The Baltimore Alley Aerial Festival took place in a wondrous graffiti alleyway behind Load Of Fun on the corner of North Ave and Howard in Baltimore. I created the Festival in order to provide a unique performance venue for audiences of all kinds and for aerialists, (who never get their own event but rather perform as a part of a variety showcases), and as a way for Tim Scofield to present his large scale work. I felt a need to introduce audiences (and aerialists, for that matter) to the variety of what aerial work can be beyond Circue Du Soliel. I also wanted to bring the Baltimore and DC Aerial community together. All of this in a very specific space that is considered urban, unsafe, and unfamiliar. For three days of the festival and for 3 years, aerialists transformed the alleyway into a space of flight that celebrates our city and the urban art of graffiti. Performances of athleticism, sculpture, and beauty for audiences of every age, race, and back round came together in the swirling, whirling color images and messages on the walls. The festival upheld In-Flight Theater's mission "to seek and support the exploration of aerialism as a pioneering form of performance that has the potential to transform a community and a place". We doubled our audiences every year and wound up creating an event that was enormously lucrative and never lost its magic. Although In-Flight created and produced the festival annually until the tragic shut down of Load of Fun, it would be nothing without the exceptional hearts and talents of the performers who have included over the years; The amazing work of Tim Scofield,Trixie Little and The Evil Hate Monkey, Arachne Aerial Arts, Eric Gorsuch, Updraft; A Conspiracy Of Movement, The DC Aerial Collective, Kristen Faber and Jessica Buccaro, Eric Gorsuch, Echo, Kate Wilson, Meagan Berg just to name a few. To this day, it is one of the most exciting events I have created to honor Baltimore and allow for poetry to fly and transform the very air of the city. I said it then and I say it now, "Let your imagination fly"! Amazing things can happen when truth and love and permission come together in a city.


Photos by Julia Pearson
  • The Teeter Totter During the day performance
    The Teeter Totter During the day performance
    Featured, Tim Scofield, Mara Neimanis.
  • Close up and upside down, up on the roof of The United Sanitary building in a 2 ton machine that one wears and moves
    Close up and upside down, up on the roof of The United Sanitary building in a 2 ton machine that one wears and moves
    Ready for the new age of flight on Scofield sculpture. DaVinci's prodigal son.
  • The Tower
    The Tower
    "The Boss" (Tim Scofield) & The Other One (Mara Neimanis) in clown duet The Tower. Danger and clowning goes together well on sculpture
  • We Await You
    We Await You
    The objects call to me, 'use me, fly with me, I will take you to magic"
  • Audiences Look Up
    Audiences Look Up
  • Awaiting Our Cue On the Roof Of The United Sanitary Building
    Awaiting Our Cue On the Roof Of The United Sanitary Building
    The United Sanitary Building has been on the corner of Howard and North Ave and owned by Lanny's family for over 30 years. It shares the alleyway with Load Of Fun. We were allowed to bring the 2 ton "Flying Machine" up on the roof with the help of Lanny's staff and fork lifts so that we could perform and make our surprise entrance from there. Only in Baltimore, folks. Only in Baltimore
  • Watching Flight
    Watching Flight
    The Alleyway alight with color, flight, whirling graffiti, and Baltimore love.
  • The Tower, 2010
    On the aerial sculpture, The Tower, sculpted by Tim Scofield (also performing) the apparatus has its own geographic world. Like any geography, it is distinct, has its own customs, speaks its own way, and has a particular feel, smell, and locomotion. So do the clowns who at this performance, smelled very distinctly performing in a 99 degree summer night! The clowns dance with the paradox of everyday gravity: how to stand up from slipping on the banana peel is the same as to how to rig The Tower, to get past the obstacle, how to solve the problem of rigging an 18 foot wild metal structure while characters motor the scene. Balance, counterbalance, height, will, need to please and do the task is all part of clowning the aerial object. “The Boss” and “The Other One” never worry about survival as they do the task at had which never seems to them incongruous.
  • Encountering #1, 2009
    On The aerial sculpture, The Teeter Totter, sculpted by Tim Scofield (also performing), Encounterings #1 explores hovering, reaching out, counterbalance, flying in great speed but never reaching one another as a prelude to Encounterings #2. Both pieces take us to a collective place of understood symbol and image that informs a narrative of our need to connect and the obstacles real or imagined that stop us. Circles turn into other circles, virtuosity in using the parameters of building walls as part of the drama creates site-specific stories. We meet somehow, or do we? We fly somehow, or do we? What is for sure, is our need for both and our attempts to reach out to each other. And somehow, the graffiti accompanies our journey in the Alleyway. Photos by Julia Pearson
  • Encounterings #2, 2009
    On the aerial sculpture, "The Flying Machine", sculpted by Tim Scofield (also performing), Encounterings #2 explores counterbalance as metaphor and function and our often futile attempt to connect and hold each other-the fleeting nature of relationship. In this work, the apparatus is what we wear, what we are affected by, what we partner with and our conflict in reaching one another. The sculpture becomes part of the body and thereby extends expression through machinery; magically giving the soul housed in the body and machinery vulnerability. Photos by Julia Pearson
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