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Before I was a science journalist, I was a circus performer.

For real, in Alaska, I joined Sitka Cirque around the same time I started working at KCAW

the community radio station.

I needed to do something outside of work.

It's my days were spent making radio, but my nights were spent making art muscles.

My crowning performance was on two aerial silks which were tied together to form an elaborate

aerial cloud upon which I climbed, flipped and flew back and forth dressed as a peacock.

I spent hours watching peacock videos on YouTube figuring out how to move to fans, pattern-like

tail feathers, how to head bob and walk at the same time, how to embody both the confident

flirt and the anxious chicken that is the peacock?

And it worked.

Who was that professional peacock interpreter someone asked?

Add that to your business card.

This is the power of circus, moving in ways that just dazzle people.

And for that one weekend, it was the closest I'd ever come to flying here on Earth.

For Julia Ruth, that feeling happens all the time.

She's a physicist turned circus performer.

So much in circus is that sensation of flying your airborne, right?

And you're not connected to anything.

Her favorite apparatus is the seer wheel, a giant metal hoop tall enough to stand in, allowing

Julia to spin and create shapes inside, almost like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man.

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