Circus Scorpius is proud to share its latest fairytale stage show with Kansas City!

Umbrella Enchanted follows the story of Mallory as she is transported into the magical world of Umbra, a land cursed with endless rain. With the aid of her fairy godmother, she travels the land in search of her missing umbrella. Along the way, she meets thieving pixies, troublemaking unicorns, and a charming prince. But will Mallory ever find her umbrella and return to her own world?

This enchanting circus show is full of excitement and wonder for everyone! It features a wide variety of disciplines including acrobatics, Cyr wheel, dance, juggling, and an abundance of aerial apparatuses. The narrative story combined with the impressive and artistic feats will keep audience members of all ages captivated throughout the entire show.

The cast of Umbrella Enchanted is composed of the Senior Company artists  of Circus Scorpius, all of whom had prominent roles in the sensational cosmic circus love story Jovia in 2023. It is written and directed by award-winning Artistic Director Kelsey Aicher (The Greatest Show, The Greatest-er Show, Here Be Dragons!, Fire & Ice). Every artist in the company played a role in making this show truly unique and magical!

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Past Show Dates:

  • Friday, May 10, 2024 @ 7:30pm

  • Saturday, May 11, 2024 @ 7:30pm

  • Sunday, May 12, 2024 @ 2:30pm

Meet the Cast

MALLORY GITTEMEIER

Mallory

  • Mallory Gittemeier is a St. Louis native and has been a dancer/aerialist/choreographer in the Kansas City area since 2010. She received her BFA in Dance (emphasis in Ballet) and a BA in Mathematics from Webster University. Mallory started her professional career as a guest artist with MADCO and as a Bharata Natyam dancer with Dances of India. She has danced with VidaDance, City in Motion, Kansas City Contemporary Dance, Gurukul Indian Dance Company, Material Girl and The Fame Monster, and is currently a dancer with Kansas City Dance Collective. As an aerialist, Mallory has performed with Circus Scorpius, Aerheart, Kansas City Aerial Arts, and Voler. Mallory is the Finance Director of Kansas City Dance Collective and works full-time as a reporting analyst.

  • Mallory will be performing the character of herself in this production, which she has found surprisingly challenging.

  • Mallory is excited to perform partner acro with her favorite gnome!

  • Melissa began her aerial career in 2014 in Columbia, Missouri. With a background in gymnastics, cheer, and choreography, Melissa fell in love with the artform immediately. She started performing within the year and obtained her personal training certification in order to teach aerial silks and aerial conditioning shortly after. Since then, she has performed with 4 different companies over the past 10 years and has met countless wonderful people and inspiring artists and friends along the way.

    After the pandemic and taking a small aerial training break, Kelsey invited Melissa to join the Circus Scorpius professional company when it formed in early 2022, to which both are forever grateful. She cannot thank her fellow performers enough for making every rehearsal, training, meeting and class an absolute blast and for being so kind, motivational and inspiring when she is extra hard on herself. It is very rare to find something you love so much with people you love and who love you.

    Melissa has performed on aerial silks, sling, lyra, rope, spiral, Spanish web, contortion straps, harness, frames, cube and dance as well as coaching aerial silks, act development, and conditioning.

  • Melissa is an avid cosplayer and has a walk-in closet dedicated to costumes, but somehow did not have a fairy costume before this show.

  • Melissa is so excited to be playing this over the top fairy godmother role. It’s like it was made for her... (It's really just another excuse to buy more costumes to fill her already massive walk-in costume closet.)

    She is also excited about getting to perform alongside this wonderful group of humans all while wearing a tutu and still getting to be her outgoing, silly self on stage.

JESSICA HARVEY

The Prince

  • Sonja Schulz is a professional dancer and aerialist in the Kansas City area. Originally from Elk Grove Village, IL, Sonja grew up with extensive training in gymnastics, dance, and acting through studios, intensives, and her high school's fine arts programs. She went on to study at the University of Iowa from 2015 to 2019 where she earned her BFA in Dance, BA in Economics, and 200-Hr Yoga Teaching Certification. Her aerial training began in 2015 as well while training and taking classes at Aerial Dance Chicago. Performing, teaching, and training in dance and aerial have become significant parts of Sonja's life and identity and she is so grateful to continue in these fields.

