Baltimore's first-ever Aerial Festival will take place this weekend somewhere in the visually sumptuous, surreal intersection between a three-ring circus and high art.
Picture this: an alley in the Station North district in which the walls are spray-painted from pavement to rooftop in graffiti, each design more elaborate than the next. It's shortly after sunset, and strings of flickering Italian lights throw patches of dark and light on those colorful walls.
On the ground, two performers on a spinning teeter-totter form a moving sculpture. No sooner have they finished their piece than, a few feet away, artists fly through the air on trapezes that dangle from steel beams spanning the narrow concourse.
"We want it to be an adventurous and poetic family festival," says Mara Neimanis an aerial artist who co-founded the festival with performer and sculptor Tim Scofield.
"It will be all about the alleyway - about the movement of shadows across the bricks, of shapes silhouetted against the lights. We're using mostly local performers. I wanted this festival to be by, about and for Baltimore."
The festival, which has a budget of $7,000, has been four months in the making.
Shows on Friday and Saturday nights and on Saturday afternoon will feature 14 acts using 10 performers, including Neimanis and Scofield. Four free classes also will be offered in which attendees will experience firsthand the joys of flight. (Space is limited, so class participants must sign up in advance at the festival.)
One performer is 8 years old, and Neimanis says it's important to her that the festival be as welcoming to children as adults.
"There aren't many places to rig up in Baltimore, and a lot of the places that do exist are in bars," she says, "so a lot of the pieces that get done in those situations are about sex. That's fine, but it's limiting. I thought there needed to be another venue where performers could explore other avenues and where parents could bring their children."
That's not to say that the work that will be performed will be, umm, lightweight. Neimanis, after all, once choreographed a trapeze piece about her experience having brain surgery, and is planning another work on Alzheimer's disease.
She draws a distinction between "aerial theater" (which she and Scofield practice) and "aerial dance." While both genres are visually arresting and often virtuosic, spectacle is never the main point of their work. Niemanis sees her role as similar to that of a playwright.
