Laura Burgamy
Marketing Coordinator
Laura grew up climbing trails and chasing fairies in the Appalachians of East Tennessee. She earned her BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Georgia where she ascended her first fabric and fell in love with moving in the air. While earning her degree, Laura was fortunate to study with Bala Sarasvati, Elsie Smith, Matt and Emily Kent, and Wendy Hesketh, among many others. After graduating, she co-created the Wing Project and traveled the Southeast performing, as well as choreographed and performed with Go! Contemporary Dance Works, Dragonfly Aerial Arts, and Circle Modern Dance. Laura is excited to fly with the company!
Megan Cattau
Faculty, Student Company Director
Megan met her first love, the low-flying trapeze, at Canopy Studio in Athens, GA in 2002. At Canopy, Megan trained primarily under Susan Murphy, who remains a deep inspiration. Megan was a member of the Repertory Company, served as the business manager and then assistant director, was part of the core teaching staff, and helped to develop Canopy’s teacher training. In 2008, she founded the aerial dance program at Durham School for Ballet and the Performing Arts (formerly Legacy Studios) in Durham, NC. She moved to NYC in 2010 and became an aerial dance instructor at Circus Warehouse as well as a core member of Constellation Moving Company. Megan has choreographed, performed, and taught extensively in the US and abroad, working primarily under the aerial dance project Flight Collaborative, of which she is a co-founder and co-director. She was awarded FFP’s 2005 Glenn P. Davis emerging aerial choreographer’s scholarship to attend the Aerial Dance Festival, and her choreography is featured in the book Aerial Dance (Bernasconi and Smith, 2008). Megan also received a BFA in 2005 from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, and her visual art makes use of clay, metalworking, and papermaking to form mixed media pieces that have human motifs. Megan is interested in how aerial dance choreography and visual art can be used to tell stories that are content-rich and emotionally compelling. Megan is also a forest ecologist, working in the tropical peat-swamp forests of Indonesia as well as the subalpine forests of the Rocky Mountains, and her mind is always on the trees.
Angela Delsanter
Professional Company, Faculty, Kids Who Fly Coordinator
Angela is a 1995 graduate of The Ohio University School of Dance. After receiving a BFA in performance and choreography, she traveled to Italy to continue her studies in dance. It was there that she experienced her first explorations with aerial movement. Upon returning she moved to Colorado to become a massage therapist and immerse herself in the dance community here in Boulder. After viewing a Frequent Flyer rehearsal in 1997, it was love at first sight. Angela has been dancing, performing, choreographing, and teaching with the company for 16 years. Currently, Angela also has her own after school dance program for kids called The Nederland Mountain Movers.
Cosmo Dudley
Faculty
Cosmo, a native of Denver, Colorado, has been an acrobat since 2008. Cosmo is a student teacher at the Boulder Movement Collective, a professional photographer, and coach at MOTH Contemporary Circus Center. In addition to thousands of hours of personal reading, research, practice, and teaching; Cosmo has trained extensively across the world learning from other great Movement instructors including Ido Portal, Jim Bathurst (BeastSkills.com), handbalancer Yuval Ayalon, circus coach Jean-Luc Martin, Yuri Marmerstein, and Rafe Kelley. Cosmo has trained acrobatics all over the world with several communities across the United States, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, and China. Cosmo has experience teaching circus acrobatics including tumbling, martial arts tricking, handbalancing, aerial straps, Chinese pole, parkour, and trampoline.
Angela Folz
Professional Company, Faculty, Studio Resource Manager
Angela has found joy in motion since she was very small, and has always been involved in some form of movement, including dance, martial arts, and aerial arts. She completed Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance Professional Training Program in 2016 and is thrilled to be teaching and performing with Frequent Flyers. Angela has a B.S. in mathematics with a minor in physics, and when she’s not dancing or hanging upside-down, she works as a web developer.
