If you’re driving north on Highway 97 past Summerland and you look up at the clay bluffs above the lake, you might see a giant metal tripod. On rare occasions, you may even see a small spinning speck underneath it. If so, that’s me trapezing!

I studied aerial dance at Upswing Aerial Dance in Berkeley, CA from 2013-2017. There they teach a form of aerial dance called “Motivity”, which was pioneered by Terry Sendgraff and is based on improvisation and the cultivation of awareness of the self and surrounding space. My main teacher there (hence my aerial mother) was Ashley Foster, who was Terry’s student. At Upswing, I also studied under Cherie Carson and Helen Fitanides on trapeze, sling, lyra, tissu, rope and harness, and bungee. I also took the occasional aerial class at the Athletic Playground in Emeryville, which teaches a more traditional circus approach.

When I moved back to the Okanagan, I used the money I had saved by moving home a semester early to purchase aerial equipment, including a portable aerial rig. For half of the year the rig is set up on the edge of the orchard, overlooking the highway and Okanagan lake. For the other half of the year, I train on lyra and sling in my mom’s garage.

For the last several years, I have been working on expressing psytrance on aerial apparatuses via the personality of an Alien-Arachnidlike Doom Being sent to earth to portend an era of tumult.

WANT TO DANCE WITH ME?