Long before aerial studios opened in communities across the country, Boulder had Frequent Flyers.
The nonprofit launched what organizers describe as the world’s first aerial dance festival in 1999, helping establish Boulder as a center for an emerging art form that combines dance, circus and theater.
Now in its 28th year, the Aerial Dance Festival continues that legacy, drawing artists from across North America to Boulder for two weeks of performances and training.
The festival’s public centerpiece, a showcase featuring visiting and local artists, runs July 31 through Aug. 2 at the Dairy Arts Center. Performers will take to aerial hoops, slings, dance trapezes, ropes, harnesses and apparatuses invented by the artists themselves.
The festival grew out of Boulder’s broader community of experimental performers, which includes acrobats, jugglers and other movement artists.
Nancy Smith, artistic director of Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance, helped build that community. When she founded the nonprofit in 1988, it was Boulder’s first aerial dance organization and one of only about a dozen in the country.
Since then, aerial studios have opened in communities across the United States, and festivals influenced in part by Boulder’s have taken root in Europe.
“There are studios in all these tiny towns across the U.S. that are teaching aerial,” Smith said. “When people who don’t have access to as many teachers come here, they suddenly have multiple people to learn from and see perform.”
From postmodern dance to the air
Aerial dance grew out of the postmodern dance movement of the 1970s, when dancers began experimenting with new environments, equipment and forms of movement.
“This is one of the many ways that dance has gone into other things,” Smith said. “Whether it’s contact improvisation or hip hop or jazz, there are all these different forms of dance.”
Aerial dance shares techniques with circus, but the traditions historically emphasized different aspects of performance.
“Broadly speaking, circus has an emphasis more on spectacle and that ‘ta-da’ moment, the building up to a trick, the line between anticipation and danger,” Smith said.
Those distinctions have increasingly blurred. This year’s festival includes training in aerial hoops, slings, handstands, peg stilts and other disciplines drawn from both dance and circus.
“There has been a ton of blurring of the lines,” Smith said. “We’re not trying to say us versus them, or one is better than the other.”
Kira Krick, resident manager and adult program coordinator at the Boulder Circus Center, pointed to aerial fabrics and acro-yoga as relatively new forms that have rapidly gained popularity.
“Aerial fabrics isn’t super old,” she said. “We’ve had this rediscovery of a lot of cool ways to move.”
A broader Boulder movement
Frequent Flyers developed alongside a broader Boulder community of circus performers, jugglers and experimental movement artists. Their overlapping audiences and practitioners have helped make Boulder a home for movement-based performance.
The Boulder Circus Center, founded in 2004 by juggler and vaudeville performer Cindy Marvell, hosts classes and a free Sunday night juggling club. The club has met for 18 years, while the Boulder Juggling Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary in June.
Chris Jost, director of the Boulder Juggling Festival, moved from Minneapolis to Boulder in 2016 partly because of the city’s established juggling community. He credits the Boulder Circus Center with helping the community endure by providing a dedicated place to practice each week.
“It’s pretty common that someone is interested in juggling but doesn’t know that there’s a juggling community, because it’s enough of a niche activity,” he said. “The only way we get new people at juggling club is if we tell them about it.”
Boulder’s experimental performance scene reaches back decades. Juggler and movement artist Peter Davison moved to the city in 1980 and helped establish Airjazz, a troupe the Museum of Juggling History has called one of the most creative and influential juggling teams of its era. The group performed from 1982 through 2001, including on the Pearl Street Mall.
Davison later served as co-artistic director of Boulder Ballet and introduced students to juggling and clowning through his LocoMotion science and circus arts program. Shining Mountain Waldorf School in north Boulder now offers a circus curriculum.
A festival with international reach
The Aerial Dance Festival has helped extend Boulder’s influence beyond Colorado.
Similar festivals have emerged in Ireland, England and France. For aerialists from smaller communities, Smith said, traveling to Boulder can provide rare access to multiple teachers and performance styles.
“For some, [the festival] is the moment where they decide to go professional,” Smith said. “It can be a really big experience.”
The 2026 showcase features visiting artists Jenn Bruyer of British Columbia, Niff Nicholls of Philadelphia and Artoor Voskanian of Seattle, along with seven artists from the Boulder area.
Smith said the combination of athleticism and artistic expression gives aerial dance its visceral appeal.
“We all floated around in the womb, every single one of us,” she said. “So when you see people floating around in the air, you have a visceral response, and you have a kinetic response. …The athleticism combined with the artistry is a deeply engaging human experience.”
Building strength and confidence
Frequent Flyers offers classes throughout the year for students ranging in age from 5 to 77. Its programs include a youth student company, intensive training for teens and adults and Kids Who Fly, an outreach program for young people facing adversity.
“For the students who come here in their youth, it gives them wings for life,” Smith said. “Whether or not they ever do aerial again, they have this confidence in the world, physical strength and strength of character.”
Smith said people do not need dance experience, or even an interest in dance, to try aerial arts.
“Just come and use your body in this way,” she said. “Find out how much fun it is, how much strength you build, how much of your own fear or reluctance you can overcome and do things you didn’t think you could do.”
The Aerial Dance Festival continues through Aug. 7. Showcase performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. July 31 and Aug. 1 and at 2 p.m. Aug. 2 at the Dairy Arts Center. Tickets cost about $33 to $38.
