It’s no wonder. Aerial dance is as diverse and unique as things you can attach a rope and harness to. In the case of Nimble Arts in Vermont, that is often tall trees in a forest setting. At Flyaway Productions in San Francisco’s Bay Area, it might be the wall of a law school, an arts center, or even, for its politically driven site-specific dances, a prison. 

While there’s no common textbook, aerial dance instructors looking to brush up on their basics or increase their class offerings can do so with the help of fellow experts. Read on for four educators’ advice. 

Safety First

No matter where you are rigging your equipment, safety must be a common denominator. “Safety is a ritual,” says Bandaloop director Melecio Estrella. He requires his dancers to learn about basic rigging and knots so that they can serve as the first of three safety checks. Each time his dancers strap into a harness, they check themselves, then check a partner, then have the safety professional, whether that’s a stage rigger or instructor, do the final check. With your students, take the time to teach them about the equipment, adds Jo Kreiter of Flyaway Productions: “So that when their feet are off the ground, they have some knowledge of how they got there.” 

From Ground to Air

Before even donning a rigging, dancers should prep their bodies well for the rigors of moving mid-air. Unlike in traditional dance, where legs support upright movement, and even unlike circus arts’ reliance on upper-body strength, Estrella says that being attached in a harness is all core. “People will find that in a harness, because the connection point is near the pelvis, it’s so much core strength. Front core, back core, obliques, pelvic floor—all those core muscles that we train in Pilates.”

Indeed, aerial dancer Serenity Smith’s warm-up for her students incorporates a lot of Pilates-based strength and mobility exercises like roll-downs. Then, she progresses to what she calls “ground school,” a series of non-harness exercises on the floor that correspond to basic skills in the air. After ground school and strapping into the harness at last, she continues with the basics, like drilling “up-downs” from a vertical standing position to a feet-against-the-wall perpendicular position and back again. 

In her summer youth program, Kreiter also has her students start with their feet on the ground. “The first thing we do is have them touch the object”—like the wall they are rigged to or a swinging bench they’re incorporating into their dance—“and feel it with their hands, feel its weight, feel how it moves without your feet ever leaving the ground. You’re initiating a partnership, you’re not trying to conquer the object.”

As dancers get more advanced and higher off the ground, she recommends contact improvision to train students’ adaptability in the air. “If the wall’s coming at you—because you’ve flown out from it, and you’re flying back in not in the position you thought you might be in—knowing how to pivot your hips at the last minute and drop your head is really useful.”

When Students Want Tricks

We all know the dancers: The ones who come to you after seeing a cool trick on social media and want to replicate it. While safety must be paramount, your classes and school are a business, and you certainly need to cater to student interests to keep them coming back. “We all need to make money,” says Smith. 

She has a helpful hack for this. In her teacher trainings, she coaches what she calls “gift tricks.” “I help teachers identify the tricks that are fun and thrilling but aren’t actually all that hard or dangerous, so that you can keep a student like that satisfied while also adding to their knowledge.”

At the end of the day, what will help your students become versatile, employable dancers is their artistry more than their ability to do tricks. Abbie Rooney, a freelancer and choreographer who has performed at Disneyland and with Carnival Cruises, came from a gymnastics background and had to develop her dancing and artistry skills to meet casting directors’ demands. “It’s more important to shows and productions to get across the intention of a character or the story,” she says. 

Think Towards Accessibility

One of the incredible things about dancing in a harness is that it provides a different relationship with the ground. Because it takes the weight off the legs, Smith works with a range of differently abled dancers: bodies who are older, who have experienced paralysis, or even those who might have missing limbs. “As a form of dance, it opens up so many more dimensions of movement,” she says.