There must be people who were not captivated and amazed when they first went to see the circus, but we don’t know any. The lure of the big tent, the smell of sawdust, the glamorous trapeze artists, the impish clowns – and, of course, the daring tightwire walkers, high in the air. Hanna Moisala knows her influences very well, and her artistic career has been one of continuous homage, while never actually having joined the circus itself.
We had the pleasure of chatting about her decisions, her desire to travel and what the future holds – while having coffee (and delicious pancakes with homemade jam) in Oulu, North Finland.
Tell us some history first. What was your childhood and youth like?
Oh my God, so this is where we’ll spend some time then. I’m from Oulu, Finland, and I have a very athletic background from childhood on: my dad played and coached football and my mom was a team coach, my brother played football and, of course, I played football. My hobby was endurance running and I was a regular Forrest Gump, five kilometres one way to school each day with a backpack full of books bouncing as I ran. My family’s main motto was that “whatever you do, travel broadens the mind”. If need be, spend everything on travelling. I remember being taken to the International Children’s and Youth Film Festival when I was probably eight years old, two Finnish Marks in my hand, which at the time was worth three films, on top of the free school screenings. So I got some nice inspiration from all that for my cultural journey to begin.
I feel like I’ve already lived seven lives – and that is just professionally. I studied different professions before I threw myself into culture. I studied, graduated and then worked as a hairdresser, and then did the same to be a makeup artist. I was searching for a life direction and decided to move to the Netherlands for a year, working in restaurants and bars – 2002-ish, I think? I was twenty-something. I lived in Amsterdam and was pining for something more permanent, so I came back to Oulu and applied to study social dancing to become a dance instructor. The course was brand new, with contemporary, folk and ballet dance courses already existing, and I spent a year there. But then I found out that the Turku University of Applied Sciences had circus studies I could apply for, and I did, and got accepted. So there I was, thinking about the hard choices in life, because I loved studying dance so much, and it was the best thing going for me at that moment – but the circus has always had this pull on me.
When I was twelve, we lived in the Raksila suburb, and Circus Finlandia came into town every year, practically to my backyard. The current owner, Calle Jernström Jr, was tempting me to join the circus, and at 12 years old I was so ready to do just that. However, Calle’s mom said that it might be a good idea to present the plan to my parents first and see if they let me join. And of course my mom and dad said not yet, finish school first. But I’ve been in touch with Calle ever since, for the first eight years we were penpals since he was performing around the world. Whenever he came to Oulu I would go and see the show. His family even took me with them to Monaco to the circus festival. So, the yearning to be in the circus has always been strong for me, but I just was too young to make the cut. Later, as an adult, I asked if I could join, and some of the circus artists have sort of made it clear that if you’re not born into a circus family, it’s not necessarily possible to grasp the whole thing fully.
Well, when I found out from the national studies application book that one can study circus on that level, I was just flabbergasted, and that was that, I had to apply to study in Turku. I think it was 2004 when I started my studies. When I told Calle that I had started circus studies, he was just “OK, let’s see what you’ve learned after four years.”
Back then you graduated as a circus artist, these days the official title might be theatre director or something. After graduating, I moved to Lahti to teach circus on a daily basis, and that was how the next five years went by, teaching circus in various youth circus schools. At that time, the national curriculum for Finnish basic arts teaching was going through some changes, and I took part with Taina Kopra to plan and change the basic education in arts into the new form, in which it still is today. But all that took so much time and energy that I started lacking on my own rehearsing and on my creativity – I just didn’t have enough energy, and it was really challenging. At that point I had to rethink my plans. Could I teach later if I would focus on creating art for now?
All that thinking eventually led me to London. The plan was that I’ll nip there for a Master’s in circus arts, getting a much needed break from teaching at the same time, and also taking time for myself to deepen my own artistic vision and practice more often. So I went there, and I stayed there for seven years. It’s hands down the longest I’ve ever lived in one place – my brother always says that he’s never seen me in the same place for longer than two months. But then COVID hit Britain, and I returned to Finland, and all of a sudden I was looking at an empty calendar, which was quite a dramatic situation for me. I had a return flight to London, which I never took because the pandemic just wouldn’t stop. I’ve been in Oulu since then, four years and running. I had started Lumo Company as a business in Britain, and ended that, starting an association here in Finland with the same name, through which I perform my own works.
