Tangle Movement Arts

Six women climb silks, hang from trapezes, and push through unexpected portals in a queer circus-theater journey which brings audiences through secret passageways, shared visions, and sudden revolutions.

This is Tangle’s immersive circus at its best—the powerful, kinetic movements of aerial dance merged with topsy-turvy storytelling that’s as intimate as a shared dream.

Mixing theater, dance, interactive sculpture, and aerial magic, Tangle’s all-female cast of acrobats invite you to a surreal marketplace where fortunes are traded and fates are revealed; into a checkerboard realm of shifting power where companions are knocked off one by one; through a mirror that opens to expose a new dimension.

Tangle Movement Arts is a circus arts company with a contemporary twist, whose performances mix traditional circus like trapeze and aerial silks with dance, theater, and live music to tell a multi-dimensional story. Tangle’s work places an emphasis on queer and female experiences, and is devised collaboratively by its all-female ensemble. Based in Philadelphia, Tangle has been a Philly FringeArts Festival favorite since its inception in 2011. Philadelphia Weekly says Tangle “blends circus-style acrobatics with a smart theatrical spin.”

For the creation of Force the Mirror Open, Tangle received state arts funding support through a grant from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.