Environmental Relations and Communication: On Diversifying Aesthetics in Aerial Arts

Abstract

Although aerial arts are typically relegated to performance, analysis, critique, and study within the niche of the Western circus sector, “Embodied Relations as Communication: On Diversifying Aesthetics in Aerial Arts'' offers pathways for understanding aerial arts through a variety of practical, aesthetic, and non-circus lenses. Applying frameworks of transdisciplinarity, ecodramaturgy, and disability studies enables aerial arts to be practiced and artistically engaged by the many kinds of artists, bodies, and environments that do not adhere to or fit within the rigid formal structures of Western circus. This paper outlines the historical roots that have led to the conflation of aerial arts and circus and then shifts its focus to diverge from these roots and unpack methodologies and artist examples that expand the relational, physical, and artistic functions of aerial arts in practice and performance.