March 13, 2026 8:00 pm
ETHEReality is a collection of stunning aerial dance performances that transforms vertical space into a living canvas for exploring the real-life impact of exclusion, identity, and collective healing. Featuring a variety of apparatuses including silks, spiral, trapeze, lyra, straps, and more, each piece reveals a deeply personal narrative of navigating the complex landscape of today’s world.
This isn’t abstract flight but a metaphor made physical. The weight of injustice becomes literal gravity, and the act of rising becomes a declaration of resilience and solidarity. Each performer from Aerial Ignition draws from lived experience to share stories of being “othered,” silenced, or separated, ultimately finding voice, movement, and freedom in the air.
As the performers move between the personal and the universal, the solo becomes the collective. Authenticity, vulnerability, and fierce beauty combine in a visceral journey that’s both intimate and expansive. The vertical space becomes not an escape, but a reclaiming of a place where difference is power and gravity is defied by unity.
ETHEReality is not just a show to be watched, but felt. It is a rare blend of technique and truth, performance and purpose. It invites audiences to witness what it looks like when people rise, literally and symbolically, by embracing, rather than erasing, what sets them apart.
Audiences will leave not only moved, but challenged: to imagine what might happen if our world chose to ascend together, through our differences, not despite them.
Runtime: 1 hour and 15 minutes
Ages: Ages 13 and Older
Content Warnings: Mild swearing and references of grief. Mild use of flashing or strobing lights.
Founded in 2024, Aerial Ignition is a DC-based aerial and dance performance company established and artistically led by Sydney Ignacio, a seasoned performer whose career spans classical ballet, contemporary dance, and aerial arts across Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Sydney’s extensive background includes training with the Royal Academy of Dance and performing internationally with Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble and the Philippine Ballet Theatre, where he danced leading roles in Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote, La Bayadère, and Madame Butterfly. In the U.S., he performed with Verb Ballets, Washington Reflexions, and CityDance Ensemble appearing at prestigious venues including the Kennedy Center. He is also an award-winning aerialist, recognized at the U.S. National Pole Championships and the Circus Star Aerial Straps Competition.
At its core, Aerial Ignition strives to be seen not as a circus troupe, but as a contemporary dance company that happens to perform in the air. While we embrace the physical demands and beauty of aerial arts, our primary focus is movement as expressive language: emotionally honest, narratively driven, and rooted in dance tradition. Our choreography is crafted with the same intentionality and nuance as modern or ballet-based dance, and the apparatuses serve as extensions of the body and spirit, not merely tools of spectacle.
Aerial Ignition brings together accomplished dancers, aerialists, instructors, and creatives from the DC and Baltimore region. Each member contributes unique personal experiences and professional backgrounds, allowing us to explore urgent social themes through collective storytelling. Our work often centers on identity, belonging, and transformation, using the vertical dimension to express the human drive to rise above limitation and division.
We aim to create performances that move audiences not just visually, but viscerally. We invite them into a world where the boundary between ground and sky, self and other, dissolves in shared experience. In doing so, Aerial Ignition reclaims the air not as a place of escape, but as a stage for truth.