Sept 2009 saw Lindsey heading off to the New England Centre for Circus Arts in Vermont to train with Elsie & Serenity Smith who have devised an extensive strengthening & stretching programme – ‘injury prevention and conditioning for aerialists’.

After spending the last 25 years working as a professional dancer with an extensive working knowledge of ‘healthy body practise’ for dance, it was incredible to discover there was so much I didn’t know or recognise about my body‘s capability as an aerialist. We looked in depth at my particular strengths & weaknesses, areas of inflexibility & overdevelopment and how to work more efficiently - truly exciting stuff.

Having never trained formally as an aerialist and therefore not having the same degree of technically strong foundations aerially that I have as a dancer the opportunity to address this lack of specialist knowledge and to begin formulating general and specific programmes for other practitioners and students was and is invaluable, giving me very clear insight as to how I want to develop this aspect of my own practise and teaching methods.

In Dec 2009 G&L hosted a week long intensive training lab in aerial fabric with internationally renowned artist Fred Deb.

Morning sessions were aimed at professional and advanced practitioners with Fred leading a ‘challenging’ warm up, followed by conditioning, technique & artistic exploration. There were also 2 evening sessions for local adult evening classes and the Brighton Youth Circus. Afternoon sessions were devoted to 1st stage R&D for G&L’s next planned middle scale theatre tour ‘The Wall’ about which more information can be read in Upcoming.