Aloft Aerial Dance, under the artistic direction of Shayna Swanson, is an exciting new dance company in Chicago, focused on creating groundbreaking, highly creative aerial performances for theatre and public space. We seek to create work that resonates in the urban environment and with the urban experience. The stillness of visual art and the frenzy of performance art inspires conflict in our work. Aloft draws from the juxtaposition of such artistic extremes: highly physical movement versus the very minimal, circus arts versus butoh dance. We achieve new movement and a unique voice by considering how to exist within these extremes and how to transition between them.

Aloft strives to make innovative use of traditional aerial circus equipment (trapeze, rope, fabric, etc.) by using them at new heights and in new environments so that they barely resemble their former selves. We also create new equipment and work within our environments to create site and situation specific aerial work that richly enhances the audience’s appreciation of their environment.

Aloft is not a dance company in the air or a circus company in a theatre. We are earth-bound aerial artists who have chosen to express ourselves though vertical space. Our eyes are so used to moving left and right, back and forth, to focusing on things close up and things in the distance. This works well for viewing traditional dance and theatre productions, but it still seems that when our eyes are coaxed upwards there is an automatic sense of wonder, whimsy, freedom, possibility and beauty. Aloft is attempting to bring aerial work out of that constrictive box. We are attempting to retrain the eyes of our viewers. Aloft shows more than just the beauty, difficulty and danger inherent in our art. We strive for purpose in every move, for meaning in every breath. We tell stories about our lives and the world which exists between the ground and the sky. That is what makes this dance. That is what makes Aloft powerful.