    After moving to Kansas City in 2019, Sonja began teaching at local studios and performing with KC Contemporary Dance, Quixotic, Westport Center for the Arts, and other artists in the area including Suzanne Ryan Strati and Katarina Fitzpatrick. Sonja currently performs with KC Dance Collective and Circus Scorpius. So far, Sonja has additionally obtained her Barre Certification through American Barre Technique, NASM Personal Training Certification, and Aerial Physique Teaching Certification. Sonja has continued to work with people of all ages in dance, yoga, aerial, and fitness.

    Sonja joined the training company of Circus Scorpius in June of 2022 and transitioned into the professional company in October 2022. She is extremely grateful to be part of this company and to be surrounded by so many amazing fellow aerialists. Alongside her training at Aerial Dance Chicago and attending the 2022 Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance Festival, Sonja has trained in static and duo trapeze with Kelsey Aicher, silks and sling with Samantha Jo Davis, flexibility, straps, and lyra with Elena Sherman, and with several other circus artists in the United States. While at ADF, Sonja had the privilege of training in dance trapeze with Megan Cattau, lyra with Gena Marie, silks with Shannon McKenna, and handstands with Cosmo Dudley. In August 2022, Sonja also had the opportunity to attend and train in wall dancing/vertical dance at the BANDALOOP Int./Adv. Summer Intensive. She has been fortunate enough to bring this back to Kansas City with the help of Kelsey Aicher and Elena Sherman creating a wall dancing space at Skyloft Center for Movement.

    Sonja really values creating and being part of performances that tell a story or touch on emotional or meaningful topics. She loves exploring movement and different aerial apparatuses and continuing to learn and train. Outside of her dancing and aerial life, she also enjoys running, traveling, and being with her family and friends.

  • When she was little, Sonja had a ladybug umbrella.

  • Sonja is excited to perform all the different acts she is in because she is getting the opportunity to incorporate some more challenging skills she has been working on. She loves the people she performs with and is excited that it is going to be a crazy, fun, and funny show.

ELENA SHERMAN

Elixa the Pixie, Cholesterol Spike the Unicorn

  • Harlowe began her aerial journey at age 8, after several successful years in competitive gymnastics. The combination of physical skill and artistic expression required in aerial proved a perfect fit. Since making the transition, she has trained in contortion, silks, lyra, hammock, trapeze, straps, dance, and hand balancing. In 2019, Harlowe was invited to train and perform with the prestigious LA-based Le PeTiT CiRqUe, allowing her to learn from some of the top circus performers in the world.

    Locally, Harlowe trains and performs with Quixotic Fusion and Kansas City Aerial Arts, having been part of the cast for Terra Luna at the Overland Park Arboretum, Future Stages at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Holidays Come Alive at Union Station, and many more high-profile events.

  • Harlowe’s favorite TV show growing up was My Little Pony and she plays a unicorn in the show. When Kelsey asked her what she wanted her unicorn name to be, Harlowe chose Dash based on Rainbow Dash from the show since she can fly and it always feels like Harlowe is flying during the sling act.

  • Harlowe’s favorite part about performing in Umbrella Enchanted is the people she gets to work with along the way. The cast is small which makes everyone super close and very involved in the show, not only creating a stronger community but also a more meaningful show for everyone inside and out.

SAMANTHA JO DAVIS

Sakura the Wyvern

MELISSA HOEFER

Fairy Godmother Miellyssa

  • Jessica Harvey is an aerial performer from Arkansas. Her disciplines are lyra, Cyr wheel, partner aerial, dance, and acrobatics. At age 10, she started taking dance, acting, and gymnastics lessons. In 2009, her passion for the arts grew more when she joined a cirque show called Drommnium. She performed as a Cyr wheel artist and acrobat. She is currently performing with the companies of KC Aerial Arts, Circus Scorpius, and Quixotic Entertainment.

