Aerial Dance Festival takes art to new heights|
Most dance festivals take years to get off the ground, laboring in anonymity to make a name for themselves or attract respected artists.
The Aerial Dance Festival, which takes place Sunday through Aug. 17 in Boulder, never paid much attention to the ground anyway. As the world’s only event of its type, it had an instant and lofty profile – even if many are just now noticing it.
“It was scary when we started because we were this tiny little dance company and not in the business of running a festival,” said Nancy Smith, founder of the festival and Frequent Flyers Productions. “But it was such a success in its first year, and nine years went by kind of fast.”
The 2007 festival features performances at Boulder’s Dairy Center for the Arts, classes for beginners and experts, brown-bag discussions and repertory class showings, all designed to enrich the growing aerial dance field.
“When people see it for the first time they’re powerfully moved,” said Robert Davidson, Smith’s mentor. “There’s this whole rocking, soaring, swinging dynamic that they can relate to, but don’t know why. It’s what we were doing in the womb. It has a very primal, hypnotic energy.”
Davidson, head of movement at the Denver-based National Theatre Conservatory, helped pioneer aerial dance with projects like “Airborne: Meister Eckhart.” Smith worked with him 20 years ago to bring the piece to Boulder as part of the now-defunct Colorado Dance Festival. He even built her first trapeze.
Davidson said that Smith has since surpassed him, advancing the art form with her company’s inventive productions and dancers. Frequent Flyers’ campy, inspired “Theatre of the Vampires” has now been seen by an estimated 18,000 people.
“I’m like the old conservative guy,” Davidson said. “But Nancy encourages her own dancers to become choreographers. She’s stimulated by their creativity.”
Davidson will be one of several respected instructors at the festival, which includes stage partners Jacques Bertrand and Fred Deb’ (a leading member of the Nouveau Cirque movement in France) and New Zealand’s Valerie Claymore, director of AeroTerra Aerial Dance.
At 62, Davidson said he still performs the physically rigorous dancing because it’s the only way to teach it. Credit the fact that he’s one of the first to be certified in the Skinner Releasing Technique, a training method emphasizing naturalistic imagery and meditation as much as physicality. It provides the foundation for aerial dancing.
“One of the main aesthetics of aerial dance is effortlessness,” Smith said. “I’ve taught probably 5,000 people in the last 20 years. People will come to take a class because they’ve seen a show, and they’re immediately stunned by how hard it is.”
Still, Smith thinks the attraction to aerial dance, whether in performing or watching, is universal. Most people’s frame of reference is Cirque du Soleil, but it’s more than trapeze work. Smith has incorporated complex mechanics, computer graphics and even snakes into her productions. She has performed in traditional theater spaces and oddball locations alike, including graveyards and drive-in theaters.
“It’s not a commercial form, and it’s tough to fund it,” Smith said of her nonprofit company. “I wrote the first grant for it 20 years ago, and it’s still not well-
understood.”
That’s not tamping down her ambition. For next year’s anniversaries (10 years of the festival, 20 years of her company) Smith and co-author Janey Bernasconi will publish the first book on aerial dance, examining its history, appeal and possibilities. The fact that much of the field is exploratory – improvising new techniques and apparatus along the way – is part of its appeal.
“It’s about risk-taking,” Davidson said. “It’s also a great leveler of the sexes, when women discover they’re stronger than they thought and men find themselves challenged.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
Ninth Annual Aerial Dance Festival
DANCE/CLASSES|Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder Circus Center;
Sunday-Aug. 17|VARIOUS PRICES|303-245-8272 or .
