Rumman Talukder’s favourite circus trick is called the Mermaid. Every Sunday, the 60-year-old IT consultant drives from his home in Stanmore to a circus school in Ware to practise it. Hanging from a trapeze by one arm, with his back arched and his legs wrapped around the rope, he says it makes him feel “strong and graceful”.
“My wife thinks I’m mad but in the run-up to turning 60, I decided I wanted to challenge myself; to find things not normally associated with people my age,” he says.
Talukder is one of a small but increasing number of people discovering circus after the age of 50.
A Generation Circus class in Hertfordshire. Photograph: Emma Taylor
In Hertfordshire, Generation Circus has spent the past year running a pilot project for older adults and now runs weekly sessions. Their oldest participant is almost 97 years old. In London, the National Centre for Circus Arts in Hoxton has just begun classes for older people and is due to launch a six-week aerial course later this year. In Eastbourne, Sweet Circus recently started monthly sessions. All are looking for funding to expand.
Emma Taylor, the founder of Generation Circus, said the sessions were transformational. “A lot of our participants signed up for classes simply because it sounded like a fun way to get fit,” she said. “But circus immediately opens up a whole new world, and suddenly they’re buying hula hoops and rigging up circus equipment in the garden.”
Generation Circus: ‘Circus immediately opens up a whole new world.’ Photograph: Andy Holloway
Evidence specifically on circus remains limited but small studies have found improvements in balance among older adults learning juggling and poi, with some also reporting gains in attention and processing speed. Separate brain-imaging studies have found that learning to juggle can even change brain structure.
For Talukder, though, the attraction has little to do with neuroscience. “Achieving something this physical at my age makes me feel indomitable,” he said. “I see people in their 70s and 80s, and realise there isn’t an age where you should feel constrained from trying something new.”
The social side matters too. Taylor said members of circus school quickly feel part of a team: no little achievement at a time in which Age UK estimates that about one in 14 people aged 65 and over in the UK are often lonely.
“They begin to dress differently: they’re more bright somehow,” said Taylor. “They look up tricks on YouTube and talk about them and go to see shows together. And it’s all because, every week, they train in a proper little circus school.”
Carol Masson: ‘After every class I feel like I’ve had a shot of life in the arm.’ Photograph: Andy Holloway
Carol Masson, 70, candidly admitted that she might not be here today were it not for circus school. The retired housekeeper struggled after the death of her daughter four years ago. “I would stay in bed and sometimes even think about suicide,” she said.
“Now I can’t wait for Sundays to arrive. After every class I feel like I’ve had a shot of life in the arm. There’s so much fun and joy. Everything else just disappears.”
Masson had a hip replacement in February but isn’t letting that thwart her newfound enthusiasm: she returned to class last month, concentrating on juggling and hula hoops while she rebuilds her strength. “Generation Circus is mental and physical therapy in abundance,” she said. “I just wish I could do it every day.”
Claire Howard, 54, who uses a wheelchair and has had 121 transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs), often called mini-strokes, never dreamed she could do circus skills. “The first session, I looked at the trapeze and just wanted to turn around and leave,” she said.
But she stayed – and a year later is so skilled with her own wheelchair adaptations of the hula hoop that she teaches able-bodied participants. “I’ve gone from having no purpose in life to rediscovering my inner child,” she said.
“Circus has shown me that life can be fun. I’d forgotten that. As a wheelchair user you’re reminded all the time what you can’t do. Here, I have skills that lots of able-bodied people don’t have. I can be useful,” Howard said.
Corinna Hartwig: ‘I can be playful, happy and creative.’ Photograph: Andy Holloway
Circus has been similarly transformational for Corinna Hartwig, who lost her mother when she was 12 and her father four years ago. “I was advised to reconnect with my inner child but I didn’t know how until I started going to circus,” she said. “Now, once a week, I can be playful, happy and creative again.”
Diane Bernier, recreational programme manager at the National Centre for Circus Arts, said circus helps older people “realise their life doesn’t have to go down one path simply because of their age”.
She said: “People discover they can still learn completely new things and that’s such a powerful revelation.”
Sarah Hodson: ‘Never in a million years did I think I’d end up doing circus.’ Photograph: Andy Holloway
Back in Ware, Sarah Hodson, 63, still laughs at the fact that she now spends her weekends learning circus skills alongside her 96-year-old mother, Jane.
“Never in a million years did I think I’d end up doing circus,” she says. “People of our age often think they’re only good for water aerobics or chair yoga. Then you look around the room and see people older than you hanging upside down from a trapeze, with someone even older swinging from their arms.
“In some ways it’s better than being young,” she added. “Because we’ve rediscovered that joy, fearlessness and freedom without the self-consciousness of youth.”
