Illinois State University
Circus and Allied Arts Collection, Milner Library, Special Collections
Archival
United States

A selection of aerial shorts from Bloomington and Normal, Illinois.

Directed by Veronica Blair & Orlando Torres
Documentary
United States

Uncle Junior Project presents SATIN, a documentary highlighting the unconventional story of how cousins Pa'Mela Hernandez and Denise Aubrey-Bertini became the first African-American aerial act in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus history.

Directed by Fawn Yacker
Documentary
United States

Documentary highlighting aerial dance pioneer Terry Sendgraff.

Directed by Danila Bim & Jimmy Slonina
Performance
United States

Unboxing: The only way out is in. A woman finds herself on a surreal journey of self-discovery. Suspended only by her hair, she utilizes poetic and acrobatic movement to delve into Carl Jung’s concept of individuation, separating herself from her thoughts, reflecting on the inner walls of her mind, and questioning whether she has the strength to break free from her limitations.

Directed by Bryan Gibel & Joanna Haigood
Performance
United States

Betty Reid Soskin became a national icon after becoming a national park ranger at the age of 85. Back in the 1960s, she was a remarkable singer/songwriter who wrote and performed autobiographical songs about the isolation and struggles she experienced as the first African-American family to move into Walnut Creek. Choreographer Joanna Haigood and cinematographer Bryan Gibel created this tribute to Betty for her 100th birthday around her stunning meditation on the ocean, the wind and the freedom of flight titled Wind Song.

Directed by Kat Cooley
Performance
United Kingdom

"What you see has a great deal to do with where you are looking from."

Chameleon: A vertical dance film by award-winning director, Kat Cooley, and cinematographer, Artuto Bandinelli. Chameleon explores a world of three figures. What is up? What is down? What is real? What is unreal? Which one is the Chameleon?

Drawing on influences from anamorphosis and trompe l’oeil, Chameleon will leave you questioning what you saw and what you didn’t.

Directed by Bryan Gibel & Joanna Haigood
Performance, Site-Specific
United States

For four days in 2022, Zaccho Dance Theatre transformed the towering ceilings, stained glass windows and cavernous chambers of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral into a multifaceted immersive experience with aerial dancers ascending a 100-ft ladder and soaring on a 70-foot swinging pendulum. Love, A State of Grace is a 30-minute dance film that transports viewers inside the experience through striking close ups, cosmic wide shots and a cinematic moving camera that soars with the dancers to capture the vulnerability, courage and meditative shared experience of choreographer Joanna Haigood’s breathtaking exploration of love and our common humanity.

Directed by Liliana Urbain, Nick Chang & Sam Miller
Performance
United States

Come Home is a song about longing, release, and return featured on Thrown-Out Bones’ most recent EP “They Beckoned Me Here”. The music video features choreography, aerial and dance performance by Ciarra D'Onofrio, including single point trapeze and site specific dance.

Directed by Cuream Jackson & Veronica Blair
Performance
United States

GORGEOUS is a collaborative short film featuring two strong black men navigating a healthy queer relationship. A story not often shown and explored on screen. Deon and Cuream go through playful, inquisitive, and vulnerable moments that build to a powerfully artistic union.

Directed by Annika Hakala
Performance
Austria

Stillstand:ing is an experimental circus short film presenting insight into the mind of a circus artist during challenging times. It is a modern circus piece presented by aerial silks technique. The project has been supported by the Federal Ministry Republic of Austria Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sports.

Directed by Bryan Gibel & Joanna Haigood
Performance
United States

Betty Reid Soskin became a national icon after becoming a national park ranger at the age of 85. Back in the 1960s, she was a remarkable singer/songwriter who wrote and performed autobiographical songs about the isolation and struggles she experienced as the first African-American family to move into Walnut Creek. Choreographer Joanna Haigood and cinematographer Bryan Gibel created this tribute to Betty for her 100th birthday around her stunning meditation on the ocean, the wind and the freedom of flight titled Wind Song.

Directed by Veronica Blair & Orlando Torres
Documentary
United States

Uncle Junior Project presents SATIN, a documentary highlighting the unconventional story of how cousins Pa'Mela Hernandez and Denise Aubrey-Bertini became the first African-American aerial act in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus history.

Directed by Chandra Krown
Performance
Canada

Knot Knowing intertwines vertical dance with the symbolism of knot tying, delving into the essence of connection. Against a breathtaking landscape, the film explores the intricate ways we bind ourselves to others and the world, both visibly and invisibly. With evocative movement, the dancers weave together bodies and thoughts, compelling audiences to reflect on the act of forging meaningful bonds.

