Lava City Cirque is celebrating its first anniversary at the north end of Bend off O.B. Riley Road with some exciting achievements. One of its students, 11-year-old Margot Tatum-Ling, won the national championship in the Intermediate 2 competition at the Aerialympics Kansas City, MO in July. Three other students won first place awards. Altogether, Lava City took home 10 medals.
Tatum-Ling, a sixth grader at Cascades Middle School, has been doing aerial performance with silks for about three years. “I started when I was eight, because my grandparents took me to see this traveling circus and….it inspired me because they did this ‘Around-the-World’ act and used these beautiful light blue silks for Niagara Falls. I was like, I want to do that because it looks pretty cool,” she told the Source.
Ariel performing is like a ballet in the sky involving long strips of silk cloths, sometimes with multiple silks or one continuous loop. It may involve a lyra which is like a hula hoop or a trapeze.
Lava City students put on a performance during a recent open house. While still celebrating their overall success in July, they’re equally excited about their next venture, appearing in a movie.
A dozen students traveled to Houston in early September to perform in “Soul Cirque,” an independent film currently in production. Lava City Cirque owner Kate Finley says they were invited after making connections at various competitions. The movie will feature performers from several aerial arts teams. Lava City Cirque performers, ages nine to 16, had to learn a routine for a specific song.
“There’s gonna be an aerial competition,” Finley says. “So we’re one of the rival teams. They gave us a song that was composed by one of the kids somewhere in Houston and we just had to choreograph a routine to it.” In the movie, they will be working together as a team.
“The movie experience, it’s been really fun,” Tatum-Ling told the Source. “I feel like I’m getting to know all of the people better. I mean, I spend a lot of time with them, but I’m getting to know them better. And…you have to really trust other people when they’re the ones who are literally holding you 20 feet off the ground.”
Finley adds, “I think it’ll be really good for the kids to do something that’s not competitive.”
“Soul Cirque” is about a shy tween girl who enters a circus competition but is in over her head. With the help of her father and younger brother, the trio embarks on a journey, realizing success and confidence doesn’t come from perfection but from embracing your cultural roots. The movie stars Tony Grant who’s sung with the Temptations and acted in Tyler Perry specials.
Twelve-year-old Kate Andrews, a seventh grader at Seven Peaks Middle School, says, “It has been a really long and fun process because we had to change our routine a ton. But I’m really excited to go because it’s a really good bonding experience where we can all go and do something all together as a group. When you go to competitions, normally, you’re kind of competing against each other.”
While Lava City Cirque is fairly new, the owner has experience in competition.
“I was a competitive figure skater and then I was a coach and then I just wanted to find some other performance art to get involved in and I kind of fell into silks,” Finely says. After working at another studio, she decided to open Lava City Cirque. Some of the classes focus on the competition team, but other classes are offered for students and adults for around $28 a class. A new class is beginning for moms and toddlers.
All the young women at the open house eagerly took turns performing. Some of the older competitors are also coaches. They use an apparatus with a pully system to lower girls who get stuck or need assistance.
While the girls compete against one another, Andrews says it’s not personal. “The competition never gets in the way of our friendship. We just try to be really kind to each other, even if we’re competing against each other,” she says.
While they practice several hours a week, even a young pro like Tatum-Ling still gets nervous. “Before you get on stage, you’re like, oh my gosh, there’s tons of people. You’re like, the world is, like, crashing down. But once you get on stage, there’s a wash of cool, because you’re, like, I know how to do this. I know what I’m gonna do.” She says sometimes she gets stuck in the silks and needs help untangling and has fallen on occasion, but Tatum-Ling says, when that happens, you just get back up.
Brandi Sooter teaches adult classes when she’s not working as a nurse. “I think it’s really empowering. It helps kids and adults find a part of themselves that they didn’t know was there. And I think it makes them, I mean, for kids, it makes them really brave. It makes them have this really unique, cool thing that nobody else has. And for adults…I get a lot of moms like myself…that are, like, ‘Hey, I would never, like, this looks crazy. I can’t imagine. I cannot believe you do that.’ It’s not what it seems. It doesn’t have to be scary… We’ll learn little tricks on the ground where it’s not painful. It’s not scary and slowly work our way up and before you know it, you’re gonna be doing this stuff in the air and be shocked that you’re actually doing it, so that’s really empowering for everyone, whether you’re a kid or a full-grown adult.”
This article appears in the Source September 18, 2025.
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