Review: Circus Bella presents ‘STARLIGHT’ Dec 12, 2025-Jan 4, 2026, The Crossing at East Cut, San Francisco, CA
- Jen Norris
- Dec 15, 2025
- 5 min read
San Francisco’s own homegrown circus Circus Bella has, for the third year running, pitched its candy-striped big top tent in downtown San Francisco. Offering a respite from real world responsibilities, Circus Bella welcomes one and all into their dazzling world. STARLIGHT, their all-new Winter circus spectacular, offers an appealing mix of fresh acts and familiar faces.
The tricks are consistently thrilling and the clowning is so hilarious that STARLIGHT left me with aching cheeks after almost two hours of awe-inspired, open-mouthed gaping and giggling. The 6-piece Circus Bella All Star Band performing original music by Rob Reich and Ian Carey builds anticipation and celebrates the performers’ successes with festive fanfare.
Circus Bella is a class act. The production values are top-notch. With heavily bejeweled fabrics and sultry silhouettes, Autumn Adamme and Dark Garden Unique Corsetry’s costume designs and fabrications make each performer shine in the beguiling lighting of designer Tristan Fabiunke.
Despite a chilly night outside, the intimate single-ring tent is pleasantly warm. Preshow, concessionaires make the rounds with popcorn and cotton candy as the clowns walk the aisles amusing young audience members with corny “magic” tricks.
Having seen Circus Bella mature over the past 10-plus years, I can say with some certainty that the aptly named STARLIGHT is full of stars. There isn’t a weak link in this 13-member troupe. Their enthusiastic enjoyment and support of each other’s talents is palpable, leaving me with a feeling of generous abundance. With the panache of a seasoned Ringmaster, director Abigail Munn crafts a brilliant evening of entertainment suitable for all ages. Her banter honors her colleagues, while as the hub of the finale “Big Juggle,” she fields flying juggling pins from atop a human pyramid and calls the cues for the complicated patterns created when the whole ensemble is pitching and catching across the ring.
This year Munn has selected 1930’s era “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” for her centerpiece song, which she gamely performs as a song and dance number with charming comedic flare thanks to the irrepressible clowning trio of Calvin Kai Ku, Jamie Coventry and Natasha Kalusa.
The brightest light of the evening may be guest artist Ossy Sanchez, a fifth-generation traditional circus performer originally from Mexico City, more recently from Las Vegas. Smiling with infectious joie d’vivre as he bounce-juggles a blur of fist-sized white balls off the floor, through his kicking legs, and around his rotating self, Sanchez clearly delights in his time on stage. Later, he performs a Malambo folk dance beginning with the drumming of a traditional Argentine bombo (drum) and concluding with the whirling boleadoras (a former throwing weapon made of intertwined cords with a weighted stone or ball at end). Sanchez twirls the boleadoras around in large arcs creating a percussive song as the weighted ends hit the floor in carefully modulated polyrhythms. Strength, finesse, and precision are on display as he twirls the cords controlling the pace of their impacts. His erect posture radiates his pride in this Latin form.
Fellow guest star Ariele Ebacher, on the tightwire, is similarly impressive. Ebacher, visiting from Vermont, can do more tricks on a tightrope than I can on solid ground. Wearing leather slippers and waving a large fan to maintain her flawless balance, she kicks, struts, hops, slides forward and back, holds one-legged poses and cross-steps along a taut wire several feet above the stage. Her playful demeanor and grace under pressure dumbfound, even before she puts on a pair of toe-shoes and reprises her choreography on her tip toes. She concludes her act atop the tightwire, with a slide into the splits and a graceful rise back to her feet.
Jack Weinstock has been part of the Circus Bella technical crew for years, working primarily behind the scenes. This past year, she spent six months in China learning the traditional art of Foot Juggling. Laying on her back, legs extended skyward Weinstock balances, tosses, rotates, and spins various objects from a giant Chinese vase, to a drum, and finally a 4-legged square table on the soles of pedaling feet.
Constantly challenging themselves to reach new heights and perfect more difficult skills, the Circus Bella regulars are also in prime-form. Rola Bola (board balanced on a cylinder) artist Ori Quesada, known for his unique knack of landing a series of metal bowls he has cantilevered off the end of his skateboard-like apparatus on his head, manages to launch, not one, not two, but, three bowls simultaneously and have them land sequentially in an ever-growing stack like inverted caps.
Young artist Mia Fan displays a mixture of grace, flexibility, and toughness, in her Circus Bella debut with partner versatile strongman Toni Cannon (seen in the 2023 spectacular climbing the Chinese Pole). They say opposites attract, and Cannon’s bulging muscles contrast well with Fan’s petiteness as he vaults her skyward and catches her flipping form. I am still replaying in my head a seemingly impossible sequence in which Fan stands in Cannon’s palms as he lowers himself to lie on the floor. While continuing to hold Fan’s erect frame in his hands, he then rolls entirely over never toppling his charge. You have to see this one for yourself, perhaps several times to fully grasp the difficulty required to pull it off.
The “Super Duper Hula Hooper,” Natasha Kaluza, incorporates her clownish ways into an Olympic-event-worthy hula hooping display. One imagines the joy Kalusa finds in dreaming up outlandishly difficult hoop gags and then honing them to perfection.
Aerial Strap artist Veronica Blair embodies elegance in motion as she flows through remarkable midair poses while manipulating the two long straps from which is tethered. Bending backward until her head threads through her legs, contortionist Elise Hing’s exceptional flexibility astounds, while the warmth of her smile and the twinkle in her eyes invites our utter amazement. The beauty and power of lyra artist Dwoira Galilea’s dance with her aerial hoop makes a suitably stunning penultimate performance.
Circus Bella performs 26 shows this holiday season at The Crossing at East Cut, 211 Beale Street at Howard on prime dates through January 4. Treat yourself, treat your family or friends to a wonderful daytime or evening of live entertainment, while supporting a Bay Area arts nonprofit.
More info at https://www.circusbella.org/bigtop
Review by Jen Norris, published December 14, 2025
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Production Credits
Director, Producer, Ringmaster Abigail Munn
Music Composition Rob Reich & Ian Carey
CAST: (alphabetically)
Veronica Blair, Aerial Straps
Toni Cannon, Duo Hand BalancingJamie Coventry, Clown
Ariele Ebacher, Tight WireMia Fan, Duo Hand Balancing
Dwoira Galilea, Aerial WebElise Hing, ContortionNatasha Kaluza, Clown and Hula HoopsCalvin Kai Ku, ClownAbigail Munn, RingmasterOri Quesada, Rola Bola
Ossy Sanchez, Bounce Juggling and Gauchos
Jack Weinstock, Foot Juggling
CIRCUS BELLA ALL STAR BAND:
Ian Carey (trumpet, music coordinator, librarian), Christina Walton (Violin), Kasey Knudsen (saxophone), Michael Pinkham (bandleader, percussion), Jonathan Seiberlich (tuba), Katy Stephan (keyboard and accordion)
TECH CREDITS:
Autumn Adamme of Dark Garden Unique Corsetry - Costume Design; Tristan Fabiunke, Lighting Design; Carlo Gentile, Production Director; Lawrence Helman, Publicity; Kirk Marsh, Tent Boss; David Messimore, Box Office Manager; June Price, Merchandise Manager; Rhonda Sauce, House Manager; Avery Ucker, Marketing & Development Director, Roustabout; Jack Weinstock, Roustabout, Set and Graphic Design.
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