Hanging by a thread

Twenty feet up, Ashley Gieg is in a pinch. Not a bind, so to speak, because the 23-year-old is in complete control—but a pinch, a maneuvered foothold that is her anchor on two golden silk ribbons, the only thing keeping her from crashing to the floor. Her bare feet are wrapped into silk suspended by rock-climbing equipment: black bands hung over tresses fastened into shackles, which are connected to a carabiner then a steel swivel then another carabiner. Her reddish hair sways like a pendulum with each meditative contortion of her body. The rig can sustain more than a thousand pounds of pressure, plenty to support Gieg’s petite frame, but as her body rolls and her leg revolves again and again, the image turns surreal.

She looks like she can fly.

This move is called the Rotisserie Chicken. The art is aerial silk performance, and a growing group of performers want to make it the next hot trend in Baton Rouge.

Certainly there is a stunning circus thrill to it all, an elusive beauty that slides between freedom and constraint, delicate and downright dangerous. The young women inside LSU’s renovated Music and Dramatic Arts building suspend themselves 15, 20, 25 feet in the air, their hands feeling for just the right grip as their bodies spin or suddenly drop, with their only harnesses the silk strands tightly wound around their feet or abdomens.

Such a fluid display of strength and grace vibrantly contrasts with their angular male partners, who are often independently in motion more than a dozen feet below. This is an arresting and thoroughly feminine art form.

“It’s really dangerous,” says LSU acting instructor Nick Erickson, perhaps the biggest advocate for aerial arts in the city. “It’s no joke. The first time you try it, your whole body is screaming, ‘Let me down.’”

The first time Gieg saw a silk Erickson had hung in the basement studio of Hatcher Hall, she asked the founding member of acclaimed L.A.-based performing arts company Diavolo if she could try it right then and there.

“I want to learn how to do this,” she said to the instructor.

“If you can get to the top, I will teach you,” Erickson told her, like a sage Kung Fu master testing his young grasshopper.

“How do you climb?” she asked, looking up to the ceiling.

“Figure it out.”

She did.

Now a professional dance teacher, choreographer and aerial instructor—she conducted workshops in China and Indiana last summer—Gieg remains a regular at this on-campus studio space, where the younger, less-experienced aerialists of the Physical Theatre Club look up to her both literally and figuratively.

“For me, it’s another skill, another outlet for expression besides dance,” Gieg says. “Aerial is a beautiful connection between the body and the mind—a total body experience. And it’s a great workout.”

In September, Erickson went to the mat with university officials to put aerial classes in the official course catalog for the fall semester. He won.

Though the group became an unexpected moneymaker for the department by selling out a one-week run of In Between last year, Erickson’s vision stretches beyond memorable performances. He is focused on creating a new artistic movement by providing skills and opportunities for performers to stay in Baton Rouge and earn a living as artists.

“Our governor talks about brain drain in the state, but I think we have a talent drain, too,” Erickson says. “That’s slowly changing, though, partly because of the film industry, and we want to plug that drain with professional opportunities for artists. It’s about empowerment, and my hope is that aerial will create a critical mass of interaction between artists, dancers, athletes and actors.”

That is happening already. Erickson’s class is filled with non-theatre majors. The aerialists practicing next to Gieg include physics and chemistry majors, marketing and elementary education students.

Gieg herself has choreographed aerial silk for Of Moving Colors, and she is developing her own Baton Rouge-based professional company for silk performers. Fellow aerialists Ryann Pinkerton and Lauren Hinton are her partners in the company called Bel Vol.

“Aerial creates a beautiful image, but it also tells a story,” says Pinkerton. “When you’re up on the silk, and people are staring in awe, you feel like you’re part of a piece of art.” The LSU group’s next performance, Dante, a contemporary take on Dante’s Inferno, will run with two performances nightly March 27 – April 6.

Visit theatre.lsu.edu for tickets and more information. For updates on Bel Vol, visit facebook.com/belvolaerial.