s all remnants of a past life. But although she’s traded in her trapeze (for now), Guimond is more involved in the world of circus arts than ever before.

Guimond is the owner of Atlantic Cirque Agency and School, the first and largest circus school east of Montreal. Since its inception more than nine years ago, the school has grown to offer year-round classes ranging from aerial skills, acrobatics and contortion to trampoline, juggling and unicycle.

Now, the ex-circus artist has two entrepreneur awards hanging on her office wall, she’s started a professional program at the school, has plans to expand into another province, and is preparing for a 10th anniversary show in February. And although it makes for a heavily scribbled agenda, the 33-year-old loves the life.

All that considered, it’s hard to believe that she came to the city 10 years ago not speaking any English.

On a summer escapade of sorts, Guimond traveled from Quebec to Halifax in 2001 to visit a friend and work on a television show. Like many tourists, Guimond hit the Halifax International Buskers Festival. After watching the acts, a bit of nostalgia and a lot of experience sparked the question: is there a school for circus arts in Atlantic Canada?

There was not. So Guimond went to work, but it wasn’t easy.

Although her English was limited, her knowledge of circus arts was not. Guimond has travelled across North America as a professional circus performer since graduating high school. She’s studied the art in Las Vegas and has worked on various productions, making stops in Florida and Arizona before returning to her home province of Quebec. She also ran another circus school in Quebec before coming to the East Coast.

“Opening a circus school in Atlantic Canada where there were none before was quite the challenge. I started working on a business plan in French and I got somebody to translate it for me,” says Guimond in her former office at the school—something she thought the school’s manager needed more.

A lot of television (part of her approach to learning the language) and a $30,000 Centre for Entrepreneurship Education and Development grant later, Guimond had the means to start the school. “I took $29,000 for equipment and I took $1,000 for the first month’s rent and crossed my fingers,” she laughs.

She says many people called her crazy, but doubt doesn’t exactly deter her. It fuels her fire, says Caitlan Anthony, head coach at the school. “It’s really no wonder that she’s successful, because I’ve never seen somebody work so hard,” says Anthony, who started as a student at the school more than seven years ago. “If she wants something to happen, it will happen. She will make it work somehow. She’s very creative and persistent.”

About 45 people pointed their toes and stretched their legs at her first-ever Atlantic Cirque class at the Shambhala School in Halifax, taught by Guimond. To promote the class, she relied on word of mouth and a few posters.

But before long, the school became more than just an extracurricular activity for her students—it was a way of life.

Consider Anthony, the gymnast who hated gymnastics.

AnaÏs Guimond, Photo by Shaun Simpson / shaunsimpson.ca

“I just hated the stress of competing,” she says. You get in front of these judges, and at the end you may come out with a medal. Great, whatever.”

Anthony might as well have been quoting her boss. Guimond says she started in circus arts for the same reasons. “When I realized that circus arts was basically using my skills and flexibility, it was perfect for me,” says Guimond next to a black-and-white photo of herself stationed on the wall, seemly flying 33 metres in the air.

Muscles flexed, faces calm—Guimond’s hands balance on another’s, she recalls. Her body extends into the air like a floating humming bird. She appears weightless, yet impossibly robust. Testing your own limits, that’s what it’s all about. And standing before a cheering audience, that’s a bonus.

But you don’t have to be a world-class athlete to love the art. “[The students] believe in it,” she says. “Circus arts are very unique and different. The kids have found another social network where they all get along great and understand each other… When they tell you the art changed their life, or their kid’s life, that’s what makes it all worth it.”

After a few years in another Burnside location, the school found its current home: a 3,500-square-foot, 11-metre-ceiling warehouse on Oland Court in Burnside. It’s more than enough space to house the 200 students leaping about the school each week.

New to the school this year is a professional circus arts program: a 12-month, 20-hours-per-week certificate program aimed at kick-starting a career in circus performing. Covering everything from technique to make up and costumes, the program is one of about three in the country, and the first in Atlantic Canada.

Guimond no longer teaches her art. She contracts about five or six professional circus artists for each of the three sessions per year and reserves the entrepreneurial aspects for herself. Having won the CYBF Best Female Entrepreneur for 2010 and the BDC Young Entrepreneur of the year for 2011, she suits the role.

But Guimond says she’d like to start teaching again. As for performing, she’s thought about it. “My energy can be focused on so many other things that are so much more important to me than going back to performing,” she says. “Of course I miss it. But I’m doing something else now. I’m an entrepreneur and I’m trying to do as good as I can.” She admits she dabbled with the idea of performing in the 10th anniversary performance series, slated for February 2012 at the Dalhousie Arts Centre’s Dunn Theatre.

Also on the horizon is her next business endeavour: opening another location. Guimond has her eyes set across provincial borders, and hopes to get the school up and running by spring 2012.

Although she now calls Halifax home, her heart hasn’t left Quebec. “It took me a long time to click, not that I didn’t feel home here, but I was coming to a different province, with a different language and a different culture,” Guimond says. “I think the determined Frenchwoman in me is really helping. I don’t take no for an answer and if a door is closed, I’m going to find another way to get through.”

Not that she’s immune to Halifax’s charms. “Don’t get me wrong, I miss Quebec,” she says, “but when I’m there, I miss the ocean, my friends, my business and Halifax.”

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