Directed by Mary Ellen Strom and Joanna Haigood
Concept and choreography by Wanda Moretti
Music: My Venice by Marco Castelli
Dancers: Simona Forlani, Giulia Mazzucato,
Francesca D’Agostino, Giorgio Coppone
Camera: Daniele Zoico

The idea is a nature that rebels and dominates humans, in particular is the lagoon of Venice, during the lockdown the force of water pushed everything away ... even tourists. Many of our islands are abandoned and even the island of Sant’Andrea where we shot the video is abandoned. Sant’Andrea is a small piece of earth in the Venetian Lagoon in Northern Italy and boasts the Sant’Andrea Fort, a fortress built in the 16th Century to defend Venice. The lagoons are the product of nature, since ancient times. At first they opposed the land, the water, and the tide; then gradually retreating the primitive waters, formed at the upper end of the Adriatic Sea a vast swamp, which sometimes submerged, was partly abandoned by the tide. The highest points were occupied, strengthened by art, and so Venice arose, formed of a complex of one hundred islands, and surrounded by one hundred others.

Marco Castelli composed this music specifically for our project. There are a lot of sounds of the Island, full of natural sounds, sounds of the water that beats on the stone, the cicadas that sing loudly, and the trees that enter more and more into the space of architecture. When I brought my dancers there we felt the need to be strong, and almost ’arguing’ with nature and architecture is very powerful, maybe that’s why I worked as you see in the video ... it is not easy to explain the instinct of creation.

I’ve loved that place forever because it is a mixture in balance and it is where we could enter into dialogue with the elements that are part of our identity. The architecture of Sant’Andrea is a bit like Venice, there are stairs that do not lead anywhere and move only the floors, there are windows inside, and stone walkways that are pure rhythm.

Directed by David Creech & Cherie Carson
Performance, Site-Specific
United States

Dancers: Kiran Satellite Haithcox, Chris Spiteri, Helium Valentine.

"Sequoya Spirits" is a playful film which peers deep into the heart and soul of a Redwood Grove. Under the great canopy of California's majestic coastal giants, we get a glimpse into the elements that bring life to the woods - fire, water and earth. On one special day, we witness Fire as she summons her sister's, Earth and Water and a hide and seek adventure begins. Their dance culminates high in the treetops where Nature's grace and beauty are personified before they vanish back into thin air.

Directed by Kat Cooley
Performance
United Kingdom

"What you see has a great deal to do with where you are looking from."

Chameleon: A vertical dance film by award-winning director, Kat Cooley, and cinematographer, Artuto Bandinelli. Chameleon explores a world of three figures. What is up? What is down? What is real? What is unreal? Which one is the Chameleon?

Drawing on influences from anamorphosis and trompe l’oeil, Chameleon will leave you questioning what you saw and what you didn’t.

Directed by Amelia Rudolph & Rachel Lincoln
Documentary, Performance
United States

Pioneers of vertical dance BANDALOOP return to their mountain roots.

SHIFT is a wilderness performance in one of the Sierra Nevada's most rugged, remote locations in Yosemite high country. Performed and filmed over two weeks during Summer 2015, the dancers and crew traversed nearly 100 miles on foot and danced on the sides of Yosemite's stunning landmarks, including Mount Watkins (elevation 8,500').

Challenging the boundaries of site-specific performance, SHIFT is historically significant within the canon of American dance, transporting the aesthetic of dancing remotely in fragile landscapes back to the urban realm.

Directed by Rodrigo Rebello, Magalie Lanriot, Roel Q. Seeber
Performance
United States

Listen is a vertical dance piece about the end of a relationship and the complexity of emotions involved in a breakup. Vertical dance is used as a metaphoric aesthetic where the dancer's relationship with gravity generates tension as they navigate the difficulties of dealing with change, the conflict between, the fear of falling and the desire to fly. The poetry of suspended intimacy and physicality is born, expressing the balance between closeness and isolation, the emptiness of the end and the struggle for acceptance. Negotiating this poetic reality, we return to being with the other in their absence through the ghosts of the past and the inability to listen. Listen is a vertical dance performance that explores the sense of vulnerability while negotiating with reality.

Directed by Danila Bim & Jimmy Slonina
Performance
United States

Unboxing: The only way out is in. A woman finds herself on a surreal journey of self-discovery. Suspended only by her hair, she utilizes poetic and acrobatic movement to delve into Carl Jung’s concept of individuation, separating herself from her thoughts, reflecting on the inner walls of her mind, and questioning whether she has the strength to break free from her limitations.

Directed by Andrea Dillon
Performance
United States

This intimate aerial silks film peeks at a woman trapped in the dejection of her own bedroom, playing with how we can make our apparatus a critical character in a storyline.

Directed by Liudmila Komrakova
Performance
Russian Federation

Challenging the boundaries of site-specific performance, SHIFT is historically significant within the canon of American dance, transporting the aesthetic of dancing remotely in fragile landscapes back to the urban realm.

