NYC Aerial Dance Festival 2026 show poster

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NYC Aerial Dance Festival 2026 at Five Angels Theater

Dates: 5/8/2026

📍 Theatre:
Five Angels Theater

Fly-by-Night Dance Theater
248 West 21 St Apt 1B NYC NY 10011
New York, NY 10019

Tickets: $25-$50

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Fly-by-Night Dance Theater announces the NYC Aerial Dance Festival 2026 - presenting Aerial Dance as Concert Dance in works that push the boundaries of both. Featured artists each bring their unique expressive approach to a variety of aerial apparatus including Silks, Dance Trapeze, Corde Lisse, Lyra and Mini Lyra, Ropes, Multicorde, Straps, Open Sling, and Span Set.

Friday, May 8 @ 7 PM & 9 PM

Five Angels Theater

789 Tenth Avenue

New York, NY 10019

Admission:

Advance Ticket Prices: Adults $ 40, Artists/Students $25

All Tickets at the Door: $ 50

TICKETS HERE

Featured Choreographers:

• Cherie Carson / UpSwing Aerial Dance Company

• Diane Tomasi

• Julie Ludwick / Fly-by-Night Dance Theater

• Karen Potter

• Megan Cattau

• Megan Dewees

• Nicki Miller & Benny Oyzon/Sticks & Stone

• Wendy Chu

• Wendy Louie & Maia Ramnath

With Additional Performers:

• Asha Flasha

• Cecilia Fontanesi

• Helium Valentine

• KC Hyland

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Show Photo: Mikhail Lipyankskiy

Description of Works to be performed:

Moonlit Memories features the choreography of Cherie Carson with dancers KC Hyland and Helium Valentine of UpSwing Aerial Dance Company in a stunning aerial performance with mini hoop and open sling. Inspired by the color blue, this piece journeys through solitude, rebellion, and resilience, revealing strength in vulnerability. The two women celebrate the complexity of the human spirit through breathtaking movement and ethereal beauty with power and authenticity.

Name It Love is an Aerial Straps work created by Diane Tomasi after the passing of queer poet laureate Andrea Gibson in the summer of 2025. Gibson’s poetry invites the listener to feel, to be, and to love, especially when life is hard and the odds are stacked against all that makes life worth living. Amid rising hatred toward trans, queer, and migrant communities, Tomasi found solace in Andrea's words—and created the work as both dedication and invitation: to feel deeply, love fiercely, and remember your beauty.

Julie Ludwick’s latest collaboration, LIB-er-tee, featuring dancers Asha Flasha, Cecilia Fontanesi and Maia Ramnath, will premiere in the festival. The work is a bold fusion of Aerial, Street, and Contemporary dance that pays homage to Lady Liberty; exploring what she stands for in America's past, present, and uncertain future. The work transforms the vertical stage through video projection, single- point low trapeze, and floor-to-ceiling span sets.

Karen Potter's new aerial duet, Circe’s Secret is performed on silks and integrates floor choreography with aerial elements. Circe — sorceress, singer, seductress — has a new arrival in her sights. What begins with a voice too beautiful to resist leads somewhere no traveler expects.

In And so we stirred the embers, Megan Cattau offers a visceral meditation on dance trapeze, exploring the quiet agency we carry in tumultuous times. Choreographed in collaboration with composer Ameen Mokdad, who created the haunting soundscape in Mosul, Iraq during ISIS occupation, the work connects us to our internal landscapes and instinctual bodies—intuitive, genuine, unapologetic. Weaving intimate narrative with textured motion, it offers resilience through presence, grounded in felt experience amid uncertainty.

Megan Dewees’ Take If Off is an intimate exploration of gender queerness, dysphoria, and transformation. Drawing from journal entries, imagery, and paintings created before and during recovery from FTM (female to male) top surgery, the work maps the internal terrain of this journey via trapeze dance. This visceral piece stands powerfully on its own and marks the beginning of a full- length ensemble work that will gather multiple queer performing artists to share their stories of embodiment and self-discovery.

