Author name: Iwona Coventry

It’s exactly 100 days to our 2nd show!!!

I cannot hide our excitement and at the same time I’m totally short of breathe even just thinking about it.

And gosh I do think about it a lot 😀

The preparations are at full speed, our amazing girls are practising their routines, the venue (after few heart attacks on my account) is at last confirmed, stage set-up and lighting are in the creation process and I really need to start looking for my first dress!!! (Eeekk)

This year we want to bring you more variety, more excitement, more character and just more fun!!!

The show is the celebration of the hard work which each of the girls has put this year in every class and the confidence which they built by attending them.

But also it is a time of celebration for my small business.

Even with all the turbulence which we already encountered this year we managed to grow and create some amazing connections and this makes our dance and aerial community a very special one.

So I, the host and director of the show cordially invite you as a friend, cheerleader, supporter and part of our small community to join us for night of Halloween celebration in the one and only…

For tickets contact us via our Facebook page or speak to any of the performers.

                                              …Absolutely Spooktacular Show!!!!

Mental health awareness week started yesterday, however I don’t feel I’m being too late with this post as I’ve been taking my social media break to recharge my batteries!

In the current world where everything happens at a 100 miles per hour it’s impossible to avoid stress and it doesn’t matter if it is rational or irrational. We are surrounded by the situations which could trigger us in many different ways, however I’ve got good news for us all! Is not only our responsibility to work on our stress levels and the way we are triggered and responding to it but we also have the power to change how we respond to life’s difficulties the current world is throwing at us! We just need to realise that we have that power, and we CAN do this!

One of the ways which definitely helps you to become ‘unstressable’ is to exercise!

Aerial arts and dance provide an excellent opportunity for you to be here in the moment and practice your mindfulness! Unless you want to get totally tangled in aerial silks, trip over your own feet while dancing or hang in the hoop while having no idea what you’re supposed to do 😉 and that’s only one of the many benefits! Bringing down your level of the cortisol in your blood (that pesky stress hormone), but on the contrary getting those endorphins levels up which bring a smile to our faces. Gaining that sense of the achievement with every session and building your confidence up! Not even mentioning being a part of such a friendly community where support and cheerleading is on the top of the list in our studio.

I’ve never seen exercise as just a body workout! We are holistic creatures and whatever we do in our lives it influences us in holistic way! So remember that you have the power to improve and change your mental health and do not hesitate to use that power.

And of course the world looks so much better while hanging upside down or dancing 😉.

Our first show as Aerial Stilettos happened already 8 months ago! We still remember that none of us could believe that our first show would be on one of the hottest days of the year. The nerves, excitement and anticipation were palpable for everyone involved.

Tiny changing room barely hold 20 performance, being let down by vendors and technical issues at the last minute did not deter anyone, not to mentioning our excitement of having such a big audience for our first show!!! You could not count the amount of laughter, support and sweat which was shared between all of us on that night. Just before we started our performance, we held hands together and I knew that those girls will give it their all that night! And dam they delivered! Bums where shaken, toes were pointed(!!!), smiles were gleaming and sass was dripping down the stage with all the sweat which we produced on that night 😀

Our first show was enormous success and even bigger learning curve. The amount of the issues which we did have deal during preparation and actual show didn’t put as off at all, if anything it made us more determined and gave us plenty to learn from.

And would you believe it, just as we finished the show girls been asking ‘Are we doing another show next year??’ I only could response to that with ‘YES’ with rolling my eyes on them 😉

So here we are in 2024, already on a roll to be bigger, more exciting, and a more varied show this year! October 26th is the date which you must add to your calendar! We cannot wait to share with all of you our efforts and ideas which we have been putting together to make the night unforgettable!

When I first started my journey creating my aerial arts business one of my top three tasks on to do list was a photoshoot. In the past I’ve done a few photoshoots which have been preorganised by the other studios that I’d been attending aerial classes, however the task of organising one for myself was rather alien territory. 

Photographer, outfits, equipment, location, make up, hair, weather, additional pair of hands….and you are on a verge on the mental breakdown and voluntarily getting yourself into straight jacket… 

So once my panic half stopped (could not hope for total panicless mode) and I’ve stopped killing anyone asking how organising photoshoots going, I’ve took the bull by the horns and get to the task. 

First task, photographer… finding a photographer who actually knows what they doing and does not make you look like a half dead zombie, just because they haven’t got any idea about lighting, or in the photo you have a pylon sticking out of your head cos they are unable to see whole picture, or they are totally not in sync with your ideas and personality, therefore they not able to show your personality through the photos, turns out this wasn’t the easiest of tasks, am I really so demanding? 

