Laura Lippert: Charialist

Our featured entertainer for the month of January is Laura Lippert: Charialist!

A St. Louis native and a graduate of Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, Laura started learning aerial at Sascha’s St. Louis School of Circus Arts under the Flying Cortes.  After a few years break of going to school for welding, then interior architecture and then being a nanny in France, she decided circus was her calling and returned to Chicago to continue her circus training under Shayna Swanson. She then traveled to Sweden to train under Christian “Vippen” Vilppola and to Montreal under coaches Rachel Walker, Victor Fomine and Yury Bozyan. The art of hair hanging she learned from well-known hairialist, Chris Lemon. Laura has performed and traveled all over the world including the 2012 season of St Louis’s own Circus Flora.

Laura Lippert presents her audience with a beautiful mélange of both traditional and contemporary technique and movement.  Her innovative style is pervasive throughout her acts; whether they are performed using her custom-designed and fabricated chair apparatus, or through her mastery of the rare art of hair-hanging.  Laura’s drive to seek out and master such a unique skill such as hanging by one’s hair is characteristic of her passion for pushing herself to explore the new and unusual while keeping a firm basis in the traditions of her trade.  The power and grace with which she navigates her many astonishing abilities is exceptional, and clearly the result of a solid foundation in dance, performance, and collaborative experience.  She is truly a masterful, amicable and generous performer; an uncommon talent who’s rapturous work must simply be experienced to be properly communicated. Check out our showtimes page to see when Laura will be performing in our home Circus Ring on the third floor of City Museum!