Danielle Garrison
Professional Company
Danielle is a Cum Laude graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. During 2007-2012, she was a dancer, choreographer, teacher and Assistant Director for Aerial Dance Chicago as well as an Artist for the Joffrey Ballet and the Colorado Ballet. Since 2012, Danielle has been dancing with Frequent Flyers® and directed the Student Company from 2013-2017. Recently, Danielle has performed and taught at the Frequent Flyers® Aerial Dance Festival, the Santa Barbara Floor to Air Festival, Aerial Ever After in the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece, the San Francisco Aerial Dance Festival, the Paloma Project and performed for Les Rencontres de Danse Aérienne in France. She is the second MFA Candidate with an emphasis in aerial dance at the University of Colorado, where she has been the recipient of the Beverly Sears Named Grant, CYE Award, UGGS Travel Grant, Eaton Travel Grant, and a Semi-finalist for Fulbright France. Danielle has received a Fulbright Award and will be working on her MAPS (Multicultural Aerial Performance Stories) project in France during 2017-2018.
Mandy Hackman
Professional Company, Faculty
Mandy is a climber, puddle-jumper, fancydancer, and all around mover. She studied contemporary dance under Mary Cochran at Barnard College and under Sarah Rudner at Sarah Lawrence College. Mandy is a transplant from NYC, where she danced with companies including SINecdoche Dance Company, The Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, and SAWtooth Dancers, and appeared in works by Donna Uchizono, Jon Kinzel, and Mike Kelley. She has taught and performed aerial with Upsidown Productions, Helium Aerial Dance, and the Gowanus Circus. As a traveling teacher/performer, Mandy has been a guest of 888 Monkeys in the Bay Area, Chattanooga Aerials, and Darpana Theater in Ahmedabad, India. She has made and toured her own work as Tree Project, a collaborative site-specific climbing dance group, and has been a collaborator for Industrial Gardens in Pittsburgh and Submerge theater in NYC. Most recently, she graduated from the Frequent Flyers Professional Training Program and is thrilled to join the FFP family. She also performs locally with Control Group Productions and performance art band ShapeShifter. Mandy’s curiosities include spiral dances, in-flight physics, and dancing in unusual spaces.
Sarah Harrison
Professional Company, Faculty, Assistant Education Director
Born in Ontario, Canada, Sarah could always be found dancing and singing in the living room, the yard, and the grocery store. It wasn’t until age 7 that she began her formal dance training upon moving to Silver Spring, MD. Sarah went on to major in Dance Performance, minor in Environmental Science, and receive her K-12 Dance Teaching Certification from Towson University. During her time at Towson she had the pleasure of taking Jayne Bernasconi’s low flying trapeze class, igniting her passion for aerial dance. Sarah has had the pleasure of dancing with DEVIATED THEATER, Baltimore Aerial Dance, Olney Ballet Theatre, and Ballet ADI. In 2014, Sarah received her 200 hour yoga teaching certification, as well as her Aerial Yoga Bernasconi Technique certification. Sarah is a graduate of the Frequent Flyers Professional Training Program. She could not be more excited to be teaching and performing with Frequent Flyers!
Danielle Alejandra Hendricks (a.k.a. Alexis Scissorlegs)
Professional Company, Faculty
Danielle spent her childhood climbing fences, trees, balance beams and rooftops in Fresno, California. She earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in Kinesiology and Dance from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she graduated in 1999. Danielle is a nationally certified Pilates Instructor and teaches at Pilates Aligned, Inc. in Denver, CO. She is fortunate enough to have studied and performed with David Dorfman Dance, Gabriel Masson, Boulder Ballet, Helander Dance/Theatre, Evolving Doors Dance, Hannah Kahn Dance, Kim Olson/Sweetedge Dance, and Jennifer Fagan Archer/Ascential Dance. She currently dances/performs with 3rd Law Dance Theater (since 2005), and performs regularly in the historic Denver May D&F tower at The Cloctower Cabaret in “L’estrange Menagerie: A Circus,” and other burlesque revues. She’s been dancing, choreographing, and teaching with Frequent Flyers since 2002 and is looking forward to many more years!