Thank God for Ela, She was actually one of the first photogropers who I sent enquiry to about my branding photoshoot, and after a few messages and phone calls I knew it was meant to be! Ela’s speciality is portrait and wedding photography, so she wasn’t fully aware what she getting herself into!  

Then time came for choosing locations. First one was easy, THE barn!!! It’s actually cattle barn which currently going under a slight change of the purpose of use to my own AERIAL ARTS STUDIO!!! (you cannot see how excited I am, can you?). At the moment it’s still an open structure with the hay and some cow poo mixed in the floor but I’m telling you, it’s bloody perfect 😀 But I didn’t fancy to just stick with one location, I wanted to add something local and something edgy. To help with this along came my husband, he is a guy with the vision and the ideas (there is a reason why I’m married to him 😉) and he suggested under the road bridge in Irthlingborough, with the river Nene in the background and the old railway in Finedon. Guys, you will see the results below and dam it, he was soo bloody right about those locations…. 

Outfits, hair, make up….that’s where my confidence shine. The leotard has been a special design by Fenellamarie…. In my favourite colours (violets, of course!) and it’s just perfect. The corset for burlesque I’ve already had bought a year ago (certain ideas had been brewing in my head for a while) and had been waiting patiently for this special occasion, and those pleasers…. oh they are dam statement piece.  

The day before the photoshoot was rather a stressful one, the weather was awful and photos were going to be all outside which already felt like disaster coming. I felt not prepared with moves which I want to do, make up just didn’t want work at any point, I wasn’t sure if the locations going to work, I was on a verge of tearing my hairs out… but I needed them for the hair style which I had planned… It wasn’t good feeling. 

The day of the photoshoot could not be a total opposite, we woke up to dry, sun and warmth so I didn’t have to worry about freezing my butt off in my outfits, Yay! Ela came before hand to my home and she made herself feel at home in seconds and we felt like we had known each other for years! That put me at ease very quickly. Even my makeup started coming together nicely. 

Photoshoot took us around 4 hours. I don’t think any of us had expected how hard work but also how enjoyable the experience would be. Three of us were working like well a synchronised team, setting up equipment (have you even realised that a portable aerial rig alone weighs around 30kg?!?!), posing and getting those photos done. I even end up posing in the river! That’s what we call devotion!!! (and amazing ideas 😉)  

At the beginning when Ela and I had been setting expectations around photos and she suggested roughly 30 photos would be end results and my husband had said that if I will get 3-4 photos which I will be happy with that would still be a success. In the end Ela sent me whopping 400 photos to review which I’ve been very strict to reduce to just above 100…. how wrong we all were lol. 

Below are some behind the scenes photos which are so important to me because they show how something so awesome has been created. 

So now over to you… I would love to know your opinions about the final results of the shoot😊. 

Special thanks to:

To my husband: 

Thank you for being my mental support, my muscles, my cheerleader, my silks wafters, my smoke bomb pointer… you’ve been fully employed now and forever to aerial madness 😀. 

To Ela: 

Thank you for showing me in the perspective which I still am only learning to see myself. I cannot believe you actually got me to stand in the freezing water ;D but then you called me a superwoman so I forgive you xxx 

This was one of the hardest things for me to do, describing myself, my aerial business and all my ideas which are then meant to be presented in just a few words and pictures, GRRR!!!!!!!!!!!
How to do it when I’ve got around a million ideas in a minute??!

Our name actually came quite easy: Aerial as that’s
what we do the best 😉 and includes a wide range of the circus arts like aerial silks, aerial hoop, trapeze, slings, straps ect. Stilettos on the flip side, I’ve always loved them. These days they grown more to the pleasers level which you can also see in pole dancing (and I’m slowly trying to include them on hoop – hello challenge) but you still can find me in stilettos on or off the ground.
It was actually way harder task to create the logo which represents me and my company.

The brief: to be classy and a bit sassy.

This is where I introduce you to Sarah and her small business Muskmelon (support local!!) and her amazing imagination. Sarah actually can understand me more than I can myself, Do you think I should be worried? 😉
Muskmelon is the company who specialised in all graphic designs and branding magic. You can find her website here www.muskmelon.co.uk.

Sarah shared her amazing talent with me and got straight down to business with full professionalism and that questionnaire! Oh do love good questionnaire 😉.

I came to know Sarah as she is one of my Burlesque Chair Dance students, she has been attending my classes nearly 2 years now! That’s definitely helped her to transfer the brief from vague blurb to a rather stunning design, don’t you think so?

Thank you Sarah for organising my rather chaotic thoughts and helping to express them better than I can express myself.

Ps. If you look very carefully you can see connection between the logo and one of the photos…can you guess which one?