Aerial Arts and Dance Improvisation is a comprehensive guide for developing creativity in aerial arts. It offers a fresh perspective on how to move beyond rote aerial technique and toward meaningful, artistic movement.

Forty creative activities guide you in exploring musicality, developing transitions, trying on characters, and expanding your unique movement signature. Authors Elizabeth Stich and Juliana Hane, lifelong performers and educators, share their findings from years of embodied research at the intersection of dance and aerial arts. They approach aerial movement through the lens of dance improvisation, framing it with the literature of creativity research—a vast and interdisciplinary field drawing upon psychology, neuroscience, and education — and provide evidence from somatic movement practices, dance education, and creative movement traditions. The activities are arranged thematically by the authors’ framework of the Aerial Movement Elements—body, time, dynamics, space, and partnering. Also included are twenty ground-based creative warm-ups and twenty-five practice session guides that give you the tools and confidence to engage in a self-designed aerial creative practice and chart your own path through the creative wilds.

This book is an invaluable resource for students, instructors, and professionals across aerial arts disciplines working in dance, theatre, circus, and fitness settings.