Feedback Loop, choreographed by Nicki Miller and Benny Oyzon, was originally created and performed just seven weeks after Benny's 2025 open heart surgery while he was still recovering. With attention to physical delicacy and mutual care, the dancers use harness, counterweight, and aerial rope to embody the layered dynamics of partnership and change. This will be the NYC premiere ofthe duo's first new aerial counterweight work since their full-length show Sticks & Stones in 2022.

In her latest 2026 premiere, Dragon, dancer Wendy Chu pushes the boundaries of contemporary Lyra performance by blending Western technique and Eastern aesthetics. Contemplating the duality of the human experience versus the ethereal power of the mythical creature, Chu integrates silk ribbons to mirror the fluid strokes of Chinese brushwork, reimagining them as a calligraphic dragon taking flight.

In Doppelgänger, Maia Ramnath and Wendy Louie suspend from Corde Lisse and multicorde, conjuring an uncanny forest where rope becomes landscape. Within this vertical wilderness, a reflection might be a shadow, a ghost might be an aspect of the psyche, a challenger might be a friend, a stranger might be a familiar, an other might be…oneself.

Cast and Creative Team for NYC Aerial Dance Festival 2026 at Five Angels Theater

Cast

Asha Flasha

Collaborator / Performer

Asha Flasha (dancer, Fly-by-Night Dance Theater) is a Flexn Dance originator born and raised in NYC who began his dance journey while drumming for his mother’s African Dance classes. He then branched off into dance, studying African Dance, Dancehall, and Hip hop before eventually specializing in the style of Bruk Up and FlexN. Asha has danced on TV Channel 67 BCAT which streams every Friday of the week and toured in Munich, Germany where he performed at the Basil Art Festival. In addition, he performed with Elton John for his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road’’ Tour. He choreographs for juveniles that were in Rikers and other dentition centers around the boroughs of New York City and teaches Hip Hop, Afro Dance, and Flexing for youth at several NYC public schools. You can find his content on his social media platforms @AshaFlasha.

Cecilia Fontanesi

Collaborator / Performer

Cecilia Fontanesi (Ph.D., dancer, Fly-by-Night Dance Theater) is a dancer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist working between Italy and New York City. Her work spans dance, improvisation, somatics, and theatre. She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the CUNY Graduate Center and is a graduate and faculty member of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS). She teaches internationally, including at Codarts University for the Arts and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. In NYC, she co-founded PARCON and served as Associate Artistic Director of the IDACO NYC Festival. Cecilia is the president of NYMA APS, an Italian non-profit supporting dance as artistic research and social inquiry. Her work is supported by Cathy Appel’s Overtime Dance Foundation.

Cherie Carson

Choreographer

Cherie Carson (UpSwing Aerial Dance Company) performed her first aerial dance piece in 1990 and has created more than 50 aerial pieces since then. In 1992, her first dance underwater film was named a finalist for the Robert Bennett Award in Los Angeles. Her choreography has been performed in a planetarium, on stilts, on rollerblades, in sculpture gardens, reflection pools, in a dress of 11 yards, on a bungee cord hanging from a Banyan tree, on trapeze, tissu, slings, rope, harness, invented apparatus and 30 feet high in a Redwood Grove. Her award-winning dance-for-camera films have garnered respect around the world. Cherie currently resides in San Francisco Bay Area and is Artistic Director of UpSwing Aerial Dance Company based in Berkeley, CA. Her unique style blends choreographed movement with improvisation and collaboration among her dancers. UpSwing currently has five performing dancers/aerialists in the company.

Diane Tomasi

Choreographer / Performer

Diane Tomasi performs on the ground and in the air, as a dancer and aerialist. Diane began as a gymnast at the young age of 2, later began to dance, and then was introduced to aerial through an inclusive, abled/disabled body workshop with Blue-Eyed Soul Dance Company in the UK. Diane has performed at Galapagos Art Space, The Slipper Room, Jacob’s Pillow, The Wild Project, Dance New Amsterdam, and The Muse Brooklyn, among other places, and with Phaedra’s Cabaret, Ko-Ryo Dance Theater, as well as in their own work and with This Body. Diane is currently working toward their doctorate in Dance Ed. at Teachers College, researching the correlation between risk-taking and identity formation in dance and with the queer community. (www.dianetomasi.com and www.thisbodylives.com)

Helium Valentine

Collaborator / Performer

Helium Valentine (dancer, Upswing Aerial Dance Company) began dancing in primary school with the Atlanta Ballet and continued technique even when she moved to the small town of Fresno in the 20th century. After a cold stint in Ohio to attend Oberlin college, upon graduation she moved to LA. There she eventually found the aerial arts, completed the Protrack program in Boulder, CO, then came back to California where she joined UpSwing in 2017.