  • One of Jessica’s favorite fairytales is Cinderella because her story teaches valuable lesson about inner strength, resilience, and the power of believing in oneself despite diversity.

  • Jessica is excited to be playing The Prince.

SONJA SCHULZ

Enchanted Portal, Solara the Gnome, Sprinkles the Unicorn

  • Growing up, though she loved the idea of acting, Elena found herself gravitating behind the stage, especially in college where she worked on the technical stage crew at the Lied Center of Kansas learning everything it takes to put on full-scale Broadway productions to intimate lecture series. Working behind the stage allowed her to become more comfortable and confident emerging onto it later on.

    Elena’s passion for aerial & circus arts started soon after her undergrad and had begun working full-time as a fitness wearables User Experience Designer while researching fitness trends. She took a lyra class in 2011 and hasn’t gotten off the hoop since. Realizing aerial & circus arts are the perfect combination of all her interests (design, artistic & physical expression, stage production, fitness) she began apprenticing at the Quixotic School of Performing Arts in 2012 and later became a founding member of Kansas City Aerial Arts (formerly Lucia Aerial Performing Arts) where she coached aerial & fitness classes. In addition she has taken on several production & performance roles including prop, makeup, costume, and graphic design. She moved to Portland in 2015 for 18 months where she continued developing as a circus artist at Pendulum Aerial Arts, The Circus Project, and Night Flight Aerial as well as traveling around the west coast to find as much training as she could. She returned to her roots in Kansas City in 2017 and has been delighted to continue performing and coaching circus skills to all levels. Elena is looking forward to growing her performance voice through her involvement with Circus Scorpius.

    Elena is also one-half of Duo Kelaini with her performing partner Kelsey. The two first met in Portland in 2016 but did not start working together professionally until 2017 after Kelsey agreed to follow Elena back to KC to take a chance on a new partnership. The two have been completely inseparable since, blending their high technical acrobatic & aerial skill and goofy personalities to create meaningful art together.

    In addition to her circus training, Elena is taking on a newly rediscovered passion of creating art through papercraft. The intricate detail and technical problem solving required for each piece she assembles perfectly balances out the high-stakes danger of her circus lifestyle.

  • As a child, Elena wanted to grow up to be a mermaid. (Aerialist and klepto pixie are a fine substitute.)

  • Elena has really enjoyed doing more character and prop based exploration in preparation of this show. It’s pushed everyone in a different ways that they don’t always get to work so it’s been a fun challenge and opportunity for growth. Most of her juggling skills for this show have been based on either a dare or as a joke that was pushed and refined.

HARLOWE PERSAUD

Fairy Godmother Lowa, Dash the Unicorn

  • Samantha Jo is an aerialist, dancer, and writer from St. Louis, Missouri, who’s considered Kansas City her home since 2015. While her aerial disciplines include trapeze, sling, rope, and lyra, she is most passionate and seasoned on silks. Samantha has trained silks under Elise Southwick, Jenn Bruyer, Terry Beeman, Juan Hernandez, Georgeanna Layton, and Lilly Steele. She is currently a company member of Kansas City Dance Collective. When she’s not training, teaching, or choreographing, she is probably reading books, stories, or articles related to trauma healing, social justice, and cultural reimagination.

    While Samantha has formed her entire aerial career here in Kansas City, with the inspiration and big-sister-type guidance from Kelsey Aicher and Elena Sherman, she will soon move to Dallas, Texas, to be with her new husband and explore the opportunities that await her there. Samantha is eager and hungry to discover what the future holds for her outside of her comfort zone. Currently, her plans consist primarily of writing and training her butt off. Jovia will not likely be her final aerial performance in Kansas City, however, as she plans to continue supporting the Circus Scorpius community in its creative endeavors.

  • The song Samantha performs her solo to is the cast favorite in the show.

  • Samantha is excited to perform her first rope solo because her skills have evolved so much. Observing her own level-up has brought Samantha true joy these past few months.

Kate Vilain

Understudy (Mallory)

KELSEY AICHER

Willow Bane the Unicorn

  • Kelsey began her aerial training on a whim in the summer of 2011 after moving to Portland, Oregon. She immediately fell in love, training silks, trapeze, and partner acrobatics diligently. Just over two years after her first class, Kelsey performed in her first professional show with Night Flight Aerial.