Jessie Loisel
Faculty, Professional Company
Jessie began dancing at the age of two in a Northern Minnesota town. She pursed her dream and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from Minnesota State University in Mankato, MN where she trained with Julie Kerr Berry, Daniel Stark and Paul Finnochiaro, primarily. During her junior year of college, she signed up for a summer abroad at the National Institute of Circus Arts in Australia and fell in love with all things aerial. Jessie spent two years supporting the start up of a Michigan based Gymnastics center and helped initiate an aerial arts program there before moving to Boulder in the Fall of 2014. She joined the Frequent Flyers’ Professional Company in 2016, which feels like a dream come true!
Valerie Morris
Professional Company, Faculty
Valerie has been a dancer since 1980 and became an aerial dancer in 1996 with Frequent Flyers. She has had the pleasure of performing with Movement Laboratories, Lancaster Ballet, Boston Ballet, CU Dance Department, Boulder Ballet, Frequent Flyers Productions, Wellingon Circus Trust (faculty and board member, NZ), AeroTerra (director, NZ), and Empress Stiltdance (NZ). She has happily returned to Frequent Flyers Productions after a four-year hiatus in New Zealand. Her secret life as a scientist keeps her busy during the day, using stable isotopes to unlock the secrets of global climate change.
Alysha Perrin
Education Director, Professional Company, Faculty
Alysha hails from Lake Tahoe, NV where she grew up dancing, tumbling, and skiing. She continued her training at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in contemporary dance. Alysha moved to Boulder in 2013 and completed FFP’s Aerial Dance Professional Training Program. Upon completion, she joined FFP in June 2015 to serve as the Assistant Education Director, teach, and perform in the professional company. Alysha loves to bounce in the bungee most of all and specializes in teaching trapeze, stilts, and modern dance. Alysha continues to pursue her passions of studying all styles of movement and inspiring her students to believe they can achieve the seemingly impossible!
Nicole Predki
Faculty
Previously dancing in NYC and working in an Environmental Science laboratory, Nicole moved to Boulder to complete an MFA in Dance/Interdisciplinary Performance with a focus in Alexander Technique. She has danced with a variety of companies around the country, as well as performed choreography by Susan Marshall, Robert Battle, Joe Goode, Rhonda Miller and Ginger Thatcher, among others. Ever since wandering in a FFP Low-Flying Trapeze class in 2005, she’s been hooked on flying! Nicole is currently the co-coordinator of the Dance Major at MSU Denver.
Josh Rigo
Faculty
Josh Rigo fell in love with aerial when his high school took on the musical Barnum his sophomore year. Josh continued his training at the New England Center for Circus Arts, graduating from the Professional Training Program in 2010. When not in the air, Josh can be found performing in theatre productions across Denver, writing music, or traveling the world – 40 countries and counting!
Nancy Smith
Founder, Artistic Director
Nancy is the founder and artistic director of Boulder, Colorado, based Frequent Flyers Productions since its inception in 1988. Based in Boulder since 1985, she has taught low–flying trapeze and releasing technique around the US. Over her 31 years of studying and teaching aerial work, she has developed the Aerial Release Technique (A.R.T.) and works with all levels of aerialists to refine their technique for fluidity, effortlessness, and lines in the body. Her work with Frequent Flyers Productions has been seen at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., at Cirque du Soleil in Montreal, in Boston, Virginia, New Orleans, Utah, San Francisco, the Bahamas, and throughout Colorado. She has received numerous awards and honors including the Living Legend of Dance in Colorado award, Women Who Light the Community, Cutting Edge Award from the Colorado Dance Alliance, the Boulder County Pacesetters Award for Arts and Entertainment, a Neodata Endowment Fellowship in Dance, and the Arts Innovation Award from the Colorado Federation of the Arts. She co-authored the first book on Aerial Dance and dreams of a prehensile tail….