Meet the Founders Part One

Hello :) If you’re reading this blog then you are likely familiar with Acro Enso. In short, Acro Enso will be the first large scale movement arts studio in Reno with a focus on partner acrobatics, cyr wheel, and dance; and with a full offering which will include everything from yoga and general fitness to clowning and magic. If you haven’t done so already, you can read our first blog to learn about our name, our mission, and our intention.  Today we’d like to share the story of us. Some people call us Duo Enso but most know us as Cyrus and Keisha. We are clowns, artists, performers, teachers, dreamers, life partners; and together, we are pursuing the work of facilitating meaningful play.  Read on to learn about Cyrus, the founder who dreamed up Acro Enso. Check in next week for part two to meet Keisha, his partner in play.

My name is Cyrus, but you can call me Cecil. Or Cirrus, Serious, Cypress; I’m particularly fond of Citrus. People seem to have a difficult time with my name, but I’ve come to realize that it’s a wonderful reflection of the many different facets of myself. My parents couldn’t decide on a name when I was born. They went back and forth for so long, the hospital nearly christened me Boy Luciano just to get me out the door. Unable to choose a name, but unwilling to allow me to go by Boy for the rest of my life, my Mother and Father delegated the choice of the cornerstone of my identity to a computer. In essence, the person I call me was birthed from the beautiful randomness generated by the endless 0’s and 1’s that make up the machines which have come to control all of our lives. But to some extent, isn’t this true for each and every single one of us?

As in the choice of my name, the path of my life has been varied, meandering, and at times seemingly random. Movement can be found in threads of memory reaching back to the earliest days of my life. Skiing, climbing, hiking, and martial arts are among the activities I enjoyed growing up. It didn’t occur to me how much I loved moving through the world in my body until I came down with Lyme’s Disease when I was 9 years old. Unable to even walk, it became excruciatingly clear to me what an amazing gift it is to move one’s arms, legs, fingers, and toes, unencumbered and free from pain. Not knowing if I would ever recover, a passion was born inside of me to cultivate and hold close any and all movement in whatever form it was available. When it became clear that I would fully recover, I decided I would never take this gift for granted.

It wasn’t until four years ago when I picked up my first Cyr Wheel that the thought of a general movement arts studio focusing on the cross-section and cross-pollination of movement and creativity really crossed my mind. After many iterations and a life altering deep dive into partner acrobatics with my partner Keisha, we now find ourselves ushering this delicate, magical idea into the world. Having played bagpipes and studied poetry and mathematics in college; having worked as a river guide engaging people in beauty, fear, and the sacred; having put my time in a cubicle and witnessed firsthand the underpinnings of life lived almost completely in the future tense; Acro Enso is a life calling and a mission statement. Acro Enso is the answer to the question I ask myself: what do I want to wake up doing every day for the rest of my life?  

Acro Enso.