Aerial Silk!

Last year, my family and I watched a Cirque du Soleil show  and I was in awe of the aerial acrobats  swinging high above us. It looked like a mixture of gymnastics and ballet in the air. 

Cirque du soleil arial performer

Aerial silk is aerial (in the air) acrobatics performed on a special fabric
that is suspended from the ceiling. It is very long and not made out of silk, but of polyester lycra. It is also extremely strong and a little stretchy.

Aerial silk

The performers use the silk to wrap, climb, swing, suspend, twirl and drop into lots of different positions without a net under them for safety.

Lexi, my aerial teacher. She is amazing!

As soon as my dance studio offered a class, I talked my mom into signing me up. It's lots of fun!

Before we work with the silk, we bring out mats and do lots of warm up exercises to avoid injury. 

Warm up!

Firstly, Lexi ties two strands of silk into a knot. We learn positions like the
straddle and froggy.

Straddle

Froggy

The first techniques we learned are called wraps. We wrap the silk around our arms and legs, so we don't fall when we go into different positions.

Single foot lock (wrap)

One pose held by the single foot lock is called 'candy cane'.   :0)

Practicing a candy cane

We also learn to climb the fabric, which is mostly done by pushing up 
from a wrapped foot over and over again. I can't climb up very high yet, and 
I think my mom is happy about that!

Trying to climb high!

Aerial is FANTASTIC fun. It makes me feel calm and confident.

Have you seen an arial show?

Would you like to learn?