How I Earned My Aerial Wings
I first got my start in the circus world in 2008 after graduating with my BA in Dance, minor in Entrepreneurship and Certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Florida International University. I was already set to continue dancing for my professor Augusto Soledade in Brazz Dance Company and with fellow alum Megan Swick in Binti Ensemble, but my friends had also suggested another company to me. Several people felt that a new Miami company fusing dance and aerial work for the concert stage was well suited for me, so I auditioned for it. The audition included a dance improvisation with a partner who was harnessed flying low above the ground as well as some bunji improvisation. I did well at both, but I could not climb the silk and when asked to run and flip in harness against a wall, I kept flopping and crashing into the concrete surface. I was, however, capable of doing some of the strength moves on the trapeze bar, probably carried over from my former gymnastics training. Whatever the reason, I got the job.
I learned a lot with that company. We worked tirelessly to create new work for shows like Sleepless Nights in Miami, a 24-hour arts festival that takes over Miami Beach, but the gig industry is what kept us afloat between artistic projects. For this reason, I was taught aerial, fire dancing and stilt walking. We were scheduled to perform all of these disciplines in the Bahamas and Bermuda within 4 months of my joining the company. That was how long I had to prepare. Back then dancers and former gymnasts were fast-tracked into learning aerial, and that was normal. Larger shows and companies still do this. My first aerial apparatus was Spanish Web, I was also in an acro stilt duet, plus I was in the group fire/glow routine. In addition, I understudied the company director for the wall/aerial harness performance in Bermuda. These were goals I was entrusted with, all while dancing for two other companies, but I thrive on responsibility and challenges. The experiences trained me to become a professional, and that was how the industry was at the time.
You see, circus classes were not as prevalent as they are today. For centuries, you had to have grown up in a circus family or taken your child to a school famous for training future circus performers in a town far away, depending on what part of the world you hail from. And for decades, you could attend a circus school in Canada or Europe in order to receive the best high level training. This is still true, but today there may be several circus or aerial schools in your city making this training accessible for people of all backgrounds and ages. I started circus training at the cusp of this accessibility age. There were maybe two schools in Miami where you can access this training and they were not very well known at the time. In 2008, YouTube did not have that many aerial videos and Instagram didn’t yet exist. It is not advisable to learn aerial from these platforms but I wanted to emphasize that ideas and inspiration came primarily from your instructors at the time and from performances you were lucky to have attended. I was fortunate enough to be working for a company where it was a part of my work training to receive these lessons and that there was an audition barrier for them to work with performers who showed a propensity toward aerial work.
So how did my first show go? Well, my fire and stilt performances went well. Suffice it to say that my dress rehearsal of the web act went much better than the actual performance where I did not properly lock my foot into the loop and I spent the entire four minutes trying not to fly across the room to my death while also attempting to convincingly pull off a grimace as a smile. So much for natural potential.
Aerial training takes time and companies eventually learned how to become more methodical and not to rush the process for everyone’s safety. But selfishly I have to admit that the thinking at that time led to more opportunities for an aspiring aerialist like myself.
The company didn’t need me for aerial often (I mostly did stilts and fire), but one day they wanted me for an aerial hammock gig where the client requested four aerialists. As I was still conditioning everyday and was fourth in line to perform aerial, the company director called me in to learn hammock that day for a corporate event taking place the following morning. She gave me 45 minutes to rehearse. The first 15 minutes was spent teaching me the ins and outs of hammock, including drops, and for the two subsequent 15 minute intervals, I was required to apply that knowledge to improvisation, back to back. By the end of it, I was exhausted. I never had to be in the air for that long before. Then off we went to spend the night at a hotel near the gig in order to wake up bright and early for the job. During our rehearsal that morning before the event, I embarrassingly asked the company director, in front of the client, how to get to sitting from my armpits. What can I say? It was my last chance to ask this question, I had to go for it. Then next thing you know, we were performing our ambient set altogether, which of course turned out to be not-so-ambient with everyone walking into the room and staring at us until the end of our performance. And I found myself thinking hard and trying not to mess up, for my own safety, as I performed drops for the first time, high above people's heads, having just learned them the day before. I believe I did well, from my recollection.
This was a wild time for the aerial world. I’ve heard from many other performers who got their start around the same time or earlier, outside of a high-level circus school, and they all have similar stories of being thrown into the water in order to learn how to swim. It was just the way things were and I don’t regret a minute of it. It takes a certain amount of character to brave the aerial space and my experiences prepared me for my future in shows like Le Reve. Most things in that show were learned onsite due to its uniqueness. The circus company evolved, of course, to hiring experienced aerialists as they grew, along with the industry.
The next time I performed hammock, it was a whole routine at a full-length show the company had at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino a few days after Pink had done the same at the 2010 Grammy Awards Show. Someone yelled to me, "Oh that's just like Pink" and I would continue to hear that for several more years to come. Thanks Pink! Just kidding, you’re amazing! 😁.
After the company left Miami, I was receiving aerial silk lessons from a Russian Coach and he STARTED you off with high drops on a stretchy fabric at a 30ft ceiling. He spoke broken English and was in his ‘70s so demonstrations were not an option. I trusted his instructions even if he sometimes forgot an important step, and if they didn’t work out, I just got back up and tried it again. He called me Spiderwoman because of how many times I got entangled in the silks and needed to be lowered down and rescued. Aerial training was a bit informal back then and we worked with the information we had. Things have certainly changed and students today may never know what it is like to test your comprehension and fear of heights on Day 1.
I recognized that I couldn’t create an act with only drops so I began taking privates wherever I travelled to fill in the gaps in my training. I’ve taken privates in Chicago, Atlanta, New York and London. I started training aerial hoop, rope and pole dancing as well. A few years later, while working on unique apparatuses in Le Reve in Las Vegas, I sometimes took classes on my days off, although I did begin to get out of touch with the traditional apparatuses I had started with. While on tour with Beyonce as an aerialist on cube, I continued to take pole classes in almost every city we visited. After the tour, I took aerial classes at Cirque School LA to refamiliarize myself with the traditional apparatuses I had nearly forgotten, and I took up aerial pole and straps. CS helped fill in some gaps in my aerial hoop training as well. Even today, I am constantly taking new courses and privates as I believe that this is a continuing education type of career. I have learned from too many instructors to mention along the way and I am blessed to have had many other performances that eclipsed my over-ambitious start. I’m so grateful to all the instructors along the way who saw my potential and pushed me to be better. It feels good that I, myself have been teaching for over ten years and that I even managed to put on my first student showcase during a pandemic.