When Madison Maschino was young, her parents would take her to see the Shriner Circus in Rapid City every year. She fell in love with the extreme performances like tightrope walking and flying trapeze. The swinging and contortions entranced her, eventually bringing her to start lessons and now perform and help produce an original show.
“Human” is an original production featuring acrobats and dancers from Amber Sky Aerial Arts, Kids and Company dancers, and Sodakcro acrobats. The show will take place at the Matthews Opera House on February 8th at 7 P.M.
The show deals with what it means to be human, exploring emotions and the ups and downs of life. Maschino is a senior at BHSU studying marketing and business optimal studies, she started her aerial career during COVID after playing soccer for most of her life.
“I was sitting in my car listening to Death of a Bachelor and I was like, this would be cool to do some kind of performance too,” Maschino said. “I called up a studio that day in Rapid City and got into a class the next day.”
COVID affected all of us in negative ways, Maschino more than most. She was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression after lockdown and became suicidal.
“Aerial saved my life,” Maschino said.
Shortly after COVID Maschino started looking for schools to further her education and settled on BHSU. Later realizing that going back and forth between Rapid and Spearfish for aerial lessons would become too much to handle and feared having to give up the art, until the recollection of an instructor she met by chance at a tournament in Colorado.
“It was just a joy to have [Maschino] on board, he enthusiasm is awesome, her love and her passion for it, I mean, I can’t hardly contain her half the time,” said Robyn Melvin, the owner and instructor for Amber Sky Aerial Arts.
Melvin, or Miss Robyn as Maschino refers to her, started instructing by doing private lessons until finding a space and launching Amber Sky in 2008.
“It’s an aerial dance company, we do classes, we do performances, we do benefits and we do festivals,” Melvin said. “Its a collective, so everyone that’s involved pitches in a little bit.”
Melvin came from a dance background, dancing herself when younger and eventually transitioning into teaching. She got introduced to aerial dance late into her career when chaperoning for a field trip with her students to try silks, trapeze, and other aerial devices. Melvin also participated in testing out the apparatus and hasn’t come down since. She decided to start teaching shortly after being exposed to it herself.
“I just kind of fell in love with it, it really took a big part of my life,” Melvin said. “The love for it, the passion, and the challenge.”
Melvin and Maschino sat together on the floor of their studio, working with the other dancers to come up with dance pieces that would represent emotions on a deeper level, below the surface of basic human emotions which spawned the idea of “Human.”
The program starts at the birth of time, starting a journey through life, all its ups and downs, twists and turns, tragedies and triumphs until the final stage of transcendence or death. Using aerial dance combined with dance and acrobatic movement to convey these human emotions that everyone has experienced on some level. Taking almost a year to get everything squared away for the performance combined with hundreds of hours of training and conditioning is finally going to pay off.
Maschino loves every part of aerial dance, from the physical workout to learning about who you are through dance.
“It’s just the bliss I get to feel, because when you’re up in the air, there is nothing like just soaring, you’re there, you’re in the moment and it’s just very beautiful and calming,” Maschino said.
Melvin and Maschino are going to continue growing their careers in aerial dance, planning to put on more original shows and hope to inspire more people to join Amber Sky and learn about the art.
“When their passion starts to ignite and you’re just starting to see them love what they do, perform it and the aha moments where it’s like, I got this now,” Melvin said.
Witness the spectacle at the Matthews Opera House on Feb. 8 at 7 P.M. and experience what it means to be human.
