"Being a professional dancer requires skill, determination and core strength. And when you're dancing hundreds of feet in the air with no safety net it requires fear. I'm opposed to the culture of no fear,' because fear reminds you of what's important, says Amelia Rudolph. We like to say that we love our fear because our fear keeps us alive, our fear keeps us vigilant."
"All of them will tell you that what they do, while like traditional dance, belongs in a rarefied air all its own there's no other feeling in the world quite like doing it. It's hard to put into words the level of freedom you sense in the cells of your body, says Rudolph. It's unprecedented as a dancer as an athlete to have that kind of relationship with gravity in a way that everything is slowed down and you are held by the air."
Professional vertical dancers combine contemporary dance technique, rock-climbing skills, determination and core strength to perform on towering structures without nets. Amelia Rudolph founded West Oakland-based Bandaloop and later A.R.M.A., both practicing vertical dance that ascends skyscrapers, the Space Needle and El Capitan. The Bay Area hosts many pioneers and companies, including Jo Kreiter's Flyaway Productions and Zaccho Dance Theatre, which runs a biannual Aerial Arts Festival at Fort Mason in 2026. Choreographer Terry Sendgraff introduced the single-point trapeze to dance. Performers embrace fear as vital vigilance and describe an unprecedented bodily freedom and a distinctive relationship with gravity while being held by the air.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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