The space of the Move to Circus Academy first strikes one as unusual. Situated among factories belching smoke in the Emek Hefer Industrial Park, north Netanya, a building that usually serves as a ski simulator is now occupied by children and teens rolling from the ceiling at record speed, suspended by “tissue,” or aerial silk, the flexible fabric used in aerial acrobatics. A girl nearby does somersaults on a trampoline. A boy juggles six balls. A 6-year-old girl swings back and forth on a trapeze, dangling by a leg. All of this is taking place on a weekday morning, while their peers sit in their chairs at schools that “suppress them,” as Shahar Kamay, pedagogical director of Move to Circus, sees it.
There are quite a few places in Israel that teach the circus arts, but none of them do it like Kamay's academy. That Kamay isn’t enthusiastic about the “regular” education system is putting it mildly. His academy challenges the traditional educational system in general, taking it to task, or at least it tries to.
