The Deal

• One ticket to see Big Apple Circus’s Metamorphosis
• Where: Dulles Town Center
• Door time: one hour before showtime
• Ticket values include all fees

Ticketing Options

• for preferred center-ring seating on Thursday, September 18, at 7 p.m. (up to value)
• $35 for preferred center-ring seating on Friday, September 19, at 7 p.m. (up to $90 value)
• $28 for preferred side-mezzanine seating on Friday, September 19, at 7 p.m. (up to $68 value)
• Click to view the seating chart

Center-ring seating includes a hotdog, popcorn or cotton candy, and a soda or juice. Side-mezzanine seating includes cotton candy or popcorn.

Metamorphosis

Trapezes artists bewitch the air, transforming it into their playground. Horses thunder past, turning the dust into a cloud of mystery. Contortionists contort, and clowns make chuckles appear where moments before there were none.

Metamorphosis brings all these feats and many others within 50 feet of the crowd. In their newest show, ringmaster John Kennedy Kane and the other uncannily talented, sometimes death-defying performers of Big Apple Circus focus on transformation. Vladimir and Olga Smirnov deftly slip from one spectacular costume to the next at double-take-inducing speed, and the Anastasini Family effectively turn each other into balls or torches by juggling each other atop their feet. Horses and shelter dogs also get in on the fun with the help of third-generation trainer animal Jenny Vidbel.

Big Apple Circus

Warm in winter, cool in summer, and filled with amazing acts in every season, the Big Apple Circus’s pair of Italian-made big tops contains the best of several generations’ worth of circus traditions. A look at any show’s cast finds a complex network of venerable European circus families passing the arts of juggling and trapeze artistry down through the years, while the tents’ motors and seating make for a comfortably modern spectator experience.

You might never guess that the troupe started small in 1974, when American circus artists Paul Binder and Michael Christensen joined forces as a juggling act on the streets of Europe. They moved from streetlights to spotlights in a hurry, appearing on the stage of the Nouveau Cirque de Paris, before returning to the U.S. and creating their own not-for-profit circus in 1976 and raising their first tent in New York’s Battery Park.