Julie Ludwick

Artistic Director / Producer

Julie Ludwick (Fly-by-Night Dance Artistic Director) has created dozens of dances for Fly-by-Night Dance Theater for numerous venues including The Flea Theater, PS 122, Dixon Place, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, and Mabou Mines Theater as well as colleges around the U.S.. In 2022 Ludwick’s evening-length work, Where Shall I Send My Joys? was presented by the CUNY Dance Initiative and the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College. The company’s repertory has evolved to include evening-length pieces with video projection, theater, and live original music. Ludwick’s Aerial Dance Technique has been featured in Dance Magazine, Paper Magazine, Time Out, and in a documentary from AfterEd TV. Ludwick has also been featured as an outstanding alum of Teachers College, Columbia University. Classes in this technique are offered to the community for movers of all levels and are based on improvisational explorations that allow each participant to find their own voice within the aerial apparatus. Her choreogoraphry has received support from: The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, CUNY Dance Initiative, Mabou Mines Artists' Suite, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Meet the Composer, The Puffin Foundation, Frances Alexander Family Fund, Northern Manhattan Artist Alliance, The Cartwheel Foundation, The Kathryn and Ador Elnes Fund, The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, The New York City Council, and City Artists Corps, among others. She is an adjunct professor of dance at Wagner College and a personal movement coach for individuals.

Karen Potter

Choreographer

Karen Potter (choreographer) award-winning Professor, has taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio for 25 years where she was the Inaugural Chair of Dance in 2011. After performing in the ‘80’s with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, she taught, choreographed and performed in New York. Having danced works by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Pascal Rioult, she’s performed her own work and that of others at venues such as New York’s Joyce Theater, the Strand Theater in Shreveport, Louisiana, The Theater in the Woods at Wolf-trap Farm Park in Virginia, and in Italy, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

KC Hyland

Performer

KC Hyland (dancer, Upswing Aerial Dance Company) is an actor and aerialist specializing in dance trapeze and aerial hoop who performs in a variety of live and virtual shows for audiences seeking unique storytelling experiences. Fifteen years of competitive rugby have given KC a fierceness which manifests as passionate, soulful movement. Performing on dance trapeze and her custom red Tiny Hoop around the San Francisco Bay Area, KC can also bring her humor, room-filling personality, and a grinning charisma to any stage.

Megan Cattau

Choreographer / Performer

Megan Cattau found her primary movement form, dance trapeze, at Canopy Studio in 2002 studying under Susan Murphy. She has since performed, choreographed, directed, and taught extensively in the US and abroad, primarily as Flight Collaborative. Her aerial homes have included Canopy Studio (Assistant Director, Repertory Company member, instructor), Durham School for Ballet (aerial program founder, instructor), Circus Warehouse NYC (instructor), and Frequent Flyers (Student Company Director, Professional Company member, instructor). You may have seen her performing in NYC with Constellation Moving Company, Dzul Dance, and Butoh company RenGyoSoh. Now Boise-based as Associate Professor of Human-Environment Systems, this is her first aerial performance since her third child's birth last summer.

