The Ups & Downs of Acro

By Nancy Wozny

The history of acrobatics and Chuck Kelley's hope for its future

As we watch a dancer fly backwards into the air from a dead stop or a circus performer contort her body into an impossible shape, a “wow” factor floods our perception. We are seeing the human body push the limits of possibilities. It’s the stuff of legends, history, and spectacle. One man at the helm of all three is Charles (Chuck) Kelley, one of the most accomplished teachers in the field of acrobatics.

The ancient art form of acrobatics fuses dance and sport in movements that combine control, balance, timing, flexibility, and artistry. When it comes to the current state of acrobatics in the United States, all roads lead to Kelley. “He’s a legend in the dance community and a landmark at Broadway Dance Center,” says Pennsylvania-based dance teacher Abby Lee Miller.

Kelley has fanned the acrobatic flame for the past five decades and has trained the best teachers in the country. “He’s a walking encyclopedia,” says Mara Merritt, a leading acrobatics teacher and former Kelley student. “You didn’t just take class with Kelley—you got an education.”

Today we see acrobatics on the dance competition circuit, the modern dance stage, the diving board, the hip-hop scene, in the new circus movement, and in Chinese touring companies. Acrobatics has virtually exploded on the stage. Kelley hopes that this tremendous level of activity will filter down to dance studios across the United States and help keep acrobatic teaching alive. He has seen interest wax and wane through his years of teaching at June Taylor’s School of Dance, Harkness Ballet, Farnworth and Hauer School, New York Centre of Dance, and Broadway Dance Center. Kelley currently teaches tap and acrobatics and is one of the few instructors in New York who teaches more than one form of dance. He has created acrobatic acts for everything from the Metropolitan Opera to the Miss America Pageant.

The word “acrobatic” derives from the Greek akros (high) and bat (walking) and originally applied to tightrope walking. Today, though, it has grown to define a much larger arena of activities; everything from a simple cartwheel to the twisted moves of a contortionist is part of the acrobatic vocabulary. Acrobatics may be one of the most ancient forms of dance in human history. Whether knowledge traveled from east to west through the Silk Road or acrobatics evolved in several places at once is not known. But it seems that humans have been interested in testing the limits of the body for millennia. In China, acrobatics can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty more than 2,500 years ago. “It all started as a religious ceremony,” says Kelley. “Acrobats were revered like gods in ancient times.” The first Roman circus, held at the Circus Maximus, included acrobatic performers. Mayan and Aztec cultures practiced sacred acrobatic practices. Egyptian murals, Greek vases, and Minoan art depicted scenes of acrobats. 

During the Middle Ages acrobatics were popular in court entertainments and street performances, which eventually gelled into the modern circus. Illustrations of jugglers, tumblers, and acrobats are found from the Anglo- Saxon period to the seventeenth century. Thomas Frost chronicles the early life of circus artists in his 1881 book Circus Life and Circus Celebrities. He cites Joseph Clark, an early contortionist known as “the posturer,” as one of the wonders of London during the reigns of James II and William III, and offers several other accounts of the unusual lives of acrobats.

How did this ancient art form end up as a common offering in so many U.S. dance studios? Kelley points to the spread of the American circus as a key ingredient. The first chapter of the American acrobatic story began when the first circus, Rickett’s, landed on the shores of Pennsylvania in the late 1790s. Vaudeville was the next step; in the 1930s most dance acts included some form of acrobatics. Vaudeville artists were the first “triple threat” performers. “The first generation of acrobatic teachers was retired vaudeville performers,” says Kelley. “In those days you couldn’t get away with just one act.”

Kelley’s career started by chance at age 9 when he learned how to do a cartwheel from a neighborhood girl. He practiced his cartwheels on a narrow strip of grass next to his home in Connecticut through the summer of 1947, until his landlord asked, “Is that all you know how to do?” then offered to pay for a few lessons. Later Kelley’s mother went to work in the commercial laundry industry to pay for his lessons. (At 25 cents an hour, it took her three hours to earn the 75 cents each lesson cost in 1948.) She made him practice an hour a day. “I practiced crab walks, cartwheels, and backbends nonstop in my living room,” Kelley remembers. Hooked, he saved up $5 for a mimeographed book on acrobatics by the Dellwrights, which he saw advertised in a 1949 issue of Dance Magazine. For the next few years he taught himself acrobatics from the book. “I pored over that book,” remembers Kelley. “I read everything twice.”

Evelyn McFarland, one of Kelley’s early dance teachers, recognized his potential. Kelley outgrew her acrobatic knowledge in a few years, so for a Christmas present she sent him to New York City for a workshop at Jack Stanly’s School of Dance, in the old Roseland building. There he met John Plaza, an Italian immigrant from a well-known circus family and one of the foremost acrobatic teachers of his day. Plaza saw that Kelley had talent but also some serious gaps in his training. He had opinions about more than the young man’s dance training—he didn’t approve of his nickname, “Sunny,” and renamed him “Chuck,” which Kelley prefers over his given name of Charles.

