Illustration by Tim Lane
The building that shares a parking lot with Hodak’s fried chicken palace doesn’t look like anything special—until you turn the corner and look in the window. The sight of women climbing ropes and silks 24 feet off the ground, then descending with artistic flourishes, looks like some sort of proving ground for Cirque du Soleil.
How do the women—and it is almost exclusively women at this aerie for aerial artists—know how to do these things? These silks that hang from the ceiling in bifurcated pairs of fabric: Who in their right mind would grab them and hoist themselves up to the ceiling and then, while hanging, do the splits in the air? Who would approach a thick rope hanging from the ceiling—a potent reminder of what, for so many of us, was the absolute worst day of high school gym class—and attempt not only to climb it again but actually do it with gymnastic, artistic flourishes? And the aerial hoop, also known as the lyra—my God, it looks like the most daunting, fiendish device of them all. Some women balance on the thing by perching astride it, as in a wedgie, the steel hoop jammed up the butt crack. And, it’s worth noting, none of these stunts is performed with a backup support line or a net. Why? Or more to the point, who?
Who are the women who have not only chosen these wicked disciplines but in doing so have formed a veritable cult around Bumbershoot Aerial Arts and its founder, the pert red-haired stronger-than-your-daddy 29-year-old Joelle Pendergrass? How is it that developing the skills to fling oneself safely through the air has led not just to a school for amateur acrobats but to a big-top tent of evangelism, where cheerful you-can-do-this psychology, intense workouts, and learning circus skills meet in a potent stew of emotions?
Bumbershoot people feel damn good about life. They glow. They fly.
The aerial silks are the most popular discipline here. These fabrics cling to the gym rafters like some form of chaotic bunting in motley colors: aqua, jade, wine, lilac, fuchsia fading to pink, lime green twisted with purple... When it’s time for a climb, the silks are slowly lowered with the use of a series of ropes and pulleys. Then the Bumbershoot instructors teach would-be acrobats the techniques for climbing, wrapping, and dropping.
Climbs are often done by wrapping the fabric around one’s foot and then pushing up, unwrapping, wrapping again at a higher point on the silk, pushing up again, and so on. (This technique is called the Russian climb.) The wrapping of the silks around the body when one is hanging in midair is an applied system of knots that implies the ultimate trust in the technique. Do it right, and you won’t fall. Do it perfectly, and you can release both your arms to assume a bird pose or flip around and over and under, as the earthbound below ooh and ahh.
“The silks are like crocheting with your body,” says Pendergrass. “You work on it until it becomes second nature; then you get what we call ‘fabric brain.’”
Drops are like dramatic suicide leaps that end with an acrobat’s fall stopped just short of the floor. Not every trip up the silk ends so breathlessly. Sometimes, the climber simply releases the pressure that holds the silk between her thighs and slides down or unwraps herself as she descends. It’s often a sensual sight.There is something distinctly feminine about a ballet danced in the air. Some men do silks, just as some men do gymnastics and synchronized swimming. But the grace of a body posing like a figure atop a trophy, the poise and beauty and controlled power of it all, seems to appeal to women especially.
In addition to the silks, there are other ladders to the sky. The aerial sling, or hammock, forms a basket at its nadir that a performer may stand, sit, or lie in and use as a pivot point.The rope is also known as the corde lisse, French for “smooth rope”; it allows the dancer to generate more momentum than the silks do. (“We say that silks are elegant, rope is badass,” says Pendergrass.) The hoop, or lyra, makes possible a surprising variety of tricks. Acrobats hang from it by a hand, a leg, an ankle, the back of a neck—you name it; they spin and contort and do things that most of us would fear to attempt. The static trapeze is probably the most familiar device; the athletes do not fly through the air from trapeze to trapeze but instead perform a variety of tricks while hanging from the bar. There are other aerial devices not currently in use at Bumbershoot—the Spanish web, the cloud swing, the cradle, and so on—that sound like torture devices.
The classes in which students learn these circus arts are anything but torture. The school promulgates a warm-and-fuzzy vibe. At a silks class, an instructor strolls from student to student, suggesting tweaks to the students’ techniques. The teacher is a fount of enthusiasm. For what might seem so daunting, especially at first, the pedagogy is nurturing. “You can do this” is the unspoken refrain. You will learn this dazzling set of skills—and you will dazzle.
But for all of the bedazzlement, many of the students are simply here for a good workout. For every person who dons an imaginative costume to perform at the twice-annual Bumbershoot Aerial Arts Student Showcase, many others are happy just to learn a new skill and exercise in an exciting new way.
The students learn from the instructors, who learned from Pendergrass.
Joelle Pendergrass founded Bumbershoot in 2009, at age 24. It was the culmination of a journey that began in Old Monroe, Missouri, a farm town in Lincoln County, where her family naturally stood out.
Joelle has 11 brothers and sisters. She is the oldest girl.
“When you’re in a big family, you can’t blend in,” she says. “When the whole family showed up anywhere, it’s a thing—people would notice, like when we all would go contra dancing.”
Joy’s mom, Janie Staley, was a cheerleader in college and an acolyte in the cult of the body. “Mom enrolled us in tumbling classes at an early age,” Pendergrass says. “I started at 3. I’ve loved it ever since.”