What is the main attraction about the circus to you? Is it the razzle dazzle, or are you driven by a need to perform?
It’s changed during the years, I’ve thought about that myself. I’ve been doing this as a profession for 17 years now, and I’ve fallen in love with the circus since those days when I was twelve. Then the first woo was very much the smell of sawdust and popcorn, a dark mystical world, incredible tricks – none of what I saw in the arena wasn’t comparable to myself then. But it was that magic that took me. And it’s been like that, it worked me over in Monaco as well, seeing the big animals for the first time there. All that was a part of the lure, it’s been such a wow effect for me.
The circus is truly trick oriented. It’s still in the no man’s land between physical exercise, art, and technical skills for a trick. But later on, my own artistry started getting the better of all that. It’s no longer so much performing, I no longer have that need to be on stage. Instead, it’s about finishing a piece, showing it to people, receiving interaction and communicating with people – to see how it’s being received and what emotions it evokes. The journey is the thing.
There probably also is authorship, that the piece is made by you?
Oh, for sure. I’m now free in my own work to combine any fields of art I want. Even though the circus itself is my core area of expertise, it’s nowadays the fusion with movement or another art field that interests me more. I no longer think about what to do if I can’t do a high jump or a pirouette on the wire. The focus on performance has changed to more difficult elements, which in turn cannot be realized without the tricks, like constant motion or controlling a device in a way to complete things you otherwise normally wouldn’t or couldn’t. There are various tricks in the world of circus, and having watched it so long, maybe I want to change it a bit.
You also do quite a lot of co-productions and collaborations, for instance with Flow Productions. What do you get out of, say, producing a tightwire element to a non-circus piece, and have faith that the director will know how to make the bits and bobs work together in the piece?
First of all, it feels like collaboration is really fruitful right now. You can combine resources and funding, you get other partners, and you might even lighten the load of your own work. Also, you get to work with people from whom you get something, like ideas, or thoughts. Of course, it depends who you’re working with, but ideally it is communicative collaborations where you discuss the possibilities, what you can do, and who is interested in what.
With Pirjo, we made Aer, a co-production between Lumo Company and Flow Productions. We did that after Hylky, it was sort of a continuation piece. We work really well together, and we have this highly communicative connection that I think now is a deep friendship rather than a work related thing, and I love that, if and when it can happen. But, of course, you don’t need to be best friends with everyone you work with.
COVID actually changed that sort of activity as well, I no longer have that kind of shorter or longer contracts. Before, I could divide my annual calendar to own pieces done on certain times, kind of like residency work. And if there were longer periods without that, I filled these gaps with contracts or performing for others. I think circus still is a lot about going to perform and taking your own specific act somewhere else. It could be like four months’ time performing somewhere, and then I do what they want me to do. Like, I have this number, you can insert it wherever you think it fits, and then I do what you want me to do. A circus performer is always for sale in a way, and also sells oneself like that.
I still have a working tightwire act and a hoop act, which are sort of individual gig numbers. But the main thing is to sell a whole piece, to attain a longer arc for a piece, so that when the piece is ready, it could tour from one to three years, which feels just about right as far as the longevity for pieces we’ve produced goes. Of course some works last longer, like WireDo was made in 2016 and is still being asked after. I can’t get rid of it, so to speak.
Some dance artists have a base, and the work is done close to that place, whereas others find touring their thing. Circus is primarily touring, I think – or, I don’t know of a fixed location circus myself.
Circus is inherently a touring thing, but there are fixed location circuses – in Germany, there is the Spiegeltent, and that building is there for good. And in Riga, there is the circus building that is one of the oldest in the world, a round circus that has always been the Riga Circus. There once was a circus like that in Finland, but naturally, it’s been long gone and torn down. The Riga Circus used to be a state circus and still has the same name, but the management changed some seven years ago. They used to have elephants and everything. I saw the venue just before they started renovating – they did a multimillion project to renew the place, for instance the whole arena was horizontally concave due to overuse and tear and wear. I performed on the wire there, practically right before they started the renovation. The audience was maybe seven people, some local workers and some of the circus personnel. It was really touching, although it smelled like a building that’s way too old. Anyway, the circus is still there, now open to the public again.
