W&L’s Aerial Dance Program Presents Spring Term Performance “Vertical Dance” will run May 22-23 and is the culmination of the four-week Spring Term aerial dance class.

Office of Communications and Public Affairs
May 15, 2025

The Department of Theater, Dance and Film Studies at Washington and Lee University presents “Vertical Dance,” an aerial dance performance on May 22 at noon and 9 p.m. and May 23 at noon. The performance will be held outside on the wall of Wilson Hall at the Lenfest Center for the Arts.

The performance is free and open to the public. Attendees are invited to bring blankets, chairs or a picnic for lawn seating across from the performance wall.

Aerial dance is an emerging form of modern dance, in which dancers are suspended 50 feet in the air in harnesses and tethered to steel cables that allow them to perform against the vertical surface of a wall. Rotating the dance “floor” 90 degrees creates new relationships to gravity for the artists and introduces the illusion of flight into their choreography.

The upcoming performance of ten student works is the culmination of the four-week Spring Term aerial dance class, offered every four years. Elise McPherson ’26, Madison Lilly ’25, Rebecca Bundrant ’26, Morgan Stoudt ’27, Hayden Myer ’25, Georgia Busbee ’26, Barclay McGinley ’26, Skyler Hollins ’27, Olesia Soukhoveev ’26, Emmie Rose ’28 and Virginia Newman ’28 spent Spring Term learning aerial dance vocabulary, elements of composition and performance techniques, as well as the technical, production and artistic components of performance. The students created new pieces of aerial dance choreography for themselves and in collaboration with their classmates.

The aerial dance program at W&L is directed by Jenefer Davies, professor of dance and theater and artistic director of the W&L Repertory Dance Company, who also authored “Aerial Dance: A Guide to Dance with Rope and Harness” (2017), which is the art form’s first textbook.

W&L’s aerial dance program is one of the first academic programs in aerial dance in the country, offering traditional 12-week courses as well as the intensive Spring Term course in aerial rope and harness. In addition, W&L students have traveled to England to study with a professional aerial company and professional aerialists have given master classes at W&L. As part of this year’s Spring Term class, the artistic director of Wired Aerial Dance Company in Liverpool, England, visited campus for three days and taught master classes.

“Aerial dance is exciting not only because of its beauty and challenging nature, but because it’s evolving, which means the students contribute to the international research and development of the form,” Davies said. “Our Spring Term class is the highlight of the program. We hire ZFX, a professional rigging company, to create our performance space outside, and we work six hours a day for four weeks to prepare for the show. That is not a lot of time for the exploration and development of such a complex art form, especially when you factor in weather conditions and a much greater performance height than we experience indoors. It can be physically and mentally exhausting, but the students are fearless and have risen to the challenge.”

For this year’s performance, the aerial dance program has partnered with Kim David, a celebrated muralist, who created a 30-square-foot trompe l’oeil that will be rigged to the Lenfest Center’s outside wall and serve as the backdrop for the performance. The performance is also supported by W&L staff members Tom Hackman, theater technical director, and Paula Fritz, producing stage manager. Elizabeth Wislar, costume designer and costume shop supervisor, designed the costumes with the students in her aerial adornment Spring Term class, Anna Waters ’25, Timi Patterson ’27, Kassandra Loera ’27 and Brenda Iradukunda ’27.