    She has been fortunate to have some of the best coaches, including Daniela Steiner, Rachel Walker, and Aimée Hancock for trapeze, Stefan Furst for partner acrobatics, and Nicolo Kehrwald and Brittany Walsh for handstands. She has had the pleasure of performing with companies such as Night Flight Aerial, Prismagic, Sir Cupcake’s Queer Circus, and Aerheart KC Circus Company. In 2015, Kelsey was a semi-finalist in the 5th Annual Denver Aerial & Acrobatics Arts Festival Competition Show and in 2016, she was awarded an artistic residency at The Steep and Thorny Way to Heaven in Portland.

    As a perfomer, her goal is to draw in the audience by creating a performance that feels relatable to every individual. The study of character through her screenwriting education and the heightened sensitivity through her clairvoyance apprenticeship guide Kelsey in her art and interactions. Every movement, every shape, every skill has intention.

  • Kelsey’s favorite character in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is the butterfly.

  • Kelsey is excited to be sharing a lyra onstage once more with Elena.

  • Kate began her aerial training in San Francisco in 2003, focusing on static trapeze for a year under first Lorelei Ashe and then Elena Panova. After a 9-year hiatus following a move to Kansas City, she resumed training and took private lessons on static trapeze, corde lisse, and lyra until Fall of 2018, when she began to train at Kansas City Aerial Arts as a student, joining the Training Company in August 2019. In Spring 2021, she joined Circus Scorpius’s student company Circ.S where she has added handstanding, juggling, and straps to her training repertoire. Kate has performed stage shows and gigs—private and public—on rope, static trapeze, dance trapeze, duo trapeze, and duo lyra, with a few dance and acro bits thrown in. Her fondest aerial show experiences so far have been playing Patrick Mahomes (as “the Nutcracker”) in KCAA/VidaDance’s productions of Cracked! and playing the immature RuPunzel in Circus Scorpius’s The Glass Combat Boot.

  • Kate got an umbrella tattoo before it was cool. Also, hers is an Edward Gorey umbrella.

  • Kate is excited to pull lines for UE, and she loves getting to train Mallory’s pieces, plus generally pretending to be Mallory.

Madi Nispel

Understudy (Elixa the Pixie)

  • Madi Nispel is an author, performer, fitness instructor and aerial coach in the Kansas City area. She first began performing at the age of four where she found her love of dance as well as many other athletic activities. She continued her passion for performance art throughout her childhood by singing, dancing and acting in school productions and through local dance studios.

    Upon graduating highschool Madi found a new love for group fitness at the University of Missouri while she received her BA in International Studies and BS in Business Administration as well as her AFAA Group Fitness Certification. Her love for movement continued to flourish and shortly after graduation she left the corporate world to pursue fitness instruction full time and continues to teach with a NASM Personal Training Certificate, 500 HR Yoga Teacher Training Certification, 50 HR Child Yoga Certification and many other trainings in cardio kickboxing, dance and cycling.

    In 2020, Madi found aerial arts and began taking classes and found a new fondness for many of the apparatuses including lyra, trapeze, silks and sling. Madi joined Circus Scorpius's student training company in 2022 and shortly after found juggling. Juggling quickly became Madi's favorite thing and from there she had the opportunity to juggle in several of Circus Scorpius student shows, Enchant Christmas and various local gigs and was then invited to join the Circus Scorpius Junior Company in 2024.

    Madi currently teaches at Great Plains Circus Center and Dance Fit flow where she values creating spaces of exploration, creativity and empowerment for all individuals. She loves storytelling in all forms whether that be in her published novels or through movement art. Outside of the circus, Madi enjoys reading, video games and travel.

  • Madi has several tattoos that are inspired by fairytales. In fact, one of them is a tattoo she, her mom, and her sister all share.

  • As her first professional, Madi is so excited to be an understudy for this fun, whimsical performance. It's so character-driven that she thinks everyone in the audience will have a fantastic time!