In Finland, all modern circus performers tour and create a piece to employ themselves in the future. Pretty few have the money and the resources to make something that will be performed just once. But those kinds of pieces are being created more and more, because the funding model in Finland leads to it, because there is no culture or infrastructure for touring – even less so now, with the funding cuts forcing theatres to nix any visiting performers. But there are some places that can be toured, like Näyttämö in Joensuu, which is a permanent space for performing artists. So it is possible, in a way. In Tampere, there is the Sori Circus, which is pretty much like Näyttämö. So, if we were ever to get a place of our own for Lumo Company, we naturally would run pieces in that, instead of touring that much.
I got to thinking how much of an effort it is to redo an old piece. What sort of productional heave is it?
Sure, you can take a piece and perform it elsewhere later on, but it’s mad expensive. The whole thing has to be reheated. Then you need to round up your work group, have them commit to the thing by paying wages, book the rehearsal space, take the gear there and then spend roughly two weeks bringing the piece back to life, paying everyone for their time. It takes some production muscle.
The performance in Oulu [Fine Line, performed in Valve on Feb. 14th. 2025] premiered in 2023, and it was actively performed throughout the year. We had seven shows in Helsinki, and then we toured with it in London, Bristol and Latvia. After that, we did a rural tour, showing about 20 minutes of tightwire of the whole piece in various municipalities. But it was shelved for the whole of 2024, with no theatre performances of any kind. So: a theatre piece that hasn’t been performed in a full year and cannot be shown outdoors means that we have to dig it out from somewhere. Although a year isn’t that bad for that piece, and it’s fairly fresh in our memories, being the latest we’ve done. But I’m already training for it so I have the stamina for the 70 minutes it lasts, and my colleague is also training right now. Then we have four days together in the hall to rehearse. The pianist is from Latvia and rehearses from video before the performance, and our lighting manager just got changed to someone who has seen the piece, but also has to train himself from video.
So, circus people rehearse for two weeks in advance, then all five rehearse four days on location, then there’s one day for building the set – eight hours – and then we have a runthrough, and then it’s go time. In May, it’s going to be performed at a festival, but we’re going to do it with the muscle memory we get from this one. I think that six months is pretty much max to either remembering the thing or not.
As a layman, it’s not possible to always notice all the details and subtleties, especially if you see the performance just for its duration, not having seen the four days of rehearsals, for instance. The details remain hidden. So, what are the details in a piece like this?
Well, there definitely is attention to detail. It’s hard to say, because I can’t estimate a value by thinking of the experience from an audience point of view – does it seem easy or difficult, meaning that is what you see the only definition for evaluating the audience experience? Or is the definition somehow connected to an emotion that the performance sparks? You know, it can be so that the audience are all shiny-eyed when someone does a split on the wire, not knowing that the hard part is the half turn – a split stays in line to the wire, while the half turn requires more control. The difference between what looks difficult and what really is can be huge, like the difference between visually captivating and technically skillful – one looks amazing but is easy as pie, the other the exact opposite.
Choosing those certain tricks is also relevant: how much does it have to do with supporting the piece and the content? Is there a reason why a certain kind of bit is done to a piece? Why have it if it doesn’t support the piece and the artistic content in itself? I like to think of what a certain movement should represent, and then stand my ground on why I’ve come up with this movement, this conclusion.
How often do you have a story or a narrative in a piece, or do you value the continuity and smoothness in the movement more?
It so depends on the work, the piece itself. Usually there is a theme or a story – either or – and in addition there is handling and including the material at hand. In the number within the piece it’s more directly which moves to include, how to use music with what, what order should these be in. But in the piece itself the context is larger. For instance, if I want to deal with air in my piece, then wondering what air itself has to do with my being and doing on the wire, it doesn’t necessarily support the idea of circus tricks at all, should that be what I normally do.
Do you see a certain style or a mix of several styles in your work?
These days there are so many more tightwire artists, that almost everyone has these clear variations or differences or styles. When I started out, I knew exactly two other people and myself who were doing tightwire. I think YouTube was launched about the same time I started studying circus, so access to material wasn’t exactly abundant, which also meant there was no external stimulus to copy or take inspiration from. But now, there are several distinguishable styles. You can tell who are doing traditional circus style and who are looking for their own thing. Many artists are after their own quality of movement, studying what they themselves are on this or that device, and I love that.
