Dating isn’t easy for anyone — but when you travel with the circus, logistics can get extra complicated. Just ask Nicole Laumb and Justin Therrien.
As professional circus performers, the couple crossed paths everywhere from Las Vegas to California before starting a relationship. As Laumb tells it, “We just kind of danced around each other for a couple years.”
“Every now and then he’d pop into where I was living in Northern California, and we’d have coffee,” she continued, “and then I wouldn’t see him again for, like, six months.”
That dance ended in 2019, when Laumb and Therrien had their first official date in Bellingham. Therrien has been involved with the Bellingham Circus Guild since 2008. Fittingly, he took Laumb to see a performance of “My Circus Valentine,” the Guild’s longest-running production.
Now in its 15th year, “My Circus Valentine” is beloved in part for its nuanced lens on love. High-level athletes — many of whom have performed all over the world — embody concepts from grief and isolation to joy, passion and creativity. The narrative changes with each run, but Producer Anneka Deacon said a throughline is “our need for connection as humans.”
“It was really sweet,” Laumb said of her first show. “I fell for my sweetie — and also really fell in love with that circus community.”
Laumb moved to Bellingham in 2021 and became an active member of the Bellingham Circus Guild in her own right. She and Therrien are also close collaborators — both onstage and in life. The couple have co-emceed “My Circus Valentine” for the past three years and even founded their own company, Shoestring Circus, in 2022. This past December, they got engaged.
Laumb and Therrien aren’t the only ones whose love story has ties to “My Circus Valentine.” The production has influenced a kaleidoscope of relationships: romances, artistic partnerships, deep friendships and an overarching sense of family.
“What I’m asking for in this show is for people to share something that feels really deep and real for them, and to be maybe a little more vulnerable,” Deacon said. “And all of that just creates community.”
The origin of ‘My Circus Valentine’
Ironically, Deacon was never a fan of Valentine’s Day. She dreamed up “My Circus Valentine” in 2010 as an alternative to obligatory, sometimes schmaltzy traditions.
“I wanted to create something that could just be for everyone,” she said, “especially people who feel like they’re on the fringes with a holiday that sometimes … doesn’t feel totally inclusive.”
Fifteen years later, “My Circus Valentine” sells out every show — and keeps winning over self-admitted Valentine’s Day skeptics. Katie Hagerman, the Guild’s accountant, used to hate Feb. 14; now, she said, “It’s my favorite time of the year.”
But while “My Circus Valentine” doesn’t center on romantic love, the production played a role in Deacon’s own relationship. She met her partner, Devon Boorman, through Vancouver’s dance community. Before they started dating, she invited him to Bellingham to see “My Circus Valentine.”
A snowstorm hit on Boorman’s way out of Vancouver, but he “white-knuckled [his] way across the border,” determined to see Deacon’s show. Upon arrival, however, he realized he’d mixed up his dates. The show didn’t open for another week — and Boorman had accidentally crashed a stressful cue-to-cue rehearsal.
“I was so frazzled, and it was such a challenging moment in the production,” Deacon said. “What I really needed was for someone to just squeeze me and to understand what it was like, and Devon just happened to be someone who totally got it.” The pair started dating about a month later.
Today Boorman is going into his fourth year as house manager for “My Circus Valentine,” and Deacon supports him in his own artistic pursuits. Their relationship is founded on shared values, mutual respect and, Deacon added, “a lot of kitchen dancing.”
Romance, onstage and off
“My Circus Valentine” also played a part in Hagerman’s relationship with her now-husband, Jules McEvoy (known professionally as Jules the Juggler). The pair met in the early 2000s, though they didn’t start dating until three years later, just after McEvoy finished a circus tour.
“He came back [as] a more serious circus performer, and just seemed more like a man,” Hagerman said. “I was like, ‘Oh, let’s hang out,’ and … our first date, we just knew.”
After dating for six years and becoming parents together, McEvoy proposed to Hagerman during a performance of “My Circus Valentine.”
“It was really sweet, because it was our family,” Hagerman continued. “I just remember a lot of people standing in the back being stoked … We even got married on that stage.”
Laumb said her friends expected Therrien to pop the question in a similar manner. Instead, Therrien tied a ring around their dog’s collar and proposed at home. The privacy felt significant: Given their shared profession, Therrien and Laumb live out much of their relationship onstage.
“If you don’t have an act together, it can be hard to stay together,” Therrien explained, “because you’re going to end up booked on different shows.”
Finding artistic common ground proved challenging: Laumb is an aerialist and “circus comic,” while Therrien has a “whimsical, detail-oriented” performance style incorporating mime movement and object manipulation. The two initially had no clue how to combine their skill sets — until advice from a friend changed their perspective.
“Whatever you’re stuck on is probably what you should lean into,” Laumb recalled. Now, she and Therrien use their differences to play up each other’s strengths.
Gallery: ‘My Circus Valentine’ returns for 15th year
“The process isn’t always romantic and beautiful, [but] if we were to just give up, then these beautiful shows that we’ve made together would have never come to fruition,” Therrien added. “ … You keep going, you find that common ground, and it leads you to the places where you want to go.”
For their first act in “My Circus Valentine,” Laumb and Therrien paid homage to their love story and acted out a “circusy, clown-y version of a first date,” Laumb recounted. She and Therrien co-wrote the entire show the following year, basing it around “what happens when you get disconnected from your heart.”
Writing “My Circus Valentine” led to an important realization for Laumb: “This is the space where we can make really personal stuff to share with people,’” she recalled, “and it felt really good. It feels like Bellingham is very open to that kind of stuff.”
Art, trust and community
Although Laumb and Therrien are the most visible relationship to come out of “My Circus Valentine,” Boorman described the entire cast and crew as “a family that comes together over and over again.” He recalled when, after a rigorous rehearsal, cast members shared soup and peanut butter chocolate cake for Therrien’s birthday.
“We accomplished something, we feel good about what we’re creating — which is different than if we just got together and had cake,” he said. “I think a lot of people are really want for purposeful, collaborative projects with each other.”
In Boorman’s view, these kinds of projects help “create greater senses of friendship and community love.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that relationships behind the scenes of “My Circus Valentine” — romantic, platonic, artistic and otherwise — can be as multi-layered as those depicted onstage.
“There are people who will be spinning on a hoop together, and they are relying on each other for their life,” Deacon said. “ … There’s immense amounts of trust, [and] it’s a really emotional process, creating art together.”
Of course, not all performance partnerships are romantically involved — but for folks like Laumb and Therrien, art and romance go hand in hand. They’re working hard to ensure Shoestring Circus has the Guild’s longevity, and both expressed a desire to make “better and better shows for the people that have supported us.”
“Seeing each other still making these wacky shows … wrestling with the hard issues, and coming out on the other side” Therrien continued, “ is something I can see us doing over and over again, with every time around the sun.”
“My Circus Valentine” runs from Feb. 13–16 at the Bellingham Cirque Lab (1401 6th St.). As of press time, tickets are still available for a newly added 9 p.m. 21-plus show on Sunday, Feb. 16. Info: bellinghamcircusguild.com/events.
Cocoa Laney is CDN’s lifestyle editor; reach her at cocoalaney@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 128.
