ARMA (Amelia Rudolph Movement Arts) is led by choreographer, dancer-athlete, filmmaker, and Bandaloop founder Amelia Rudolph, whose award-winning work has pioneered the fusion of dance, climbing technology, site-responsive performance, and environmental engagement for over three decades. Her latest work, Source Water, explores humanity’s relationship to water as both a vital life force and a vulnerable resource. Featuring performers B Dean and Kriss Rulifson, innovative rigging, and an immersive score by Luke Mombrea, the project creates a visceral encounter with water through movement, sound, and embodied experience, inviting audiences to reflect on ecological stewardship and interconnectedness.

Joey Moore, known professionally as Joey the Tiger, is an acclaimed aerial artist, director, and educator whose work is celebrated for its combination of strength, grace, vulnerability, and emotional depth. Specializing in dance trapeze and aerial straps, he has trained internationally and performed with organizations including Circus Bella, Cirquantique, Lunar Circus, Cirque de Bohème, and Montréal Complètement Cirque. His solo work, Disturbed Waters, draws from his lived experience with misophonia, a neurophysiological condition that causes intense reactions to specific everyday sounds. Through a powerful and deeply personal aerial performance, Joey explores the isolation, exhaustion, and resilience that accompany the condition, inviting audiences to cultivate greater awareness, empathy, and understanding.

Growing up in Berkeley, California, Ron Oppenheimer discovered circus at age eight after joining a youth program at Splash Circus. What began as a chance opportunity quickly became a lifelong passion. He later trained with San Francisco Circus Center's Youth Circus under Master Lu Yi, studying Chinese pole, hoop diving, aerial rope, and a wide range of dance styles, including ballet, contemporary, tap, and hip hop. In 2019, Ron graduated from the École nationale de cirque in Montréal, specializing in Chinese pole and aerial rope while developing a distinctive movement style that seamlessly blends dance and circus. Since then, he has performed internationally with Cirque du Soleil in Amaluna, Amora, and 'Twas The Night Before, appeared on Georgia's Got Talent, and most recently served as an aerialist, dancer, and aerial choreographer for Katy Perry's The Lifetimes Tour. Ron specializes in flying pole, Chinese pole, aerial rope, straps, and acro-dance.

Through the spectacle of apparatus-based dance, South Asian American choreographer Nina Sawant explores the concepts of personal identity and humanity’s place in the natural world. Drawing on her background in circus, dance, and costume design, Nina’s work bridges the gap between art and entertainment to weave stories that are heartfelt and visually captivating. Nina began dancing as a child in Tennessee, where her family were the only mixed South Asian Americans in her community. She went on to receive a B.A. in Dance Choreography from the University of South Florida, where she was part of two inaugural dance abroad programs in Paris, France and Mazatlan, Mexico. Concurrently, Nina began her commercial performance career in Busch Gardens KaTonga, which led her to join the Krymskiy circus family, touring in traditional tent shows in Ukraine. Drawn to collaborative, multidisciplinary work, Nina has performed with ensemble driven companies such as Zaccho Dance Theatre, Shoestring Circus, Sweet Can Productions, and Vespertine Circus. She has written and directed theatrical circus shows including Popo’s Orchids, Cirque Menagerie, and Hypothetical Circus’s Hotel California, and she has designed costumes for individual commissions and shows at Stanford Live and the SF Aerial Arts Festival. Nina has presented work locally and internationally at festivals including the SF Aerial Arts Festival, Moisture Festival, and the Festival D’Avignon. Nina also produces specialty entertainment through her company, Dahlias Entertainment, which focuses on creating living wage work for diverse performers and mentoring artists in self advocacy and business.

Founded in 2021 by Mexican American artist Xochitl Sosa, Cirque Vida is a contemporary circus company that combines aerial arts, dance, and acrobatics to tell powerful, human-centered stories. Rooted in a commitment to diversity, representation, and cultural connection, the company creates intimate performances that celebrate resilience, identity, and community. At this year's San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival, Cirque Vida presents Entre Dios Cielos, a duet performed by Xochitl Sosa and Agustín Rodríguez Beltrán. Blending aerial movement, contemporary dance, and physical theater, the work explores the Texas–Mexico border as a place of shared history, cultural exchange, and enduring connection, honoring the communities and traditions that unite generations across borders.

Rhythmic Rising is a piece by Darielle Williams. In this time of uncertainty where progress has been curtailed and the idea of equal rights has faded into a distant dream, Rhythmic Rising is meant to inspire action and change. It is performed on the Aerial Drum, a unique aerial apparatus created by the artist. The Aerial Drum is an afrofuturistic reimagining of the African Djembe drum, its form becoming a movement space to explore the rhythms of the music derived from this same magical ancestral instrument. As a Trinidadian, Williams feels that the African drum aptly encapsulates one of the main symbols of culture and resistance for people of the African Diaspora. Historically, the African drum has been an instrument used for communication as well as its musical properties, the Aerial drum in this piece is used as a vessel for the question “Can we make them proud in this moment?” With Rhythmic Rising, Williams hopes to encourage viewers to find strength in the principles of those that came before us - identity, pride and community will see us through. Let this piece be a reminder of who we are, where we came from and what we are capable of

Veronica Blair is one of the nation’s leading Black aerialists, with a career spanning international stages including Universoul Circus, Afrika! Afrika! in Germany, and Universal Studios Japan. A Bay Area native who began training at the Circus Center in San Francisco, Blair is also a producer, educator, and advocate dedicated to amplifying the history and contributions of Black circus artists through projects such as The Uncle Junior Project. Her new work, EleKtric Body, is a site-responsive aerial performance that honors the resilience of bodies of color and the ancestral energy that sustains them. Inspired by Robert O. Becker’s The Body Electric, the piece blends aerial dance and movement to explore the body as a vessel of memory, healing, transformation, and cultural inheritance.

