SARASOTA / CIRCUS ARTS / INSPIRATION
Dolly Jacobs
The next person
looks up.
By Rob Urban
Dolly Jacobs grew up in a family for whom joining the circus did not require running away. Her father, Lou Jacobs, was a celebrated Ringling clown. Her mother, Jean Rockwell Jacobs, had been a model before becoming a circus performer. Sarasota was home, and circus life was part of the family’s ordinary world.
What she did with that inheritance became distinctly her own. Jacobs built an international career as an aerialist, particularly on the Roman rings. Later, with fellow performer Pedro Reis, she helped create an organization that could give circus arts a continuing home in Sarasota through performances, training, and education.
Her story stretches from a child watching accomplished performers to an artist helping younger people learn the work. The continuity is physical. A tradition survives because someone practices it, performs it, and takes the time to teach another person how.
Confidence takes practice.
The National Endowment for the Arts named Jacobs a National Heritage Fellow in 2015. Its account describes her joining Ringling in 1971 as a young member of the corps de ballet and developing her rings act with her godmother, Margie Geiger. Her solo debut followed in 1976.
In the accompanying interview transcript, Jacobs remembered finishing school before taking time at home to concentrate on the act. Geiger came to work with her in the mornings and evenings. They tried a single trapeze before moving to rings, where Jacobs developed both still and swinging routines.
The recollection makes the performance less mysterious without making it less impressive. An audience sees the finished sequence. Training contains the repetition, adjustments, discomfort, and patient correction required to make that sequence possible.
Jacobs also recalled living and studying on the circus train. A tutor worked with her, and travel brought opportunities to visit museums and see places across the country. Her education took place within the unusual circumstances of the profession she was entering.
One detail in that transcript stays with me. Jacobs learned low to the ground, then increased the height in stages. She describes confidence developing through repetition while her respect for the height remained. That seems a generous way to understand courage. A person can be brave while still taking the difficulty seriously.
Two performers.
A shared future.
The Conservatory’s founders’ account describes Jacobs and Pedro Reis creating their aerial duet, On Wings of Love, in 1994. Reis brought his own long career, beginning with training in South Africa and extending through international performance. Together they had experience of both the artistic work and the world that makes a show possible.
In 1997, they founded the organization that became Circus Sarasota and later the Circus Arts Conservatory. Its professional performances drew on the intimacy of a one-ring European-style circus. Educational work and community programs developed alongside the shows.
Jacobs’s recognition included the Silver Clown at Monte Carlo in 1988. Awards such as that acknowledge performance at a demanding level. Creating a nonprofit introduced a different test: whether artistic ambition could become an enduring local resource, with the people, space, and support required to continue.
Keep the art
in motion.
Sarasota gave that effort a particular setting. The Conservatory’s history connects the city’s circus identity to the arrival of the Ringling winter quarters in 1927 and the generations of performers who made homes there. Circus was part of the community’s working life, not merely an attraction passing through town.
I admire the decision to give that history a working future. Performances and training keep it active. There are still skills to learn, productions to prepare, and audiences to meet. Jacobs and Reis helped build a place where Sarasota’s association with circus could keep generating new work.
They also made room for people who would encounter the art in different ways. Someone might buy a ticket, enroll a child, take a recreational class, or meet a circus educator at school. Each encounter asks something different of the organization.
The school
she came back to.
Jacobs had trained with Sailor Circus as a child. The program later came under the Conservatory’s umbrella, bringing an important part of her own early experience into the institution she helped establish.
Sailor Circus Academy traces its beginnings to a high school gymnastics class in 1949. Today it offers youth training in disciplines including acrobatics, aerial work, juggling, clowning, and performance. It serves students from Sarasota and Manatee counties, with an evaluation process for entry.
The range matters. Circus can accommodate different strengths and temperaments. A student drawn to balance may discover something different from one attracted to comedy or juggling. A production brings those skills into relation, requiring performers to contribute to a shared event.
For young people, learning an act also means learning that preparation has consequences. The sequence must be practiced. Equipment and coaching matter. The student has to respond to instruction and to the other people involved. Applause arrives at the end of a process that contains a great deal of less conspicuous work.
A first class
has a place here.
The Conservatory also offers recreational classes, including aerial silks, lyra, and flying trapeze. Those classes create another route into the art for people whose aim is simply to learn something unfamiliar. A beginner does not have to arrive with a professional future already mapped out.
There is room in a cultural institution for both serious vocational ambition and the person who wants to try a first class. The common requirement is an environment that treats learning with care.
The Conservatory’s current class information makes that beginning practical: students start with beginner training, and coaches assess readiness for more advanced work. The invitation comes with a process. For someone who is nervous about being the least experienced person in the room, a clear place to start can be a kindness.
When movement
makes an idea visible.
The Conservatory’s educational outreach uses circus arts to explore academic subjects. Its programs include work with Newton’s laws, Alexander Calder, and circus science. The approach invites students to ask questions, observe, and investigate through activity.
Movement gives an abstract idea something visible to attach to. Balance, motion, and the arrangement of objects can become questions a student wants to answer because something interesting is happening in front of them. The artist’s ability to capture attention becomes part of the teacher’s opportunity.
There is also a magnet-program partnership with Booker Middle School and Sarasota High School, connecting circus training with an academic pathway. These programs extend the art beyond the special-event calendar and into students’ ongoing education.
The teaching has names and histories of its own. Rikki Hettig-Rolfe Meaux grew up in Sailor Circus, became an elementary school teacher and returned to work in the Conservatory’s education and training programs. Her path makes the idea of continuity wonderfully specific. A former student comes back with skills from another classroom, adding something the institution did not give her.
Jacobs’s contribution is visible across that range, though the institution’s work belongs to many coaches, educators, staff members, volunteers, and students. A founder creates possibilities that other people then develop. The young artist does not have to reproduce the founder’s career to carry something valuable forward. There is room to discover a different specialty, a different way to teach, a different contribution to the show.
The next student begins where every accomplished performer once began: with something they cannot yet do, and someone prepared to teach them.
About Dolly Jacobs and the Conservatory
Who is Dolly Jacobs?
Dolly Jacobs is a Sarasota-raised circus aerialist known for her Roman rings performances. A 2015 National Heritage Fellow, she co-founded the organization that became the Circus Arts Conservatory with Pedro Reis in 1997.
What is Sailor Circus Academy?
Sailor Circus Academy is a youth circus training program in Sarasota with roots in a high school gymnastics class founded in 1949. Its disciplines include aerial arts, acrobatics, juggling and clowning.
Can beginners take classes at the Circus Arts Conservatory?
Yes. The Conservatory offers recreational classes for beginners as well as experienced students. Its published class information explains age requirements, advance registration and coach assessments for progression.
Sources: the National Endowment for the Arts biography and interview transcript, and the Circus Arts Conservatory’s history, program descriptions and educator biography. Checked September 2026. Reflections are Rob Urban’s.
I write about the care behind work people remember. If that is part of your story too, you can read more about my writing and consulting when you meet Rob.