Dancing in Air
The aerial ballet by the four women of Samadhi is beautiful, thrilling and dangerous. Take the grace and precision of ballet, the flexibility of yoga and the whole-body strength, balance and technique of an acrobat.
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Take the grace and precision of ballet, the flexibility of yoga and the whole-body strength, balance and technique of an acrobat. Roll all of these qualities into one person, place that person 20 feet in the air, hanging from a rope, upside down, and you’ve got a dancer from the aerial troupe, Samadhi.
The four core Samadhi dancers - Andrea Torres, Chandra Miars, Jamie Nakama and Nicole Young - gave their debut public performance in April. Costumed in jewels, ribbons and shimmering leotards, the women basically danced vertically up four 17-foot swaths of cloth draped from the ceiling.
“We come from a dancing background,” says director Andrea Torres, “so for us it’s not only an acrobatic performance. It’s more than that - it’s deeper, fulfilling. You watch and you get something out of it. We’re not freaks, we’re not superhuman. You might think, ‘Oh, this is impossible,’ but there’s a human side to our work and it shows.”
Despite her assertion, there was something other-worldly about the dancers. They’re like human insects as they twirl their arms and feet around the rope and climb effortlessly, superhumanly stretching, bending and contorting their bodies to the beat of the music as they ascend the silk.
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Once in the air they begin cocooning themselves in the dangling cloth, weaving it around and around their legs and waist. Then, suddenly a dancer releases her hands from the cloth and goes plummeting head first toward the ground.
Men, women and children caught their breath. When the dancer came to a halt just a foot above the cement floor, a collective sigh echoed across the room. A silk loop around the dancer’s feet held her safely suspended above the ground. Other dancers whirled down the silk sideways, the cloth spiraling around their bodies as they rushed toward the ground. One dancer showed off a unique stunt by falling backwards, bungee style.
The dancers are not strapped into harnesses but rely solely on their own skill, strength and presence of mind for safety. Depending on the length of the rope and the style of the fall, the dancers free fall anywhere from 10 to 20 feet. Torres admits the moves are dangerous.
“We’re risking our lives,” she explains. “One wrong thing, if you’re not focused ... you can get stuck in the move in midair, and if you panic you lose strength. I had a show once where I completely lost my strength in the middle of it and
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I literally slipped down and could have died.”
As someone who practices yoga, goes hiking and grew up climbing coconut trees, I jumped on an opportunity to attend a one-person workshop with Torres (keep posted at www.SamadhiHawaii.com for upcoming workshops). She started off by looping me into the rope and having me hang upside down for a minute. Then, she had me wrap my foot around the rope and secure the “lock” with my other foot. As I reached higher and attempted to catapult myself upward, I slid down the silk like a bag of cement. The dancers had made it look so easy. My attempts at a sideways hang proved equally futile, the cloth digging painfully into my side. Within 20 minutes I was dizzy, sore and out of breath.
Ever-amiable, Torres reassured me that, though she had a background in dance, it took her a month to gain the upper body strength needed to climb the rope. She grew up dancing ballet, modern, jazz and African in Brazil. In Hawaii, she performed samba in Waikiki and worked with major dance groups like Iona Contemporary Dance Theatre, Ballet Hawaii and Tau Dance Theater. Her aerial career began in 1998 when she was hired by Ulalena on Maui. After several months of training, including three months in Montreal, Torres took her dance background into the air.
Her fellow troupe members also hail from dance backgrounds and though they have “day jobs,” they are dedicated to making time for aerial performance.
“I teach,” says Jamie Nakama, who dropped in during her busy schedule to get in a half hour of practice on the silk. “I’m
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