Plaza taught Kelley new techniques and told him to practice only what he had learned from him. The young dancer returned to New York at every opportunity to study with Plaza. At age 18 he moved to New York and managed to survive by flipping burgers at White Castle. “I was hooked on acrobatics with Plaza,” says Kelley. “His students had pointed feet and straight legs; they had technique. I still teach Plaza’s warm-up; it warms and stretches every part of your body.”

Kelley finds a strong connection between the popularity of acrobatics and Broadway trends. During the 1920s through the 1940s it wasn’t unusual to see an acrobatic number in a Broadway show that had little to do with the story line. Kelley says that Plaza’s teacher, Lou Wills, produced about 80 percent of the acrobatic dancers on Broadway in the late 1930s to 1940s. Plaza invited Kelley along for Wills’ weekly dinner meetings at the automat. “They talked acrobatics nonstop,” he remembers. Wills was in his 80s at the time and interested in passing along his teachings to Plaza. Kelley spent 14 years studying with Plaza and took over his classes at June Taylor’s studio when he retired in the 1960s. “One day he showed up and announced that he had bought a home in Miami and was handing me his classes,” recalls Kelley.

Movie musicals of the 1940s and ’50s were also a strong influence. The 1954 film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers featured some of the most spellbinding acrobatic dancing on film ever seen. “The average dance teacher got on the bandwagon,” says Kelley. Michael Kidd, an important Broadway choreographer, was a skilled acrobat who infused his dance routines with tricks. Then, during the 1960s, with the onset of the Fosse musical, acrobatics took a backseat on Broadway. Kelley remembers the last number in the 1973 revival of Irene, with Debbie Reynolds and five amazing acrobatic dancers. “No one in New York was doing acrobatics then; they had to go to small dance studios to find acrobatic dancers,” he says. Dance studios continued to offer classes, keeping acrobatics alive in their own quiet way.

The proliferation of acrobatics in the North American entertainment industry in the past decade is yet another sign that it is here to stay. Cirque du Soleil has single-handedly put the art back in acrobatics. “They have spectacular contortion routines,” says Kelley. Nearly 50 million people worldwide have seen a Cirque show and a projected 7 million will see a show in 2006. With shows touring the U.S. and several concurrent productions in Las Vegas, Cirque’s contribution to the visibility of acrobatics is significant. Currently, the creation studio at Cirque runs a full program in acrobatic training to prepare new performers. A Cirque du Soleil offshoot, Cavalia (created by one of Cirque’s cofounders), features equine acrobatics and tours extensively in the United States and Canada. Most of Cavalia’s performers are trained in acrobatics. Nadia Richer, the lead trainer, says they come from varied backgrounds. “Some artists even come from families who’ve been performing for generations,” says Richer. “I don’t think there is a return of acrobatics, because this discipline has always existed.”

Modern dance companies have been incorporating acrobatic techniques since the early 1970s. Pilobolus, Momix, STREB, and Diavolo all incorporate acrobatics in their choreography. And aerial dance companies have emerged all over the world. More recently, movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix may have been instrumental in fueling a boost in martial arts–based, computer-enhanced acrobatics.

Kelley believes that the Chinese are a tremendous force in the acrobatic field and will play a significant role in developing the next generation of teachers. The 54-year-old Peking Acrobats company has been touring the United States since 1986. Currently four separate troupes tour the world simultaneously. Don Hughes, the company’s co-producer at IAI Presentations, estimates that millions of people have seen them so far. The troupe has appeared in the films Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve and is slated to perform in Ocean’s Thirteen. Acrobats in China are considered celebrities, and the field is continuing to develop. Recently Shanghai City Dance Company produced an acrobatic Swan Lake, performed by Guangdong Military Acrobatic Troupe.

Many factors have brought acrobatics back into the mainstream entertainment world. According to Kelley, the competition industry has exposed a large number of children to acrobatics. (Most competitions have an acrogym category.) “Kids see this amazing stuff and they want to learn how to do it,” he says. Kelley has seen some fine teachers on the circuit. Nelda Hill of Shawnee, KS, is one of them. Kelley was impressed with the technical skill of her students. Hill subsequently brought her students to study with Kelley over several summers and took copious notes on his teaching. “She wrote down everything I said,” says Kelley. “I didn’t realize how much I knew until she started writing it all down.”