Megan Lowe Dances (MLD) is a San Francisco Bay Area–based company creating multidisciplinary dance works rooted in care, collaboration, and community. Led by Chinese-Irish American choreographer and performer Megan Lowe, the company is known for blending site-specific choreography, dynamic partnering, and aerial/vertical dance to transform public and cultural spaces. For Meandering Urbanite, Izzie Award–winning collaborators Megan Lowe and former BANDALOOP artist Roel Seeber create a new vertical dance duet that explores the wilderness within urban environments. Inspired by the rhythms of city life and the layered histories of Fort Mason, the work combines aerial movement, immersive sound, and shifting perspectives to investigate connection, memory, and the search for stillness amid contemporary movement and change.

RAWHIDE is a collaborative performance work by movement artists Clarissa Rivera Dyas and B Dean that explores racial solidarity, trans resistance, Black queerness, and collective survival in a time of social and political upheaval. Blending aerial dance, contemporary performance, and queer improvisation, the piece investigates transformation as a response to crisis, inhabiting the tensions between freedom and restriction, strength and softness, ground and air. Rivera Dyas, a Black Filipinx choreographer and producer recognized by Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” joins forces with Dean, a queer trans aerial and site-specific artist whose work spans companies including BANDALOOP and Flyaway Productions. Together, they create a powerful meditation on relationship, resilience, and the possibilities that emerge within contradiction.

Kelsey na Gealaí is an aerialist, director, and founder of Circus of the Moon, a touring company known for immersive circus productions that blend mythology, storytelling, and technical artistry. Drawing on a foundation in classical ballet and multidisciplinary circus training, she creates evocative works that explore transformation, shadow, and the human experience. Her latest aerial hoop piece, Vessel, examines the physical and emotional realities of living with multiple sclerosis. Moving through fear, grief, resilience, and adaptation, the work reflects on what happens when trust in the body begins to fracture, offering a deeply personal exploration of identity, belonging, and self-acceptance in the face of illness.

Katherine Hutchinson is an aerial dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Kinetic Arts Center in Oakland, California, where she leads the youth circus programs Circus Spire and Circus Gilly. Drawing on more than 20 years of classical ballet training and a decade of aerial practice, she creates emotionally driven circus works that blend strength, grace, and storytelling. Her latest aerial silks piece investigates the transformative power of women’s anger, exploring how rage, grief, fear, resilience, and determination can become catalysts for personal and collective change. Through dynamic movement and evocative imagery, the work invites audiences to reconsider anger as a source of agency, expression, and strength.

Azraa Muhammad is a San Francisco–based aerial artist, dancer, performer, birth worker, and educator whose artistic journey began at age six in Zaccho Dance Theatre’s Youth Performing Arts Program. After a decade of training and performing with the Zaccho Youth Company, she advanced to apprentice and professional roles with Zaccho Dance Theatre, building a career that includes collaborations with Flyaway Productions, A.C.T., BayCAT, and the Golden State Warriors. Her solo work, Joy?!, is an intimate aerial window performance tracing her ongoing journey toward emotional wellness. Developed over five years and shaped by motherhood, personal growth, and resilience, the piece explores struggle, healing, and the importance of staying grounded while continuing to move forward through life’s challenges.

We are matter in motion, dense cells moving through less dense cells, endlessly negotiating with weight, momentum, exhaustion, balance. But the gravity we experience is not only external. It exists within us too. The invisible pull of memory, grief, love, fear, longing.. The experiences that shape us, anchor us, soften us, and sometimes threaten to pull us apart. Somehow, wrapped inside all of that biology, something deeply human emerges. A consciousness capable of carrying entire emotional worlds inside a fragile and temporary form. This piece explores the strange poetry of embodiment: What does it mean to inhabit a body constantly suspended between falling and flight? To resist gravity while simultaneously being shaped by it. To carry both the physical and emotional weight through space and time? Perhaps to be human is to fall gracefully for a little while.. to observe how the body obeys gravity, and how the soul invents its own.

Megan Lowe Dances (MLD) is a San Francisco Bay Area–based company creating multidisciplinary dance works rooted in care, collaboration, and community. Led by Chinese-Irish American choreographer and performer Megan Lowe, the company is known for blending site-specific choreography, dynamic partnering, and aerial/vertical dance to transform public and cultural spaces. For Meandering Urbanite, Izzie Award–winning collaborators Megan Lowe and former BANDALOOP artist Roel Seeber create a new vertical dance duet that explores the wilderness within urban environments. Inspired by the rhythms of city life and the layered histories of Fort Mason, the work combines aerial movement, immersive sound, and shifting perspectives to investigate connection, memory, and the search for stillness amid contemporary movement and change.

