Coach & Program Development Lead
Mandy Hackman
Mandy Hackman started dancing and climbing things at the age of three and couldn’t imagine her life without it. A childhood of competitive dance and intensive classical training at Point Park University gave way to a college degree in contemporary dance at Sarah Lawrence College, after which she started a contemporary dance career in New York and fell in love with aerial arts. Mandy has since performed with many circus and dance companies such as Rainbow Militia and Control Group in Colorado, Sinecdoche Dance and Daniel Gwirtzman in New York, and Double Blind Productions’ “Escape Velocity” in PA when she was commissioned as the director of circus. She also created a nationally touring improvisational acrobatic dance troupe, Tree Project. Her circus adventures have brought her from sold-out underground clubs in converted churches, to secret shows in abandoned warehouses, to the Kennedy Center and everything in between.
Mandy has taught aerial arts, contemporary dance, and composition nationally and internationally, including the US Aerial Dance Festival and Excessive Realness Dance Festival in recent years. Mandy comes to Boston via Colorado, where she was a company member of Frequent Flyers Productions and taught Kinesiology for Movement Artists at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She also produces her own work and is a founding member of interdisciplinary collaborative ShapeShifter Collective. As a coach, Mandy is passionate about movement efficiency, balancing technique with theory, and a sense of discovery.
Mandy also offers mobility, strength, and neuromuscular retraining through All Our Bodies (https://allourbodies.com).
Teacher Bio
As a coach, I have a passion for digging beneath the surface to find the little pieces involved in each move, getting to know them, and putting them all back together. I love to use my background in Applied Kinesiology to find those little “aha!” moments that unlock tricky technique by digging into the muscles & movement patterns involved in complicated circus tricks. As someone who came to circus through dance, I tend to make sequencing and improvisation a part of class. I love the big, tough moves and the little sneaky transitions equally—but I really got into circus because of my passion for aerial theory. In my class you’ll get technique with a dash of learning the grammar of circus as well- how each skill is connected, and how to someday make up your own variations and novel moves. I’m also known for making weird superhero noises and inventing “rude” (but useful!) technique drills.