Sometimes it’s the small-town dance studio that carries the flame through all the shifts and changes in cultural taste. Kelley imagines that the future lies in a handful of individuals who have continued to expand their knowledge, including Abby Miller, who takes her students to Kelley every chance she gets. Miller even offers a contortion class at her Penn Hills studio. She sent a contingent of her students—contortionists, acrobats, and tumblers—to an audition for Twyla Tharp’s new Broadway-bound show, The Times They Are A-Changin’. “We could see a real resurgence [in acro classes] when this show hits the Great White Way,” says Miller.

Kelley also puts a lot of faith in Mara Merritt, who took over her father’s dance studio as a teenager. Merritt directs one of the few acrobatics teams that continually bring home the trophies at competitions. Even gymnasts study with Merritt. “They want to learn the tricky tricks like a ‘front reverse tinsicas’ [a move that starts with a cartwheel and ends like a walkover],” says Merritt. “They pump up their floor routines with good acrobatic training.” Merritt finds that acrobatics is more accessible than gymnastics. An acrobat is trained to perform on a stage, without mats, apparatus, or a special floor. “Anyone can do it,” she says. “You don’t have to be a 99-pound adolescent.” She even holds classes for adults at her studio in Schenectady, NY. Merritt credits hip-hop for the comeback of acrobatic training. “Kids see these amazing stunts and wonder how to do them.” Break dancing and hip-hop are yet another modern incarnation of acrobatics.

Another fan of Kelley, Larraine Susa, has been teaching acrobatics for 33 years in Uniontown, PA; one of her students now performs with Cirque du Soleil. “Her students do clean work and have great dance backgrounds,” says Kelley. According to Susa, the concentration of acrobatics teaching varies from region to region. In areas that have few gymnastic studios, you find more acrobatics in dance studios. Susa identifies Olympic gold medalists Nadia Comaneci (1976) and Mary Lou Retton (1984) as important figures for both acrobatics and gymnastics. Gymnastics training exploded across the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s, and students who were impressed by the celebrity of Retton and Comaneci may have wandered into an acrobatics class if gymnastics was not available in their region. Susa is a believer in training well-rounded dancers and finds that acrobatic training creates versatile dancers. “Acrobatics enhances the other dance forms,” says Susa. “Students become more flexible and learn how to stretch properly.”

From Wills to Plaza to Kelley, acrobatics continues to be an enduring part of dance education. Kelley says that dance teachers don’t need to be able to do it to teach it. “Some of the best teachers in the U.S. were never acrobats themselves,” he says. “They understand the mechanics and can impart it without having done it. We can learn it from the book. It’s a matter of understanding weight, momentum, and technique.” Kelley recommends James Rozanas’s Advanced Acrobatics and Tumbling and Acrobatics Made Easy (1953 and 1954 respectively; both now out of print), to all acrobatics teachers.

Acrobatics on Broadway may continue to come and go. When Twyla Tharp was choreographing the 1985 revival of Singin’ in the Rain, she brought in Kelley to replicate Donald O’Connor’s famous walking-up-the  wall routine. Kelley spent a month trying to teach a young dancer with no acrobatic training how to accomplish this feat. “Tharp ended up cutting the scene,” remembers Kelley. “That was too bad; it was the best sequence in the movie.”

At 69 years of age, Kelley dedicates himself to passing on his knowledge but feels the strain of being a one-man show. Up until a few years ago he was still doing splits and walkovers. As a frequent presenter at Dance Educators of America (and just about every other dance teacher organization in the country), he helps teachers learn the best methods to teach acrobatics. He’s writing a dictionary on acrobatics. He’s been working on it for 10 years and he’s only on C due to the enormity of the subject. The cartwheel section alone is mind-boggling. He’s collected every book on the subject he can find and plans to leave his large library of acrobatic literature to one of his longtime students.

Kelley is concerned about who will succeed him in New York and worries that dance teachers don’t learn more than the fundamentals of acrobatics. “Someone needs to come along and pick my brain,” he says with cautious hope. But for now, no matter how filled with awards and plaques his walls get, he shows no signs of slowing down. Most weekends he’s off at competitions and conferences, working with students and helping teachers with the nuances of this mysterious art form. Last spring he traveled to Biloxi, MS, to offer free-of-charge workshops to an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. His students, past and present, speak about him with the reverence due a master. Kelley remains committed to the power of that eye-popping flash that acrobatics adds to the dance terrain. “The art of acrobatics will never fade away,” he says. “Spectators are constantly awed and amazed at what the human body is capable of doing.”   

Photo Captions (top to bottom):

1st picture: Chuck Kelley in the 1960s

2nd, 3rd, and 4th pictures: Danny, Michael, and Michaela McNamara

5th picture: Paul Lubera, professional acrobat contortionist, studied with Kelley for over 30 years.

6th picture: Miss Dolly Adren of Kansas City, contortionist supreme, who worked in the 30s and 40s

7th and 8th pictures: Chinese acrobats