14 DAY TRIAL // Professional dancer Ashleigh took aerial fabric dancing to a whole new level when she decided to dance without a harness hundreds of meters above the ground as part of the Maiden Light project.
Armed with a lot of courage, fabric silk and incredible skills, Ashleigh took her performance into new territory, on the backside of The Maiden, an overhanging monolith in the Flatirons of Boulder, Colorado.
Aerial fabric dance, or aerial silk, is a style of modern dance in which the artist performs aerial acrobatics while hanging from a special fabric. It’s an incredibly demanding art form, as it requires high flexibility, strength and power, as well as a lot of courage and grace to master.
This type of dance is also very risky as performers climb the suspended fabric without the use of safety harnesses. They only use the fabric to wrap, climb, suspend, swing, drop and spiral their bodies while they fly through the air, striking impressive positions and figures in order to deliver emotion.
The video embedded above shows Ashleigh performing an amazing free solo aerial fabric dance that perfectly mixes beauty, emotion and expression. In order to realize this ambition of hers, Ashleigh had to learn some climbing techniques.
As you can see, after she climbs up there, the harness is pulled out and she basically dances in the air, relying only on her training and skill to ensure safety. She waves her hands and legs up and around the fabric, arches her back, and performs a stunning dance hanging high above the ground.