Words from the air: Unfolding aerial embodied knowledges and lived experience beyond the silence

Based on practice-led research, this article focuses on aerial practices in the European contemporary circus and more specifically on what lies beyond the aerialists’ apparent silence. This field study includes rehearsals observation and interviews undertaken with contemporary circus artists working in Europe, it explores what can be learned about non-verbal practices from the voices of those who perform them. My approach challenges the apparent silence of the aerialist performance, as well offering a reading of aerial disciplines as practices of risk. Commonly described through a perspective of reception, this article aims at unveiling the lived experience of the aerialists through their own words. For instance, the focus on the dialogue between aerialist and apparatus turns the invisible sound of the equipment into an active collaborator, revealing the need to listen to the sonic expression of non-human materials and agencies. By listening to embodied knowledges of the artists, the aerial practice appears as a place of comfort and a home inhabited by bodies of unique structure and relationship to gravity. Getting closer to the aerialists’ experiences of the air through their words unlocks new and unique understandings of this acrobatic practice, shifting from an outside look of spectacle to an inside perspective of embodied experience.