Megan Dewees

Choreographer / Performer

Megan Dewees (they/she) is an actor, circus performer, choreographer, director, combat/stunt coordinator, and writer. Their art is inspired by forces of nature, their queer community, combining their loves of circus and theatre, and coming up with crazy ideas with their friends. Recently, you may have seen Megan in: CIRCUS: Gay For The Holidays (Producer, dance trapeze, Duo trampoline) Testing123…(producer, dance trapeze, acro) The Void (flying trapeze, duo trampoline, dance), Coup de Foudre, a contemporary circus on the flying trapeze (flying trapeze, duo trapeze), A Haunted Happening (director, choreographer, duo trapeze) FILM/TV: The Four Seasons (NETFLIX) Last Ride in the Graviton Galaxy (independent feature) Through a Window (independent short) Play readings: Blue Beach by Sam Castor, Giulia // A Body of Work by Sabrina Caputo, Fuckboy Saves The World by Mage McCormick and Brock Bivens, Honeypot adapted by Tahereh Safavi. UPCOMING: Megan directed and choreographed Avast!, which ran at Circus Academy in ‘25, and will have it’s second run this September at Hupstate Circus Festival! INSTAGRAM: @meganrdewees WEBSITE: megandewees.com

Maia Ramnath

Choreographer / Performer / Collaborator

Maia Ramnath (dancer, Fly-by-Night Dance) has created and performed many interdisciplinary circus/dance/theater works as co-founder/director of Constellation Moving Company, meanwhile performing as a freelance aerialist and modern dancer with various companies and choreographers, including Fly By Night (since 2019). At other times Maia might also be found working as an aerial rope and silks teacher, history professor, or NYC walking tour guide.

Tento Nazzy

Performer

Tento Nazzy is an emerging dancer in the Brooklyn-rooted FlexN scene, a style known for its extreme body control, storytelling, and illusion-based movement. Drawing from techniques like gliding, bone-breaking, and get-low, Nazzy represents the raw creativity and expressive energy that defines flexn culture. Like many flexn artists, he uses dance not just as performance but as a form of personal expression, blending rhythm with narrative to captivate audiences. His style—especially in elements like “get-low”—reflects the influence of battle culture and underground dance events, where individuality and originality are everything. He is a scholarship student with Fly-by-Night Dance Theater.

Nicki Miller and Benny Oyzon

Choreographers / Performers

Nicki Miller and Benny Oyzon have been weaving aerial dance and theatrical performance since 2017. Nicki Miller (she/her, co-founding artistic director of Only Child Aerial Theatre) is an interdisciplinary theatre maker, aerial artist, writer, and movement educator. Coaches and mentors include Lisa Natoli, Nita Little, Diana Lopez Soto, Leo Hedman, and Wendy Reinart. She holds an M.F.A. in Theatre (focus on interdisciplinary aerial arts) from Sarah Lawrence College and is also an aerial choreographer and dramaturg for theatre and opera. She currently is the aerial arts faculty at Pace University and teaches at several studios. Benny Oyzon (he/him) is an artist and civil engineer with 20+ years experience as an aerial acrobat, aerial rigger (on and off Broadway), martial artist, dancer, fire performer, and Pilates instructor. Notable credits include Broadway: Floyd Collins (aerial coordinator); Off-Broadway: Breaking Surface (rigger, performer) and multiple projects with Lisa Giobbi, Grounded Aerial, ABCirque, and Only Child Aerial Theatre. He is continually creating different ways to find the beauty in nature and the magic in physics. Together, the duo explores the relational poetry of aerial counterweight and interdisciplinary performance. They developed their full length show Sticks & Stone at 5th Wall Studio and premiered it at NYC's Performing Garage in 2022. They continue to use Sticks & Stone as a company name. WEBSITE: sticksandstone.art

Richard Oaxaca

Performer

Richard Oaxaca (dancer) holds an MFA in Contemporary Dance from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) where he is an Assistant Professor of Dance. His performance credits include dancing the role of Jason in Martha Graham's "Cave of the Heart" at CWRU, and dancing at the 2012 World Expo in Korea, for Disney and major cruise lines including Royal Caribbean. In addition to choreographing for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Oaxaca's contemporary choreography has been commissioned by Ohio Contemporary Ballet and has been presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Brazos Contemporary Dance Festival, and the OhioDance Festival.

