New York City’s Cirque-tacular Productions, making its Carbon County debut during this weekend’s Jim Thorpe Winterfest, will stage “Shimmer” at the Mauch Chunk Ballroom, West Broadway.

The aerial snow ballet/winter-themed circus will fill the second floor of the Mauch Chunk Museum and Cultural Center, with shows set for 12:30, 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

“For ‘Shimmer,’ we are focused on all things ice, cold and snow, perfect for Jim Thorpe Winterfest,” said Pocono Pines resident Tad Emptage, who founded Cirque-tacular in 2007. “Folks can enjoy the humor and spectacle: aerial acrobatics, contortion, hula hoops, body-balancing and novelty acts.”

Flying high

The Jim Thorpe production of “Shimmer” serves as a highlights version of the full-scale “Shimmer: A Winter Cirque Reverie.” The latter’s primary leads, four core acrobats, will perform this weekend.

“What makes this unique and special for Jim Thorpe audiences is that it is a rare chance to experience the thrill of the circus up close. Guests will be right in the action.”

The Mauch Chunk Museum, Emptage said, “has a beautiful tall ceiling. We are setting up portable rigging to allow for three aerial acts within the show: aerial silks, aerial hoop and aerial doubling.”

Emptage, raised in the farm country of Ohio, moved from Times Square to the Poconos just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, he discovered and fell in love with Jim Thorpe. Four months ago, he and his partner opened Pose Mortem Portrait Parlor, an old-timey photo studio on Broadway.

From there, “the desire to bring one of our circus shows to the town increased,” said Emptage, who commuted to New York City multiple times a week. Upon Winterfest organizers telling him about the festival, “I knew this was the perfect time to present our inaugural production in the area.”

Becoming ‘Shimmer’

“Shimmer,” whose music includes nostalgic favorites and sounds evoking winter, started as a different show, “Snowkus Pocus.” The latter, created for an off-Broadway run in 2016, was a “book” show, with a storyline and plot involving a young girl, new to the North, experiencing winter for the first time.

Loving the winter theme, “we repurposed many of the tricks and choreography for that show,” Emptage said, “in a new flexible-format variety show that could be presented in a wider variety of venues.”

“Shimmer” ranks among Cirque-tacular’s dozen or so productions. The company, which performed at Shawnee Playhouse in 2025, has brought shows to all 50 states and 70-plus countries.

A world-class company

Shows feature world record holders, Olympians and grand champions, with a U.S. roster of 300-plus performers and a core group of 20 full-time artist-creators. Emptage, who primarily produces and directs, performs in some shows, having trained as an acrobatic base.

“I hold people who are doing the tricks up in the air, and I am also the person they hang off of to do tricks when they are upside down in the air.”

Emptage, in the theater world since he was a child, toured with his puppeteer/storyteller parents. Fifteen years into his career as a professional singer/musical theater actor, he no longer wanted to sing.

“For the two years prior, I had been on tour in a show that featured cirque performers and acrobats. Those folks were my friends. During our hangout sessions, I had gotten them to teach me tricks.”

After two years, Emptage had learned enough that he was a “bona fide acrobat.”

Making a career from a passion

Upon returning to New York City, he searched for a full-time circus job, only to find that, at the time, such jobs did not exist.

Emptage then spent two weeks knocking on doors of high-ceiling venues, “imploring them to listen to my pitch about why they need aerial acrobatics at their venue. Eventually, someone listened. I started that weekend and the company was born.”

Cirque-tacular quickly grew and “before I knew it, we were performing not just in New York City, but all over the world, with all of my new circus friends as colleagues.”

With circus acts inherently dangerous, “that is why there are so few professional circus performers,” Emptage said. “Artists train for years to ensure accidents do not happen. In 20 years, we have never had an incident, and we don’t plan to.”

Cirque-tacular, for some, may draw comparisons to pioneering Canadian company Cirque du Soleil for which many of Cirque-tacular’s artists have performed, though Emptage noted differences.

“There aren’t too many American circus companies left, so we are honored to carry on that grand tradition.”

Furthermore, “our presentation style is far more inclusive of the audience.

“While Cirque creates dreamscapes where the artists feel otherworldly, we take the opposite approach, inviting the audience in, letting them know they are an active part of the exchange.

“When they leave our shows,” he continued, “they will feel that they now know our artists, that they have made a new set of friends. We are very much the living, new American vaudeville.”

Emptage, anticipating Cirque-tacular’s Carbon County debut, hopes “Shimmer” viewers see that magic occurs when people converge in the real world, to enjoy a little bit of life together.

“What better place for that opportunity to occur than during a show about the warmth of this ‘cool’ winter season.”

Want to see ‘Shimmer’

Tickets are still available for the performances this weekend. More information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/ShimmerJT.