If it weren’t for the bouncy blue floor and pieces of silk hanging from the ceiling, the Aloft Loft at 937 N. California might seem like just a garage. But inside the unassuming building is the home of Aloft Aerial Dance, a dance company focused on using traditional aerial circus equipment such as the trapeze in unorthodox ways.
Shayna Swanson, who now serves as Aloft’s artistic director, started the group two years ago when she developed Rolling Blackouts, a performance that combined elements of traditional theater, dance, and aerial maneuvers.
Swanson says a traditional circus uses big tricks to wow and stun the audience, whereas Aloft shows are a bit more subdued. “We operate more as a dance company using circus tricks,” she said. “It’s more about the story and the choreography.”
Swanson also teaches classes in trapeze, aerial dance, rope, harness and bungee, Spanish web, silk, and hula hoops. According to Swanson, most of the students are adults with a few teenagers thrown in; there are hopes of reaching even younger aspiring aerialists.
Less than a year after their inception, Aloft found a perfect candidate in Sam Sion, a senior at Riverside-Brookfield High School. After seeing the Rolling Blackouts perform, Sion decided to take a class at the studio. Beginning gymnastics when he was 7, the 17 year old now has more than 10 years of experience as an aerialist, even though he is Swanson’s youngest student. He has been training at Aloft for a little more than a year now.
“I just got hooked on aerials after my first class with [Swanson],” Sion says. “I started with silks.”
“When I started gymnastics,” he says, “I always preferred the aerial events. I gravitated toward the high bar, rings and parallel bars. And I still do a lot of my training on the rings.”
The athleticism he exudes in the air runs in his blood. His mother, an aerialist who performed for four years with the Triton Troopers circus act, first introduced him to gymnastics. As he trained at the rings, his aerial prowess continued to develop.
About three years ago, his dentist mentioned in casual conversation a studio called Broadway Armory. Sion visited the studio, joined their group, and began training on the flying trapeze and gaonas. There, he met his first coach in acrobatics, Nourbol Meirmanov, with whom he still trains.
While Sion says he’s unfazed by difficult aerial maneuvers, he admits that his parents sometimes appear nervous during his routine.
“They’re always a little on the edge when they see me,” he says.
Though his mother won’t mind if he goes into the circus, his dad wants him to follow a different path.
“My dad wants me to be a stuffy businessman like him,” he says.
Though he has not received any injuries from aerial maneuvers, Sion has taken his knocks in other places. Currently, he is in physical therapy for two ruptured discs in his back, an injury he suffered while training on the Russian bar at the Broadway Armory.
The Russian bar, he explains, is an acrobatic trick in which three pole-vaulting bars, duct-taped together to form one bar, rest on the shoulders of two holders at each end, while a flyer swings around the bar, gaining momentum to propel his body into the air. He recently performed this trick at the Chicago Hilton in March.
“The strain on the shoulders is pretty strong,” Sion explains of the trick, “hence, the back injury.”
“I’m not allowed to hold weights above my shoulders,” he says, adding that the injury does not affect his aerials. His other serious injury came while teaching himself to ride a unicycle almost two years ago.
“It took me 10 days and a broken nose to learn,” Sion says.
When Sion first moved to Aloft a year-and-a-half ago, he started out on the aerial silks under Swanson’s guidance. Silks are composed of two sets of nylon fabric, hung from the ceiling 25 feet above ground. Sion uses the fabric as a catalyst for his aerial maneuvers.
Sion trains with Swanson every Tuesday evening, and then practices on his own during the rest of the week. He still trains with his first coach, Meirmanov, but says of Swanson, “it is a privilege to work with such a great coach. She is the best I have ever had.”
While Aloft doesn’t have any shows currently in production, the group is collaborating with Willow Creek Church in South Barrington on a Christmas show called Imagine Christmas, which opened Dec. 20. The group is also performing for private functions through April, Sion says, and is currently working on creating a new act he hopes will premier in the near future.
Following in his mother’s footsteps, Sion has already been admitted and plans to attend Illinois State University in Normal, where he is eager to continue pursuing aerial dance at the university’s circus arts club. According to Sion, it is the oldest club of its kind in the nation.
He is undecided as to what he will major in, but says he is considering business, education or mechanical engineering. No matter the lecture hall he finds himself in, it is clear that his heart is in the air. And this is quite natural for anyone of his athleticism, upon whom the laws of gravity seem to act with a leniency that most mortals can only dream of experiencing.
Bill Mayeroff contributed to this report