Ryan Shinji Murray

Performer

Ryan is a multi-disciplinary circus artist who has performed around the world with Cirque Éloize's "iD" and as an original cast member of Cirque du Soleil's "Kurios," touring with the show for eight years and as well as taking turns as the understudy hand balancer and comic characters. Now, he is Brooklyn based and collaborates with several different companies and stages including ABCirque, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, 3AM Theatre, Parallel Exit, and Westchester Circus Arts. He also coaches circus arts at Circus Academy New York.

Wendy Chu

Performer / Choreographer

Wendy Chu is a classically trained dancer and artistic athlete based in NYC. Her professional credits include stage, television, film, media and print for national and global campaigns. Her aerial training began as a scholarship trainee at Fly-By-Night Dance Theatre with Julie Ludwick and lyra with Heather Hammond, and most recently at Aerial Arts with Kris Olness and faculty. Also in demand as a fitness professional, she is a guest strength and conditioning coach for the American Ballet Theater Studio Company for the last three seasons.

Wendy Louie

Choreographer / Performer

Wendy Louie is a New York City native and a movement artist. She has performed aerial, handstands, and dance at various venues across NYC. Wendy has appeared in multiple featured productions with Constellation Moving Company, as well as performing at special events with Cirquetacular and Bindlestiff. She is passionate about continuous learning, movement, collaboration, and artistic creation. Wendy is dedicated to expanding her skills and pushing her boundaries to achieve growth as an artist.

The INTERWOVEN ensemble

LIve Music for Wendy Chu

The INTERWOVEN ensemble (music for Wendy Chu) is a pioneer of intercultural music that brings together historic sonorities of Eastern Asia and Western Europe. INTERWOVEN is currently in its fourth season as a chamber ensemble. Taking inspiration from its birthplace NYC, where countless cultures coexist and thrive, INTERWOVEN celebrates and integrates traditions, aesthetics and communities that originate from various heritages through performing, commissioning, and recording contemporary music. The ensemble debuted in 2021 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in NYC, with the funding from the City Artist Corps Grant. The group has since performed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Metropolitan Museum, Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn and Vancouver Civic Centre Annex, among others. INTERWOVEN has served as a guest artist at UCLA, Longy School of Music in Massachusetts, University of Kansas, Toronto University, and Colby College in Maine, working closely with the schools’ composition and instrumental departments. In 2023 the group was awarded funding from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Canada Council For the Arts for their original community-focused project, FantAsia!, in Washington Heights, NY; a neighborhood with the smallest Asian representation in the borough of Manhattan. www.interwovenmusic.org

Ken Pierson

Live Music for Fly-by-Night Dance

Ken Pierson (Music Composer/Arranger/Performer Fly-by-Night Dance) has composed for dance, theater, and concert stage, with performances nationally and internationally. Theater works include A Midsummer's Night Dream and Falling Moon. He has arranged works by Haitian composer Jean Jean Pierre for the Kiskeya Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. For over twenty years he served as dance accompanist at Juilliard, City College, and Barnard College, where he was Musical Director for the Dance Department. A multiple Meet the Composer award recipient, he has also composed extensively for Fly-by-Night Dance Theater. Ken holds an MA in Music and Music Education from Lehman College and currently teaches music for dance at Adelphi University and accompanies classes at Adelphi and the Paul Taylor Dance School. He also offers private lessons in improvisation and music theory.

Cristobal Vivar

videographer/cinematographer for Fly-by-Night Dance

Cristobal Vivar (videographer/cinematographer for Fly-by-Night Dance) is a cinematographer originally from Mexico City, working across video and photography. His background in motion graphics, interactive media, and photojournalism gives his work a versatile visual perspective rooted in storytelling. View his portfolio at www.vivarphoto.com and www.cristobalvivar.com

Creative Team

Kaia Merrell

LIghting Designer / Board Operator

AJ Jones

Sound Board Operator

Sam Hart

Rigger

Cristobal Vivar

Show Videographer

Sophia Angulo

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About the Theatre

Five Angels Theater

248 West 21 St Apt 1B NYC NY 10011
New York, NY 10019

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Five Angels Theater

248 West 21 St Apt 1B NYC NY 10011, New York, NY

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NYC Aerial Dance Festival (3/8/24-3/9/24)

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