Aerial Performance: Aerial Aesthetics

The origins of aerial performance are difficult to identify with any certainty, but ever since Jules Léotard popularised trapeze in the mid-nineteenth century, aerial arts have captured the public imagination. The role that aerial action has played, and continues to play, within performances is to provide spectacle and sensation. Although aerial action appears to demonstrate performers taking real risks, there is a distance between what the performer experiences and the audience perceives. Examining both key historical figures and contemporary practice, this chapter proposes four aesthetics for aerial performance: weightlessness, risk, gender, and physical appearance.