As for myself, I have really long legs, and my body looks tall on the wire. I hear all the time that it seems so light, that I’m not perceived as heavy on the wire. I often strive to create a dancelike movement up there, and sometimes I think that the movement I can make on the wire I can’t make on the floor, that it just won’t come out bodily like it does on the wire. But that’s an endless research project. I’m all the time in it, trying to see what things will pan out like, and I try to do it by feeling and improvising as much as I can, and then check the video afterwards to find what looks good and is the core of the art, so to speak. But there are things I have had to give up as well, which most probably has to do with aging. I’m not that ruthless anymore, not having a hundred reps of this or that.
Aging is so personal in both dance and circus, in everything actually. What is it for you? What happens if you no longer can do what you could do when you were younger?
Well, there you have it. In reality, many traditional artists in the circus world – and many others as well – have this mindset that once they can’t complete their number technically and have to start taking bits out, it’s quitting time, which to many means that they will retire quite early. There’s this set of values that won’t yield or budge. But there are many ways to do the circus. There are those who have done a lifelong career in traditional circus, and there are those who have embarked on an artistic career through circus, and I think these are two very different things.
I’m personally suffering about the fact that it always takes longer for me to prepare for a certain piece. When it’s something done beforehand, the technique in it is solidly in there, and it takes me a considerably longer time to get ready. I no longer can just get ready three days before and then do a 90 minute show, my physique just isn’t up to it anymore. But I’ve come to terms with that, somehow. You should always be consistent about being on the wire, it should be part of your daily routine, which is especially challenging when you’re on tour and inside a moving car the whole time, not being able to practice. You just go and do the performance and there is no time to train.
I value my teacher’s words very differently now, having said “once you can sleep on the wire, you’re a tightwire artist.” When I was starting school I didn’t get it at all, but I think I now understand the methodical element it holds. Every now and then, you can train really intensively, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a short session, an hour and home. But if I just hang around up there every day, it maintains internally the capability my body has towards a steadier balance. Because balance can develop endlessly, and it all stays in my body. Everything stays moving and fluid, and I don’t suffer from it, I don’t get aches or cramps. And that’s sleeping on the wire.
Before COVID I talked with a colleague, a high wire dancer from France, and he said that he was so disciplined that he couldn’t give up the idea of not hanging around on the wire. So, one day he had been so tired that he fell asleep there – like falling asleep at the wheel. And fell from three metres. After that, he’s understood the difference of mental states you can be on the wire. It’s so sensitive, everything affects it – medicine, periods, ear lock, everything. But I’ve also found a meditation side from it, so that when you think you’re too worn out to do anything, just hang on the wire, don’t set the bar too high. Concentration can be murder to tired brains. But if you take it as a meditation moment, it’s more like going and saying hi to the wire, “hello there, sorry but I don’t have time to talk today.”
Let’s sidestep a bit. Are you impulsive, organised – what character traits do you think make a good circus artist? How would you describe yours?
Well, my character traits probably are fast, spontaneous, maybe impatient in certain situations… I mean, luggage queue in airports, of course I’m impatient. Brave, imaginative… I’m a person who starts doing a thing at once, if I feel an idea is going to take off, I grab it and do it. I have a friend just like me, with similar energy. When we’re in the same room, it’s so instant and direct. “Let’s do it now, it only takes five minutes.” We’re immediately in sync. But I don’t necessarily always get such a positive response to this quickfire energy of mine, which forces me to slow down somewhat.
To digress a little to working in the industry, I’ve had to learn a ton. When I started doing this professionally, I didn’t know that I had to be a producer, a paymaster, a logistics expert, a stage decorator, a licensed driver… I didn’t know I had to be all that, I thought I’m just a performer, I make money when I go and jump about on that wire there. In my opinion, working in culture is full entrepreneurship. I’m sure this goes for all culture fields and genres, but especially in the circus it’s emphasised: let’s build the whole infrastructure and never mind that it feels like you have to do everything by yourself. “That doesn’t exist there, let’s bring this over and build it there.” It’s like making a movie with a crew of two when you actually need 70, and you carry that infrastructure everywhere, all the time.
Ideally, we naturally want to sell our pieces. The conversation always takes place when we start creating: what sort of piece are we making, where are we going to sell this to, what does it take, will it fit in the flight luggage or is it cargo size, or are we going to rent a van and drive ourselves. Primarily we all want theaters to buy the works, or an agency to sell them for us, but there is no rural touring system in Finland, so we have to sit down and produce the damn things from scratch ourselves.
You’ve also done quite a lot of film and TV productions, which seems to be quite a shift from the circus. How did this take place?