She and her siblings grew up learning to balance on trampolines before they could even walk. Tumbling, dancing, and constant horsing around (including a stunt in which the whole lot, a dozen kids, formed a human pyramid) led Pendergrass to organize a performance troupe with the younger kids. They were soon unicycling, juggling, tumbling, plate-spinning, globe-walking, and learning other acrobat skills in the Staley Family Circus. They performed at nursing homes, fairs, festivals, YMCAs, dance studios, and corporate parties.
The children’s father, Matthew Staley, would often join in. “My dad likes anything interesting or different, so he really encouraged my creative side,” says Pendergrass. “One day, he came home with six enormous plastic barrels, and we did a square-dance unicycle act around them. Then I made my dad a ringmaster costume when I was in high school. He blew the whistle and did the act with us.”
All the while, she was training and competing in gymnastics. She eventually decamped for St. Louis and began learning at the Circus Day Foundation. (The group’s now called Circus Harmony, headquartered at City Museum.) By the time she was 15, Pendergrass was teaching others. She stayed on to teach for years, eventually becoming the circus school’s lead aerial instructor.
Then she heard the call. “I was getting older, and I didn’t necessarily want to go on tour with a circus,” she says. “I was developing a love for teaching aerial skills to adults. Up to that point, I had only taught teens and kids, and I began to see I could make this approachable to adults, to give them a piece of the magic.”
Bumbershoot was born.
“One obstacle that was really hard was to trust my own sense,” she says. “Nobody encourages you to trust your own sense when you’re a 24-year-old woman. Everyone wants to tell you what they think—which can be valuable—but eventually you have to follow your gut and do what the universe is calling you to do. I was terrified, but I just did my darnedest and hoped other people would fall in love with the idea, too—and they did.”
Pendergrass’ team of instructors is the best kind of family: the kind that grows organically from shared passions. Instructor Sunny Williams comes from circus royalty; her grandfather’s uncle was Lou Jacobs, a Ringling Bros. clown who popularized the clown car and red rubber nose and appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1966. Joelle’s brother Matthias Staley juggled and tumbled with the St. Louis Arches and stunt-rode on horses with the Ianna Spirit Riders at Circus Flora. Tom Eggers works in the circus arts, including a stint as the ringmaster of Circo Zoppe, a 173-year-old Italian family circus. Other Bumbershooters have performed in such retro troupes as St. Louis’ defunct Beggar’s Carnivale, which revived vaudeville and burlesque arts.
But most of the instructors didn’t have any circus skills until they met Pendergrass. Jerome Gaynor is a rehabber and accomplished comic book artist. Bumbershoot general manager and lead instructor Amy Schumaker and instructor Kris Shellabarger are both mothers of three. Coty Smercina teaches at a swimming school for toddlers. Other Bumbershoot teachers include a tuckpointer and a psychotherapist. A few students might want to be in Cirque du Soleil, but most just want to forget work or their demanding family life for a spell and play in the course of getting a good workout.
Regardless, everyone wants in on the act. Last month, Bumbershoot graduated eight students to instructor positions, nearly doubling the number of aerial teachers. No matter how high these aerialists eventually climb, they start as novices on firm ground. “No one is graceful at the beginning” is a maxim found on Bumbershoot’s website.
“Each week in classes, the students are given a new challenge, which means new fears,” says Gaynor. “They’re taken outside of their comfort zone. Then, that same night, they learn the technique and overcome those fears. It’s very powerful.”
Ria Ruthsatz, who co-owns a film production company, is a devotee of the silks. “I started at Bumbershoot shortly after it opened, and I was really nervous before my first class,” she recalls. “I had absolutely no experience or strength for something like this. After the first 90 minutes, I felt stronger, like I could do this. I got hooked. Even after five years, when I climb to the top, I’m still amazed I made it.”
Marie Laure Firebaugh, another silks student, agrees. “It’s exhilarating to be up there,” she says. “When I’m doing a drop, my heart beats very fast, and then I just let go.”
So who are these aerial flippers? They are, quite simply, your neighbors. With an ounce of bravery and a pound of instruction, they head for the ceiling and glory.
The spiritual aspects of all this climbing and flipping are never more evident than at Student Showcases, twice-yearly performances. At last May’s showcase, a mix of Circus Flora veterans, gymnasts, and newbies converged. As the first act, four women in floral costumes climbed four ropes. They ascended, configuring skeins of rope to support themselves, and flipped around into graceful poses. At their act’s climax, they swung to the sides of the stage in wide circles. Anyone who’s ever wished to be Tarzan or Jane, swinging through the jungle, had to be jealous.
A woman wearing the red arm and leg bands of comic book heroine Elektra worked the silks to the rhythmic pounding of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Her muscular performance contrasted with another woman’s slower, smoldering silks act, choreographed to Lana Del Rey’s pouty “Video Games.” Williams showed off her abilities in a creative act on the static trapeze that was a defiant tour de force. Another woman spun and hung from the steel hoop to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” It’s hard to say which was more intense: the training she’s received or the level of flexibility she’s attained.
An elaborate finale starred six women dolled up like ’50s beachgoers in wavy perms and vintage swimsuits. Calling themselves The Slingers, the group shared just three slings. Their creative flinging and slinging was a glorious triumph.
The standing ovation that closed the show was a reflection of the family vibe. Everyone has taken pains to teach and support everyone else. Gravity means less to this gang than to the rest of us.
Bumbershoot is a slice of circus, a cult of flight, and an unexpected jolt of therapy. That explains the school’s official T-shirts, bearing this slogan, printed upside down: “If you can read this, I’m in my happy place."
