Olga Kaleta was born in Krakow. Her passion for circus emerged from love of theatre.  She is interested in the creative process from the perspective of a performer and a director. She studied Theatre and Drama at Jagiellonian University. One Monday morning, unimpressed with the model of the Polish theatre industry, she felt like leaving. She was gone on Wednesday…

 In 2008 she moved to Cardiff and begun training as an aerialist at No Fit State.  She graduated from Circomedia in 2015, specialising in Corde Lisse and Physical Performance.

 She’s interested in work at a two different scales; exploring dramatic possibilities of circus itself, and using circus in context of medium to large-scale multidisciplinary community based projects. As an artist she is interested in creating performances that engage with social and political issues and that simultaneously explore artistic concepts. She performs regularly with Mary Bijou Cabaret and Social Club, collaborates with Splatch and co-runs street performance company The Bad Eggs. She’s committed to fostering creativity amongst NoFit State Community and she runs their youth circus performance troupe.

As part of my continuing project to document Polish artists living, working and contributing in the UK I travelled to Cardiff last year. My purpose was to meet with and photograph Olga Kaleta at No Fit State. NoFit State is based in Cardiff and is the UK’s leading large-scale contemporary circus company, producing professional touring productions and a wide variety of community, training, and education projects for people of all ages.

Olga is yet another example of a Polish national making a significant contribution to the cultural life of the UK, north to south, east to west. If you know of others, please let me know. I’m keen to document as many of these contributors as possible.

You can find all the artists featured in this project here.

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