Ryan ChartrandGrowing up, Rebekah Leach, like many children, had high hopes of flying, soaring through the air and maybe even performing a trick or two in the process. She even considered joining the circus to fulfill this dream.
Although her circus fantasies didn’t pan out (lessons were too much financially and she was too busy with other activities, anyway), the idea of learning to “fly” always stayed in the back of Leach’s mind.
Two and a half years ago, this Cal Poly alumnus finally fulfilled this dream when she attended the Aerial Dance Festival in Boulder, Colo. She first heard about the dance form – in which dancers perform while suspended in the air by long pieces of strong fabric – after seeing a flier advertising aerial dancing in one of the Cal Poly dance rooms. She researched aerial dancing via Google while studying abroad in Thailand in spring 2005 for months, and then flew to Colorado, where she learned various aerial techniques.
“(Aerial adds) a new dimension to dance. Not only are you going in all directions on the ground, but you’re going in all directions up and down,” said the 5-feet tall Leach, who did gymnastics when she was younger and has taken several dance classes, including many within Cal Poly’s dance department.
Last summer, Leach’s dream of teaching others about the dance form she has become so passionate about came true. She taught three weeks of classes – two weeks of introductory fabric workshops and one week of intermediate classes.
“I had to fly out to Colorado to learn this, and I wanted to bring it back home, back to the Central Coast,” Leach said. “Plus, I love, love, love it! With anything that you love, anything that you’re passionate about, you want to tell everyone about it. Shared joy is doubled joy.”
That joy has indeed doubled. And it will soon increase even more since Leach will be conducting two more days of aerial workshops – the first on Saturday, Nov. 3, and the second on Saturday, Dec. 1 – at Echo Artspace, an artists’ cooperative in Grover Beach.
Each Saturday, an intro to fabric class will take place from 9:30 a.m. to noon; an intermediate class will take place from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.; and an intermediate to advanced class will take place from 3 to 5 p.m.
The cost of the classes is $60 for beginners and $50 for those returning from the summer workshops or for those who have had prior aerial dancing experience. Those who sign up for both classes and pay ahead of time will receive $10 off the total payment. For registration forms and more details, go to aerial.dancing.googlepages.com.
Those who took the summer classes and others have been urging Leach to continue teaching her unique dance classes – the only one of its kind on the Central Coast – here, even though she and her husband have relocated to Ojai, where Leach is now teaching algebra and geometry at a local high school.
Linda Camplese, creative director of Echo Artspace and a participant in the summer workshop, defined aerial as being death defying and dangerous in appearance (though not as dangerous in practice).
“It has challenged my ability to work at a height again,” said Camplese, herself a former gymnast, which she said had helped her pick up the dance form so easily. “I’ve had to reacclimate to the height aspect and velocity (drops) again.”
Both Leach and Camplese described Echo Artspace as the perfect location for Leach’s lessons.
“(It’s) perfect; it’s a space for artists to come and be creative . and they’re really flexible with what we can do,” Leach said.
Leach found out about the space from a friend of Camplese who saw Leach doing aerial dancing and wanting to learn. She recommended Leach use the artists’ cooperative for classes. Echo Artspace is located in a warehouse in an industrial part of Grover Beach and is geared toward more alternative or cutting-edge forms of art.
Since the workshops in August, Camplese and five others have been meeting once a week – on Wednesday nights at Echo Artspace – to work on new moves, often analyzing performances on YouTube for inspiration and direction. They are looking forward to the upcoming workshops as a way to expand their group and their skills, Camplese said.
Students are not required to bring their own fabric (she provides three pieces of fabric for each class to practice with), but are advised to bring water and arrive with clean feet, since Leach, as she jokingly put it, “(doesn’t) want people getting my fabric dirty.”
Beginners should expect to start off the two-and-a-half-hour workshops learning yoga poses on knotted sections of fabric, which will help them “get used to reintroducing themselves to the space,” Leach said.
Then Leach will break down movements and show students how to wrap the fabric around their bodies. Although the lesson will be difficult, it isn’t something that is too challenging. Over the summer, Leach said she had a girl in her workshop who had a broken arm, and although the girl did need help with many of the poses, the beginning aerial class was not something that she couldn’t do.
The movements aren’t simply artistic, though.
“It’s challenging and more mathematical. You have to use your left side of the brain,” Leach said. “It’s like fitting together a puzzle.”
For Leach, the “dramatic-ness” of aerial dancing – the whirling and height aspect especially – make the dance form much more superior to its on-ground counterpart.
“It’s so big; it uses that third dimension in an epic way,” Leach explained. “I feel like every song I use and every performance I give has to be epic; it has to be huge.”
In a way, aerial dancing is a means for everyone, Leach and Camplese included, to relive his or her childhood desire to fly.
“In a nutshell, it’s fun. It’s fun to swing,” Camplese said. “That’s something you do as a kid but don’t really do as an adult. This (class) is clearly satisfying this impulse.”