Ascend Aerial Arts Welcomes Visiting Guest Instructor Stacey Strange!
Get ready to elevate your aerial game! We’re thrilled to announce that the incredible Stacey Strange will be joining us at Ascend Aerial Arts in January 2025 as a visiting guest instructor.
Private Lessons with Stacey Strange
Want personalized attention from Stacey? Book a private lesson during the week of January 20th. Limited spots available, so book early! Contact Tammy at tammy@impactkbf.com to book a private lesson or workshop.
Inversion Intensive
- When: Thursday, January 23rd, 2025 at 7:30 PM
- What: This 90-minute workshop is for anyone and everyone who wants to dig deep into the nitty gritty techniques of the art of getting upside down, or wants to troubleshoot their inversion. Whether you’re struggling to get upside down, trying to banish a microbend, or want tools to progress to straight arms, we’ll cover it all. We’ll begin with a discussion of mechanics, then tackle some basic exercises to help you pinpoint what’s holding you back. From there we’ll attack some drills to address common inversion issues, and you’ll go home with a short conditioning plan to add into your home workouts and open studios time! Please come with a note taking device and a few bullet points on what you feel your biggest inverstion struggles are.
- Pre-requisites – Students of all levels welcome!
C-Shaping Power Hour
- When: Friday, January 24th, 2025 at 6 PM
- What: Are you ready to roll? This workshop is for anyone and everyone looking to get some tools and techniques for C-shaping success. We’ll focus on drills for C-shaping on a horizontal apparatus (lyra, sling), prep for back balances and side planche, and roll ups ona vertical apparatus (silks, rope and straps). The majority of class will take place in the sling with the possibility to apply your skills to the apparatus of your choice at the end.
- Pre-requisites – Students should ideally have a basic understanding of C-shaping concepts and be able to hold a solid front and back balance in a sling or on a lyra.
Single Pole Pathways for Rope & Fabric
- When: Friday, January 24th, 2025 at 7:30 PM
- What: Rope is so much more than giant beats and big release moves. In this workshop, we’ll focus on the structural side of things, deconstructing delicious sequences in corde lisse pathways that work equally well on aerial fabric. We’ll learn sneaky, and creative transitions, and follow them to their most surprising conclusion. We’ll also work on adding in touches of dynamic movement to add flair and ease to our sequencing work.
- Pre-requisites – For Pre-Intermediate+ students. Students should be able to repeatedly invert in the air comfortably with straight legs and have excellent hip keys in the air. Familiarity with shooflys, front balances and basic beats are not required but extremely helpful.
$80 per student per workshop
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the aerial industry!
About Stacey Strange
Stacey Strange is a quintuple threat. A multidisciplinary circus, musical, and visual artist, she often combines art forms to create transportive entertainment rooted in meaningful storytelling. Her creations include aerial short films, touring circus productions, and the occasional novel. Her work has been called ‘As smart as it was entertaining—and it was very entertaining indeed.’ (The New Haven Independent)
She studied creative writing, classics, and film at Vassar College, tempered with four years in the school’s recreational circus club. She made it two whole months into graduate school in New York City before realizing she hated New York (she already knew this) and that she didn’t want to go into academia (she already knew this).
She swapped a closet-sized bedroom in New York for a blocks-long abandoned warehouse in Connecticut, and academia for studying aerial fabric primarily at the New England Center for Circus Arts where she is now a member of the permanent coaching staff. Though she’s never looked back, she has moved into a legally habitable dwelling.
She is the founder and creative director of Air Temple Arts in Connecticut, one of the largest circus studios in New England. A dedicated coach with over a decade of experience, she has taught myriad circus arts to hundreds of students across the United States and internationally. In 2018 she founded an aerial fabric teacher training program and expanded on the success of that program with a bar apparatus training in 2022.
She has been featured on the national PBS show START-UP, had her photography published in the New York Times, and has the most expressive feet one YouTube commenter has ever seen. Most recently she won a silver medal for her performance at the Hubei Chutian Star Guzheng Competition in China, which sees thousands of competitors.
Spring/Summer 2024 will see her touring LAYOVERS, a small, ensemble show about suitcases, gravity, and time. Layovers also includes a hybrid piece of hoop juggling and self-accompaniment on guzheng featuring the industrious use of a looping pedal. She is also brainstorming a solo show, and querying a novel about magic, alchemy, and love.
We can’t wait to see you there!