Well, I actually drifted into that industry on the brink of COVID, when there was nothing going on. It might have been the shooting of the second season of All The Sins in Oulu, and they took assistant trainees into various departments. First there was an introduction to the work for about a week, and then you were in the production to learn, doing what you could. That’s how I moved in, and then COVID took place.
Before that, I had done stunts when they needed something specific, usually involving tightwire. I’ve also consulted that to some films. In the UK, it was a nice extra income to belong to agencies where they got their “supporting actresses”, as they are reluctant to use the word “extra”. Ricky Gervais was spot-on with his series, it’s exactly like that behind the scenes.
It seems to me it’s not about money anymore – you like that stuff for real?’
Who the hell likes it, it kills you in a week! [laughs] But, let’s say that it’s something that has come as a replacement to my shorter circus contracts. If I’ve been asked to join a production that has fit my schedule, usually four weeks tops, I’ve mostly joined. It’s usually something to do with sets or certain locations. Some productions are really hard and others not so hard. And I’ve had them pretty steadily, maybe one or two a year that fit my calendar. And it’s nice to get new friends and acquaintances, and then seeing them again in the next productions.
You’ve been in Oulu for a good while now, nevermind your parents taught you to travel no matter what. Does the road still have a pull on you?
I still spend the majority of my time on the road, but my Oulu roots will never leave me – I was born here, after all. You can get the person out of Oulu, but you can’t get Oulu out of the person. And the accent, you can’t get that out of anyone or anything. All my life I’ve been told how my Oulu accent is so thick, but, lacking any other, it’s all I have accent-wise.
I actually would like to try and stay put for longer periods of time. I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but it’s the truth. Maybe because my hips just can’t bear the goddamn driving. It honestly is exhausting, especially now that calendars and nations are open again with COVID giving us a break. Last year I travelled so much I was in Finland maybe a day or two at a time, and all around the country as well, I didn’t even make it back to Oulu at times. But with no places to work or practice in Finland, all the roads seem to lead away from the country. Since it is a profession I want to work in, some solution for this would be nice. I think that the only solution would be a farm of my own, with a small red cabin and the wires up on the field there, tied to birches, under the shining star. Just think of the Nordic exotica. A tightwire centre, a hiking retreat, meditation on the wire sort of thing.
Which direction do you see your own circus art developing? Do you have a sort of a proceeding arc of development you follow?
Maybe, in the larger picture, the idea of a place of my own is smoldering under there, and not just because of my own art, but I’d like to actually do quite a lot in the fields of art and culture. I’m talking about Significant Good Deeds here, but I don’t mean that I’d be saving or solving anything by myself. I would like to be doing the thing I find most important to everyone’s well being. But yeah, it’s depressing right now, while struggling with whether I should keep going with the energy I got when the general feeling is that you’re being hit in the head with a hammer. But strategically, sure – I’m always thinking for the long run. Which work comes where, five year cycles, none of that stuff is ending. But I’m thinking about the place a lot. I’m not retiring just yet, but I would like to stay still for a bit.
It’s really hard for me to wrap my head around the pitfalls with the place and how it should be productive financially and from every angle there is. And then I think that goddammit how wonderful places there already are, like in Southern France in a tiny nobody village, which has a bigger circus centre than any place I know. Artists living in caravans in the yard or apartments of sorts. Different kinds of studios, different kinds of places to create, a theatre… And all this was started by a clown. And it’s not productive. There are no youth circus lessons held there. In Finland, it goes like, “I must be productive, I must keep a hobby activity available for possible clients”. The function of it all is somehow raking money in. But over there, the function is that people go there to experience art. And that’s where wellbeing comes from.
This 84-year old actor said at an online course I took that he thinks everyone would be younger if they would find social community spirit, in or around a commune if need be, and if you can’t find one then take an art course. I understood right away what he was talking about. You won’t find it in housing, you won’t find it in neighbours, it has to be around a common interest to a common thing. And everyone should have something like that.
The spaces in the place could be just like that: communities. They don’t have to be producers of hobbies or leisure activities. It’s a difficult equation, especially in Finland. Even with art and creating being so important to me as they are, at times things can just be so damn depressing.
At the time of writing this, Hanna was travelling through France and then Spain, towards Porto in Portugal, where she is taking part in a residency for two weeks to work on a new piece. Hanna chatted with Pasi Pirttiaho in Oulu.
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