Biography
Jesse Jensen-Kohl is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney where he is researching the history and development of contemporary circus in Australia. He has been involved in circus arts for over 20 years, as a performer, educator and researcher. He is a founder of Sydney Trapeze School where he was Head Instructor and Artistic Director for many years. Jesse is a member of the Circus Oz Living Archive Committee and was a Board member of the Sydney circus school Aerialize. His Master’s degree, Running Away to the Circus, an exploration of the motivations of contemporary artists to choose circus performance, was awarded in 2018.
Jesse began his circus arts career when he taught himself to juggle and ride a unicycle at 12 years of age. Soon after he was invited to join the Performing Troupe at the renowned Australian youth circus school Cirkidz, where he went on to also become a Core Trainer and assistant director. At this time he also became interested in the academic understanding of the medium of circus when he first read Prof. Paul Bouissac’s Circus and Culture: A Semiotic Approach.
As a performer, Jesse has performed at many venues including Adelaide Festival Theatre, Luna Park Sydney, Her Majesty’s Theatre Adelaide, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Club Med and Fox Studios, Sydney. As a director he has directed shows for Flick!, Cirkidz (assistant), the Mercury Cinema (Zerna Premiere), Club Med, Sydney Trapeze School and Macquarie University Circus Group. He has also co-directed a number of short films with his brother as part of the Jensen-Kohl Brothers production team. At Macquarie University he directed two shows that applied his research in the field.
As an educator, Jesse has taught at institutions including Cirkidz, Aerealize, Adelaide University Students Union, Sydney Trapeze School and Macquarie University and he has conducted and participated in countless circus workshops and master classes throughout Australia. As Head Instructor and Artistic Director at Sydney trapeze School he introduced the Youth Performing Troupe (YPT) in 2016 for young people. At the University of Sydney, he currently teaches performance studies.
Jesse’s commitment to the medium of circus is primarily as an artistic medium of expression and performance, but he is also interested in its role recreationally and educationally, and he is particularly interested in the underlying meanings and context of circus, philosophically, culturally and historically. His aim as a researcher is to bridge the gap between circus practice and scholarship, and to provide agency and a direct “voice” to performers themselves while increasing the understanding of the medium of circus within performance studies research.