Ten years of aerial dance in the city

At number 99 Pere IV street, in the Poblenou neighborhood, a door opens to the unexpected: a space where one dances without touching the ground with their feet, where the surprising reversible art of flying while dancing or dancing while flying is exercised.

More than two hundred square meters and ten meters high are the stage for aerial dances that Jorge Alcover and his now very numerous team of teachers have been teaching for ten years. Some of them started as students, and in a decade they have become trainers at the Onair Barcelona school.

In a warehouse where ships were once repaired, Onair offers a setting where apprentices from four to over fifty years old follow the steps to master their body in a self-discovery that surprises each one, day by day. The progress of all of them is shown to the public in spectacular festivals organized in the heart of the city's technological district.

Onair Barcelona fully shares the spirit of the association it is part of, Poblenou Urban District, which brings together professionals, companies, and organizations from the creative and cultural sector of Poblenou. The Onair school is a private initiative driven by Jorge Alcover's desire to share everything he felt, and feels, as an aerial dance dancer, moving his body in the air with the help of only silks, hoop, rope, or hammocks. "The silks are my dance partner," he says.

No prior experience, much less a vocation as a circus acrobat, is needed to try it. The school offers different options to do so. One can start with a first class to meet the group and see how one feels, and experience the different disciplines: dance with silks, hoop, or hammocks. Three initial trial classes can be taken at a more economical price to feel what is most appealing.

"Although it is now better known," explains Jorge Alcover, "people still think that aerial dance is for very specific people, who will later dedicate themselves to it professionally. But from our school, we have always wanted to spread and teach that aerial dance is for everyone, and to the extent desired."

About six meters from the ground, aerial dance puts body mastery into play in a sinuous flirtation with gravity

Also, coinciding with the celebration of the Open Night and Open Day organized by Poblenou Urban District to showcase all the creativity of the Poblenou community, Onair Barcelona shows the learning of its dancers. Within the framework of the Open Night, they stage the show baptized as La Catedral del Cel. It is between thirty and fifty minutes of aerial dances inspired —light, colors, makeup, and clothing— by religious themes that link the earthly with a more celestial dimension. La Catedral del Cel has become a hallmark of this Barcelona school's unique style. And, on the occasion of Open Day, in May, Onair sets up an exhibition often dedicated to its child students, as well as a photographic exhibition to give visibility to its art, in images, and in motion. In addition, every two years they prepare a large-format show, which closes the course at the Mercat de les Flors and brings together between 350 and 400 students on stage.

Sensations in the void

In addition to weekly classes, the school organizes workshops and special classes throughout the year, lasting one day, one week, or several days. It is time to tense and flow, to grasp and release. About six meters from the ground, aerial dance puts body control into play, in a sinuous flirtation with the law of gravity. "The sensation up there is spectacular, especially when you start to be able to flow and disconnect from putting your foot here or there. When you feel that it's just you, connected with your body and the music. It's a very different activity from everything, very intense, and it leaves your mind quite blank," explains Marta Vila, a thirty-two-year-old woman who has been a student at the school for two years. She has tried silks, the hammock, and the hoop, and says that "although each apparatus is different, the feeling of evasion and liberation is felt with everything."

This student, who is a communications manager at a technology company, assures that "aerial dance has a magical quality, because you don't dance touching the ground, you are floating, flying." And, she adds, "it has an addictive quality. You always want to go back and try it with different music. She perfectly understands, however, the hesitations one might feel if they have never tried it: "When you go to see an aerial dance show, you think it's very difficult, that it's not within your reach, and I think the most difficult thing of all is learning to climb the fabric. Once you start to feel comfortable, if it hooks you, you learn very quickly. I enjoy it a lot now," she says. And she has been able to feel all the progress she has made, and she believes this has to do with how they know how to transmit the technique at Onair.

Classes are very often recorded on video to see how they can and are improving. "If the correct guidelines are followed, anyone can enjoy it a lot," says Marta. She would tell someone who has never tried it and finds it intimidating: "Just put one foot in, then the other, and step by step. It's a beautiful experience. It fills my life so much, it gives me adrenaline, happiness, a goal, it disconnects me from everything else, it's like therapy."

Strength in the hands, which are rudder and safety on the fabrics. With them, each movement is articulated and disarticulated, "you learn to listen to the music, to understand the rhythm and melody, with a bass or drums," explains the creator of Onair Barcelona.

Aerial dance combines a more athletic part, physical exercise, with the more creative. Letting go and losing shyness also come into play. "They face a theater, all of a sudden," adds Jorge Alcover. A theater where one performs in three dimensions.

Aerial dance allows one to gain strength as well as concentration and connection with the present moment and with one's own body

Quarry

In these ten years of classes, the school has already been able to create a good quarry. In the second year, they already started to receive boys and girls, and now, says Alcover, "we are part of their lives. They started in kindergarten, now they are already in the youth category and, later, they will join the adults". In addition, he explains, "there are parents who, since they come to bring their children and have to wait for them, also sign up to follow classes with adults."

Ester Rams was one of the first students of the school. She is now forty-seven years old and started at 36. She does aerial silks dance and from her experience she highlights above all "the sensation of lightness and that play with gravity, a falling without falling, being stopped before reaching the ground." She also feels like she is doing "something magical that provides a lot of adrenaline." She says she always leaves better than when she arrives at class. "I arrive tired, but I leave light and with energy. It is very healthy because you feel that your mind has stopped and only your body has come into play."

Reflecting on the years she has been doing it, she concludes that "what aerial dance has given me the most is body awareness". Also, strength. "I had never done any strength training and now, without doing anything extra, I have gained it in class. It is a challenging discipline; each attempt is tiring, but that also hooks you and, in the end, progressing is very rewarding. I would highly encourage people to come because it is an accessible space. I started very old, and I believe that everyone can find their space here."

The courage to dance and make others dance in the air

Skating, painting, but above all dancing was Jorge Alcover's desire, even as a child, in his town, Lloret de Mar. Through its streets he glided on roller skates at just five years old. After an episode of bullying at school, a change of scenery in Girona where he continued studying allowed him to start dancing at a dance school. Later, his training in dance and musical theater led him to participate in shows such as the musical Hoy no me puedo levantar. From a pair of trapeze artists he learned the discipline that would lead him to open the first aerial dance school in Spain.

Being young, brave, and very energetic made it possible for that thirty-year-old boy to risk his savings and ask for a bank loan. He was already teaching aerial silks, and with what he loved to do, he decided to create the Onair brand. With a childhood friend, actress and dancer Sara Miquel, he set up in Barcelona what did not exist. "I come from the world of dance, and these disciplines like aerial dance come from the world of the circus. But what I wanted was to dance in the air, not do acrobatics. Ten years ago, no one talked about aerial dance, only vertical dance, which is with harnesses, and that wasn't done here, only in other countries, like Argentina, for example."

At the Onair Barcelona school, students do not come from the performing arts, nor from the world of sports. "They are cooks, lawyers or architects, people who perhaps don't like the gym and want to do something different," explains Alcover. The friendships generated among the students of this art made with their own body are a strong pillar of this first decade of history of an illusion that knew how to take flight.