Directed by Austin Forbord & Jo Kreiter
Performance, Site-Specific
United States

15 minute dance film centering the experience of women with incarcerated loved ones.

Directed by Chandra Krown
Performance
Canada

Knot Knowing intertwines vertical dance with the symbolism of knot tying, delving into the essence of connection. Against a breathtaking landscape, the film explores the intricate ways we bind ourselves to others and the world, both visibly and invisibly. With evocative movement, the dancers weave together bodies and thoughts, compelling audiences to reflect on the act of forging meaningful bonds.

Directed by Mary Ellen Strom and Joanna Haigood
Concept and choreography by Wanda Moretti
Music: My Venice by Marco Castelli
Dancers: Simona Forlani, Giulia Mazzucato,
Francesca D’Agostino, Giorgio Coppone
Camera: Daniele Zoico

The idea is a nature that rebels and dominates humans, in particular is the lagoon of Venice, during the lockdown the force of water pushed everything away ... even tourists. Many of our islands are abandoned and even the island of Sant’Andrea where we shot the video is abandoned. Sant’Andrea is a small piece of earth in the Venetian Lagoon in Northern Italy and boasts the Sant’Andrea Fort, a fortress built in the 16th Century to defend Venice. The lagoons are the product of nature, since ancient times. At first they opposed the land, the water, and the tide; then gradually retreating the primitive waters, formed at the upper end of the Adriatic Sea a vast swamp, which sometimes submerged, was partly abandoned by the tide. The highest points were occupied, strengthened by art, and so Venice arose, formed of a complex of one hundred islands, and surrounded by one hundred others.

Marco Castelli composed this music specifically for our project. There are a lot of sounds of the Island, full of natural sounds, sounds of the water that beats on the stone, the cicadas that sing loudly, and the trees that enter more and more into the space of architecture. When I brought my dancers there we felt the need to be strong, and almost ’arguing’ with nature and architecture is very powerful, maybe that’s why I worked as you see in the video ... it is not easy to explain the instinct of creation.

I’ve loved that place forever because it is a mixture in balance and it is where we could enter into dialogue with the elements that are part of our identity. The architecture of Sant’Andrea is a bit like Venice, there are stairs that do not lead anywhere and move only the floors, there are windows inside, and stone walkways that are pure rhythm.

Directed by David Creech & Cherie Carson
Performance, Site-Specific
United States

Dancers: Kiran Satellite Haithcox, Chris Spiteri, Helium Valentine.

"Sequoya Spirits" is a playful film which peers deep into the heart and soul of a Redwood Grove. Under the great canopy of California's majestic coastal giants, we get a glimpse into the elements that bring life to the woods - fire, water and earth. On one special day, we witness Fire as she summons her sister's, Earth and Water and a hide and seek adventure begins. Their dance culminates high in the treetops where Nature's grace and beauty are personified before they vanish back into thin air.

Directed by Kat Cooley
Performance
United Kingdom

"What you see has a great deal to do with where you are looking from."

Chameleon: A vertical dance film by award-winning director, Kat Cooley, and cinematographer, Artuto Bandinelli. Chameleon explores a world of three figures. What is up? What is down? What is real? What is unreal? Which one is the Chameleon?

Drawing on influences from anamorphosis and trompe l’oeil, Chameleon will leave you questioning what you saw and what you didn’t.

Directed by Amelia Rudolph & Rachel Lincoln
Documentary, Performance
United States

Pioneers of vertical dance BANDALOOP return to their mountain roots.

SHIFT is a wilderness performance in one of the Sierra Nevada's most rugged, remote locations in Yosemite high country. Performed and filmed over two weeks during Summer 2015, the dancers and crew traversed nearly 100 miles on foot and danced on the sides of Yosemite's stunning landmarks, including Mount Watkins (elevation 8,500').

Challenging the boundaries of site-specific performance, SHIFT is historically significant within the canon of American dance, transporting the aesthetic of dancing remotely in fragile landscapes back to the urban realm.

Director by Rodrigo Rebello, Magalie Lanriot, Roel Q. Seeber
Performance
United States

Listen is a vertical dance piece about the end of a relationship and the complexity of emotions involved in a breakup. Vertical dance is used as a metaphoric aesthetic where the dancer's relationship with gravity generates tension as they navigate the difficulties of dealing with change, the conflict between, the fear of falling and the desire to fly. The poetry of suspended intimacy and physicality is born, expressing the balance between closeness and isolation, the emptiness of the end and the struggle for acceptance. Negotiating this poetic reality, we return to being with the other in their absence through the ghosts of the past and the inability to listen. Listen is a vertical dance performance that explores the sense of vulnerability while negotiating with reality.