We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dark Sky Aerial a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dark Sky Aerial , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Dark Sky Aerial has been a unique and meaningful project for each of the artistic directors. This project is co-led by five strong women, Elisa Venezia, Abby Chan, Carrie Gaydos, Isabelle Dove-Robinson and Joanie Garcia, who come together to create work. This artistic collective draws upon each other’s depth of intuition, creativity, passion and movement practices to create its artistic works. This organizational structure is unique as far as artistic projects go because the team of five do not limit themselves to strict roles and responsibilities within the organization. Not many artistic projects are co-directed by 5 artists in this way, but there is an alchemy within this team of five that leads to the heart-stirring works it creates.
Dark Sky Aerial as an organization has specific project goals and artistic inspiration for each of its works, but the guiding ethos for the overall project is centered in mutual support, friendship, and creating a connection between the artists in order to foster an environment for creativity and inspiration to take hold. “Dark Sky [Aerial] feels like an umbilical cord that connects us back to the origins of our humanity in the way that it focuses on feeling, intuition, emotion and movement as its key practices” said Joanie Garcia, one if the five artistic directors when asked about the meaning of Dark Sky Aerial as it relates to her experience as an artist and creator.
For Dark Sky Aerial, its use of aerial theater as a medium for expression is an ongoing project that will continue as long as the five artistic directors hunger to express their emotions and find a wellspring of healing in this artistic practice. Finding unique spaces such as rooftops, airplane hangers, the sides of buildings, and natural landscapes such as the grand canyon is one of the unique challenges of this project, but also has the great potential to add meaning to each project.
The project focuses on creating works that speak to the moment. Oftentimes the artistic works are edgy and evocative, uncomfortable and yet also breathtakingly beautiful. However these artistic works come into being, they are a salve for the soul. Pulling on creative inspiration from present and past experiences, this project trusts in connecting to heart as the guiding light for its artistic projects. The journey is the destination for this artistic project, and in each moment this team spends together, lifting one another up, supporting each other, witnessing each other’s struggles and helping one another, this process brings a depth of meaning that each collaborator feels extremely grateful to experience and participate in. It is the intention of Dark Sky Aerial that this meaning and depth of connection ripples out to all who witness it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Our goal is to connect communities through ambulatory and kinesthetic aerial theatre. We aim to explore the human experience through movement and spoken word, creating a platform for our audiences to dive deeper within the self and connect with others. Dark Sky Aerial produces all original work. We do not use a script and there are no established rules for site-specific aerial theatre. Our company installs our work in airplane hangars and off the sides of buildings. This guerrilla-style of performance art is rooted in a rich tradition of modern dance and other art forms, which have laid the groundwork for the creation and experience of performance art in non-traditional spaces.
To-date, we have produced three original productions: OPIA (2016), TILT (2017, 2018), and OMEN (2021). Our most recent work, OMEN is an original harness dance film created and performed by Dark Sky Aerial and filmed and produced by Nick Geib of Firewatch Media – and Blake McCord, Harlan Taney, and Justin Cliffton of Sandcast Media.
Our most recent project OMEN has taken on a life of it own, winning several arounds at film festivals world wide as well as a write up in the New York Times. We are so honored to have our work appreciated by diverse audiences around the world.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
DSA’s creativity springs from a place of collaboration. We embrace each performer as a whole person and collectively expand our capacity to express innovation and insight. Our goal has been to invite our audience and offer inspiration by inclusion. We extend an invitation to our audience, to question what they know, while offering a sense of familiarity or togetherness as we move through life. Overall, we have enjoyed exploring our humanity through movement and sound while stepping outside the box to voice our storyline.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The road for Dark Sky Aerial has been life-changing for the creative team, but not without challenge – both logistical and emotional. From permitting, weather interference, to scheduling – it is not uncommon for the production to encounter a roadblock to challenge and inform the creative process. As an exceptionally tight-knit team, we have been able to overcome even the most unlikely challenges, by employing constant change management, strategic planning – and by remaining flexible and compassionate. We have an incredibly supportive community that has stood by us during all of these hardships. As a company, we are not afraid to dream as high as possible and have been able to put in an immense amount of work to forge a new pathway to achieve whatever we dream.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.darkskyaerial.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darksky_aerial/?hl=en
Image Credits
Blake McCord and Chad de Alva