Meet Anastasia Timina | Circus Artist & Aerial Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anastasia Timina and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anastasia, why did you pursue a creative career?
Because I have gremlins in my chest. They are an urge, or a voice, or a drive to make or create. When I had to work other miscellaneous jobs to make a living I did not have as much time to create and there was a deep pain that manifested in my sternum. When I tried to ignore it hurt worse and worse until I felt that it was sucking and spiraling me into a dark place. I knew that I was not doing what I was meant to do. I felt a lot of relief when I was able to draw or paint or perform or even just craft something. To me, there was immeasurable joy in having someone connect to something I had made and I could not see myself doing anything else. One of my earliest memories is testing a new set of markers I had received as a gift. There were many colors and I carefully tested each one by drawing a squiggly line across a sheet of paper. Upon seeing my work, my family asked why I was just randomly scribbling, to which I replied in my most offended tone that my work was not simply scribbles, it was a depiction of a pile of string.
It was my way of navigating my world and connecting to others. Whether it was a story, or an emotion, or just a witty comment about a scribble drawing, it always began with something handmade. I wanted then, and still do to this day to make something that has meaning to someone.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Glitter and Grime. The glitter is what everyone sees. It is the final product, the performance piece, a new unlocked achievement. It is beautiful and brilliantly executed and costumed. The shiny glitter momentarily catches the eye as I spin and it is an exciting and ephemeral moment of performance art. I am a circus artist. I tell my story 30 feet off the ground hanging from a rope, or trapeze, or fabric. The glitter is also the twinkle in the eye of a student as they finally achieve the skill they had been working on. It is that “aha!” moment when the pieces finally fall into place. I am a circus coach and helping others learn to fly is a wonderful feeling. The glitter is, however, the very tip of the ice-burg. Underneath is a decade of grime. It is the part that people don’t often see and don’t normally care to see because it can feel like disillusionment. It is the years of hard training, of hustling, of trying and failing, of learning, of entrepreneurship. It is the engine that makes the whole machine run. I can only speak for myself but it has been a difficult road. There have been many ups and the people I have met along the way have been so wonderful and I love my circus family. But I am reminded of the grind a bit more nowadays with the entertainment industry in shambles.
I started circus as an adult. It was a creative outlet for those chest gremlins that kept me up at night but it quickly became an obsession. For the first three years I was constantly at my gym and did work-study to help pay for my classes. I began teaching soon after receiving my teacher training and loved every second. I went from a single class a week to over 13 classes per week and began performing. I still find so much happiness in coaching and performing. It feels like a superpower that no matter how bad my day or how much my body hurts from training, it all evaporates when I teach or perform.
I first pursued a career in art as a painter. I did not know how to market or network or how to endorse myself or my work. I got burnt out. I felt cheated because I had this mindset that if I just worked hard enough and tried hard enough, I would be found by the right people and they would fund me to make more work. Perhaps it was that I was not good enough after all, but I did not get discovered by some magical patron saint of oil paintings. More likely, is that I did not know how to network or market or make my art something profitable enough that I can keep making it. Rejection and failure can be very rude but useful teachers.
I had to learn how to be an entrepreneur and how to sell my own product and I learned all of this through circus. I went from visual art to performance art and I learned how to treat it like a business. I learned how to make my art my product and how to endorse and advertise it. I learned how to manage it and how not to get burnt out by it. I learned how to teach it and I learned how to see things that others might miss so that I would be worth learning from. As well as making my performances worth watching because I try to speak to and connect with audiences while trying to awe them with tricks that seem to defy gravity. These are all forever projects and I feel that I will be a forever student but I love the journey and I am glad I can continue to pursue it. The glitter makes the grime worth it!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Lets face it, Denver is pretty cool. There is a lot to see and do! A lot of my friends are also circus folk so we would definitely try to see a show! There are so many great groups here-Phantom Circus, Circus Foundry, Handsome Little Devils, Frequent Flyers, Rainbow Militia, Shows at the Clocktower, The Oriental, or The Dairy just to name a few! We would definitely visit Union Station because I love trains and the station reminds me of Europe. We would probably go on a few hikes in the mountains, especially ones with water falls or lakes, hang out in some nice parks. As for food, oh we would eat everything! There is a lot of great food- Polish, Ethiopian, Japanese, French- You name it! We would get lunch at the Central Market and visit RiNO, Tacos at Machete, and fancy dinners at Larimer Square. We would probably go to the zoo, or botanical gardens, the aquarium, Meow Wolf, or the Art Museum. Lastly we would probably go train at some of the awesome studios around town: Circus Collective, Aerial Cirque Over Denver, Apex, Gravity, Iluminar, Frequent Flyers, or the Boulder Circus Center to name a couple of my regulars!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many! Our personal stories are little more than the conglomerate of traces that other people leave as they touch our lives. My partner of ten years has been nothing but supportive of my strange career despite the roller-coaster that it has been and I am so grateful. We have both climbed out of our share of sinkholes to be where we are today. I am grateful for the small martial arts studio I started at and its owner for treating me like family and teaching me so much about my own fortitude and disciple (Phil of Masters Studios). It is also where I happened to meet the two people who have launched me on the path I am now, my first two circus coaches, Clayton and Jordan of Aerial Fit. They were great mentors and teachers and above all, great friends. It would be silly for me to fail to mention on of my best friends, Janelle Dinosaurs, who was my guide to circus here in Colorado. There are so many other friends, co workers, artists, agents, family members I could credit as every person in my life has had some influence in the course of it. A book I recommend is “Art and Fear: Observations on the perils (and rewards) of Artmaking” by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It talks mainly from the perspective of visual art but I feel that is has advice and insight that has been very valuable in all aspects of my life.

Website: www.anastasiatimina.com

Instagram: @anastasia.timina.aerial

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/anastasia-timina-1aa4b4161

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anastasia.timina

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdJJBwhv_4hnACtYzGAFLw

Image Credits
Annabelle Denmark