Up in the Air: a Serendipitous Sonnet

At first, Santa Barbara Centre for Aerial Dance founder-director Ninette Paloma was none too pleased when she discovered that several of her planned guest artists for this weekend’s Floor To Air Festival had been saddled with visa issues and weren’t going to be able to arrive in time to participate in the high-flying show’s fifth anniversary production. But then Paloma was able to round up a bunch of mostly California-based artists for this year’s offering, and the luck didn’t stop there.

“I ended up surfacing some remarkable local talent,” Paloma explained, while noting that there are a total of 14 aerialists in attendance at the festival, joined by 10 guest dancers from SBCC’s new professional dance company performing on Friday night, May 25, at the Lobero. “It turned out to be pretty serendipitous, because 14 is the number of lines in a sonnet, which also has five that are stressed and five non-stressed in the iambic pentameter form.”

So titling the performance, A Sonnet of Limbs wasn’t much of a – ahem – reach.

“It’s the perfect poetic way to approach the production,” she said.

Indeed, the Floor To Air Festival has always been something of poetry in motion, as the performers use strength and agility to produce flowing feats of flight that seem almost effortless in their beauty and grace. The show is the culmination of a week-long festival featuring student and professional choreography, classes, workshops, and mini-presentations from artists both local and from afar.

Sonnet of Limbs distills the elements of aerial dance down to 14 distinctive (and sometimes opposing) sentiments, as it marries the ancient arts with the contemporary approaches in a kinetic regaling of the creative process. The pieces deliver the story of creation, from inspiration to elation, with stops at frustration and vindication along the way, said Paloma, who choreographed most of the movements (with contributions from Shelby Lynn Joyce and Isabel Musidora), and will direct Friday’s show. “They flow one after the other along the journey,” she said. “It starts very raw, with organic movements that are vulnerable and authentic, as if a person is simply telling you how they feel, with no fanfare, and then, by the end, it’s an unapologetic piece filled with gorgeous fabric and color, a huge 12-minute-long piece to end the evening.”

The performance takes place 7 pm Friday at the Lobero, and after the aerialists have alighted for the final time, VIP ticket holders are invited to a post-performance wine reception with the artists in the Lobero Courtyard. For tickets or more information, call 963-0761 or visit www.lobero.com.