Fatimah Hasan is a 15-year-old aerial artist whose training bridges traditional circus and contemporary dance. Beginning circus at age eight with a focus on silks, she later expanded her artistic practice at Berkeley’s Tea Dancers before joining Kinetic Arts Center’s Circus Spire Youth Troupe in 2024, where she has performed in two full-length productions. Inspired by Adrienne Lenker’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, her solo work explores grounding, resilience, and connection to nature. Blending movement on the floor and in the air, the piece reflects her commitment to creating seamless dialogue between dance and circus while defining the artistic voice she is excited to continue developing.

Mendocino Center for Circus Arts (CircusMecca) is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization dedicated to providing high-level circus and aerial arts training in Northern California. Based in a small rural community, CircusMecca relies entirely on volunteer support to make professional-quality instruction accessible to young artists. The organization champions youth-led creativity, encouraging performers to develop and choreograph their own work while coaches Bones and Holly Newstead provide guidance in safety and artistic development. This year, CircusMecca returns to the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival with three outstanding youth acts, including a performer selected as one of only eleven acts featured in the 2026 World Youth Circus Arts Championship at VIVA Fest in Las Vegas.

Ocean Spirit is a poetic aerial dance by emerging circus artist Mara Lau-Seim, a company member of the San Francisco Youth Circus. Through movement, Mara embodies a young ocean spirit gliding across the water, expressing wonder, joy, and a deep connection to the natural world. Inspired by the breathtaking ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay, the work celebrates the power of the ocean and our relationship with Mother Earth, inviting audiences to pause and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. Mara studies dance, acrobatics, and aerial arts six days a week and will attend the École Nationale de Cirque summer program in 2027.

Ashland Aerial Arts’ Performance Company brings the epic finale excerpt from their most recent creation: The Gilded Ganache: an Aerial Chocolate Heist. This hilarious, acrobatic tale of three rival gangs in a world where access to chocolate is limited to the privileged few. In the full evening show, there were aerial dance-offs in many locations within the villainous Guy Rich’s mansion. In the end our star-crossed lovers lead the way to the epic finale, excerpted here, where the gangs come together to ensure “chocolate for all!” Aerial silk, partner acrobatics and a hefty serving of attitude reminds us all to lift each other up and share what we have.

People’s Circus Theatre’s Youth All-Star Show brought together exceptional youth performers from across the Bay Area to create “Le Petit Cirque,” a unique performance in PCT’s signature style combining circus, dance, and storytelling. Directed by Yasmina Bourdais, this show was presented for six performances at the Children’s Creativity Museum in Yerba Buena Gardens this July. Inspired by the beloved novella “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “Le Petit Cirque” follows the Prince as she leaves her tiny home in search of adventure. Along the way she meets a wild assortment of characters: acrobatic sheep, juggling businessmen, hoop diving tipplers, aerialist animals, and more! On this journey, the Little Prince discovers that the most important things in life are invisible to the eye. We are excited to share an excerpt from this production at the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival.

Zaccho Youth Company (ZYC), the performing ensemble of Zaccho Dance Theatre's award-winning Youth Performing Arts Program, presents Sailing Away, Landing Here. Inspired by Joanna Haigood's original work about San Francisco's first Black residents and the 1858 migration to Canada, this reimagined performance connects that history to the performers' own family migration stories. Guided by former ZYC member and Zaccho artist Azraa Muhammad, the youth artists explore identity, ancestry, and belonging through movement and storytelling. Their research and personal reflections honor the generations who "sailed away" in search of freedom, making it possible for future generations to "land here."

Deaf Ancestors: Fly Loud, created and directed by Antoine Hunter and performed by Urban Jazz Dance Company, is an original aerial dance work celebrating Deaf culture, Black history, ancestral memory, and the enduring human desire for freedom. Inspired by The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton and The Little Prince, the production blends aerial dance, American Sign Language, and expressive movement into a powerful visual storytelling experience. Using ropes, ladders, suspended structures, and dynamic choreography, Deaf performers journey between earth and sky, revealing resilience, imagination, and collective strength. Founded in 2007 by Deaf choreographer Antoine Hunter, Urban Jazz Dance Company uplifts Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Disabled artists while fostering connection across communities through performance. Internationally recognized, the company has performed at venues including the Kennedy Center and produces the annual Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival, celebrating Deaf culture as a vibrant source of artistic innovation and human expression.

Join pioneering aerial dancer Susan Murphy and photographer Don Carson for a discussion and signing of Spirit Chasers, their stunning collaboration of photography, poetry, and journal reflections. Through slides, readings, and conversation, they will share stories behind three decades of creative exploration across the American West, where movement, landscape, and light converge. Don's innovative pre-digital photographic techniques and Susan's embodied practice create breathtaking images that blur the boundaries between body and nature, offering a poetic meditation on artistry, wilderness, and the enduring power of creative partnership.