Drago Nesa, entrepreneur, international circus performer and longest-body-burn-while-hanging-from-their-teeth world record holder, teaches aerial silks at SkyHigh Odditorium, a Richmond-based aerial arts and acrobatics school where strength training and choreography fuse in midair. “When you do aerial,” she said, “you’re doing something that you think is impossible. And when a person can conquer their ability to do the impossible, they get this amazing sense of empowerment.”  Drago’s Intermediate Silks class meets every Wednesday at 6pm. When I sat in to see what aerial was all about, everything felt familiar at first—the session began with a rigorous warmup of stretches, yoga poses and ab drills. But as soon as the silks were unraveled and the aerial practice began, the class literally turned upside down. The students launched into movements that were immediately implausible—mid-air hangs and flips with the wow-factor of a good magic trick. Aerial silks is the acrobatic art of climbing into the air on two long, flowing ribbons of fabric and manipulating the fabric to perform an athletic dance that doesn’t touch the ground, as the performer wraps, suspends and dangles in strange, precarious shapes. The silks are the aerialist’s only safety line, allowing performers to rise, fall, twist and sometimes seemingly vanish into knots. Each move is a negotiation between body and fabric, as the students tangle themselves into twists and loops of fabric that appear both reckless and precise.  Developed in the ’80s and ’90s, aerial silks is a new genre of aerial acrobatics that first became well-known when it featured centrally in a Cirque du Soleil show in 1998. Drago discovered it while performing in a traveling fire-performance troupe in Taiwan, then found an aerial teacher when they moved back to New York. “I just thought she had the coolest life,” Drago said. “She would be in this amazing art space with these great ceilings, surrounded by a bunch of really cool babes, doing badass stuff in the air. I was like, ‘I want this to be my life.’” Drago founded SkyHigh Odditorium in 2012 with a vision for an age 21+ aerial arts school accessible to beginners while keeping its roots in performance art. “My mission statement at SkyHigh is that aerial is both art and fitness,” Drago said. SkyHigh’s students don’t just learn tricks for fun—they work towards the ability to showcase their skills. “I built SkyHigh around the idea that people would be trained to perform,” Drago added. AERIAL PRO A student may build skills enough to join the Dragonettes, SkyHigh’s in-house performance troupe that appears at local events and tours across California. (Photo courtesy of Drago Nesa) Some students build their skills enough to join the Dragonettes, SkyHigh’s in-house performance troupe that appears at local events and tours across California. Drago sees the artistic side of aerial as the core of the practice, giving it creative flexibility. “Gymnastics is so compulsory and non-optional. You have a set frame of what is good and what is beautiful. But with aerial, there’s a lot more space to creatively express yourself,” Drago said. Aerial silks looks intense—and it is—but SkyHigh’s doors remain wide open to everyone, regardless of their previous experience or athletic ability. Drago finds that many prospective students have a preconceived notion of what they’ll need to be able to do to be successful in aerial—a full split, a big drop, a ton of pull-ups. “But as they learn aerial,” Drago said, “they see that there’s so much more to it than flashy moves—and that there’s space for anyone that has ambition and motivation and willingness to work hard and forward their craft.” Student aerialists do need grit—this isn’t a discipline you can just drop in on a few times a year. “You can take an aerial class one time, but honestly, the thing that you’re going to understand most about that class is that aerial is really hard,” Drago said.  Those who stick with it, though, may find the journey addictive. “The people that stay with it are in for the long run,” Drago said. “I get this kind of very interesting demographic of people that are adults who are looking for something fun to do—but something fun that’s going to go somewhere.” The first step is learning the basic moves that one can do within the two strands of silk, and how to manipulate the fabric to get there.  “There’s a lot of directional analysis,” Drago said. “You are supporting your own weight with just your hands, and then moving your body around and navigating shapes that you’ve never seen before in your life.” When I sat in, the Intermediate class focused on inversions—moves done partly or completely while hanging upside-down. The students practiced moves like the spiral plank drop, which involved weaving silk around their legs and torsos to create a harness, then doing an expert swivel that magically unraveled the knot, dropping them into a fall that was caught just in time by another skillfully formed snare of silk. Drago introduced each new move with a demonstration, pointing out the muscular underpinnings, where the students should feel tension and what to watch out for. Drago often lectures comfortably while fully inverted, an impressive feat of diaphragm control. In performance, the aerialists combine these moves into a seamless sequence. “I look at aerial as a language,” Drago said. “Silks 1 is learning the vowels. In Silks 2, you learn consonants and start putting together words.” As the students practiced their consonants, Drago watched and gave precise corrections and suggestions. “Everybody is different, and a good aerial teacher, after observing somebody over a short period of time, should know the exercises to give somebody that is at their level of strength and flexibility,” they added.  With the help of Drago’s specific and intuitive cues, students progressed quickly. “I don’t think I’ve ever done so many inversions in one day,” said student Megan Tvedt. The atmosphere in the class was warm and supportive, as students cheered each other on and burst into applause when someone nailed a particularly badass move. UPSIDE DOWN Drago Nesa teaches aerial silks at SkyHigh Odditorium in Richmond. (Photo by Sonya Bennett-Brandt) “I think that the community plays a huge part here,” Drago said. “First of all, you can’t train alone.” SkyHigh welcomes a diverse range of students, many of whom haven’t found a home in other fitness spaces. “We are indeed, all Odd here,” says the SkyHigh homepage. Some of Drago’s best students arrive with no athletic background and are able to develop an incredible level of fitness, going from being unable to lift their own body weight to doing so while suspended upside down 10 feet off the ground, protected only by their own strength and a few folds of silk. “The other thing that I see completely transformed with my students is their level of confidence,” Drago said. “I have seen all of them go through their own levels of empowerment.” After all, they’re doing the impossible.  For the aerial-curious, SkyHigh offers a weekly beginner class on Sundays, where no previous experience, strength or flexibility is required. “I just think anybody can do aerial. If you are at all interested, you should try,” Drago said. “It makes you feel so good, no matter what,” Tvedt added after class, as the students carefully braided the silks together for storage. “And you have Drago cheering you on.” SkyHigh Odditorium, located inside of Traverse Fitness Facility at 1 W. Barrett Ave., Richmond. 510.230.4441. skyhighodditorium.com