CANBERRA Circus Festival is back, this time in the Big Tops at Chifley Oval right near the Warehouse Circus headquarters.

With a focus on artists who grew up in Canberra and went on to perform with Australian companies such as Circus Oz, Circa Casus and Dislocate, it would also provide Canberra audiences with some fun.

An intrinsic part of the event is a national youth circus training camp bringing budding artists from across the country to Canberra, supported by industry leaders Gravity & Other Myths and the National Institute of Circus Arts, NICA, with the tents provided by visiting company, Suitcase Circus.

On Monday I caught up with members of Brisbane’s Sparkle Society as they rehearsed their main stage show “Cab Suave” under the Big Top.

Founding directors, Latonya Wigginton and Abby Kelso, who’d just arrived in Canberra, told me that their artistic style was based on film noir with a vintage aesthetic, taking audiences back in time.

In a mixture of circus and jazzy music – think Peggy Lee’s “Fever” – there’s also a theatrical narrative in which private eye Dick Johnson carries out an investigation – circus style.

Although Sparkle members predominantly LGBTQIA+, they say, they’re proud to have “one token straight man” in the troupe playing Dick.

That token straight man turned out to be Jack Wilde, a one-time pupil at Brindabella Christian College who had run away to Warehouse Circus, performed in the UK, graduated from NICA, then become a leading circus performer now based in Melbourne, where he lives with his wife and family. Wilde’s dad is still in Canberra so he loves to get back here to see family.

Also, on hand, were a chatty group of young circus artists practising their juggling and “adagio” [partner acro-balance] work.

Aged from 15 to 20, they’re all serious about a future in circus and told me that while most Warehouse Circus classes were weekly, they worked up to four times a week as part of the performance troupe. One of their number, Jade, aged 19, was already studying health and nutrition, with an eye on the health benefits of circus.

While working hard to learn the skills, they said, they also studied acting techniques enabling them to smile through the trickiest efforts and adopt “certain faces” for comedy.

Sometimes it was important for acts to appear effortless, they said, but other acts were deliberately planned to show faults, because if you didn’t have a few spills, it would look fake.

All the artists, both local and visiting, will be staying at the Lions Youth Haven in Kambah, where the many interstate visitors from the NT, NSW, Victoria and Queensland would arrive on Tuesday. Some of them will be young as 11, with a couple of eight-year-old siblings.

Artistic director Tom Davis, said the festival was a place circus artists of the next generation could meet each other.

He praised the art form’s approach to physical diversity, saying that circus welcomed all kinds of bodies, and ran classes for people with disabilities.

“Sport is awesome, but there’s also a place for circus,” he said.

Canberra Circus Festival, 70 McLaurin Crescent, Chifley, April 18-23. “The Great Big Circus Gala(h)”, 7pm Tuesday, April 18 and 8.15pm, April 19, all other performance details at canberracircusfestival.com.au