ROYALSTON — Aerialist Molly Baechtold will be performing this weekend at the Royalston South Village Revitalization Committee’s Up in the Air Fair that will be held at the Royalston Fish & Game Club, 49 Main Road, Phillipston. Baechtold and her partner, Leah Abel, will “take to the air” at 1 p.m.
Asked how she ended up becoming an aerialist, Baechtold told the Athol Daily News, “I was actually a dancer my whole life. I’ve danced since I was really young. When I was in college, I was in a dance company that aerials as a part of its performance. So, I got started while I was in that dance company and really kept going with it. Dance is a great segue into it — and gymnastics, too. A lot of people will go from gymnastics into aerials nicely, but I didn’t do gymnastics myself.”
She said one doesn’t just “become” an aerialist; there is a learning curve, just as there is for any profession.
“When you first start, you’re very low to the ground and over a big crash pad mat, a nice big mat,” she explained. “So, you definitely start low and slow. Then the stronger you get, and the more comfortable you get, the more involved the moves can become, and you can take it a little higher if you want to. So, by the time you reach professional status, you’re performing moves you’ve done so many times and that you know fully inside and out. It’s quite a journey to get there.”
When many people hear the word aerialist, the vision of trapeze artists may come to mind but, while the two arts may be related, they do in fact have differences.
“I would say a trapeze artist is a type of aerialist,” said Baechtold. “Flying trapeze, I guess, is in the same family. But it is quite different, also because it takes a really elaborate set-up. Despite what sometimes happens in movies, you always have a net when doing flying trapeze. There’s never a moment of, ‘Hey, let’s take the net away.’ That’s never the case in real life because with flying trapeze, your tricks happen in the air once you’ve left your apparatus.
“With the aerial artists, for the most part all your tricks happen attached to whatever apparatus you’re using. There’s also something called static trapeze where it’s still a trapeze but not swinging, essentially, and you do tricks on it.”
While Baechtold and Abel do entertain the audience, the two aerialists also give children in attendance a chance to experience a little performance art.
“My aerial partner Leah and I, we put on a show that’s about 30 minutes long. We do three acts up in the air. Our last one is our duo act, so there will be two of us in the air at the same time, kind of facing each other and mirroring each other. All of our acts are choreographed to songs.
Baechtold said, “After the show — we’re both also professional coaches and instructors in the area, so we teach aerials for a living as well — so, afterwards we let the kids try out some moves on the fabric if they want to. And we also bring things like stilts and juggling balls and hula hoops for kids to play with.
“I think that’s what makes it so fun is that it’s rare that you can see a show and then immediately participate and see what it’s like. So, we love bringing that to communities and to the kids.”
Providing a hint of what the audience will see, Baechtold explained, “One of the things we perform on, it’s called aerial silks. It’s just a fabric that hangs down, a very specific fabric, and you wrap yourself in it and go upside down in it, and we’ll let the kids try out doing moves on that.”
Baechtold said she began learning her art while attending the University of New Hampshire. She added that she has been performing for about 15 years, while Abel has been an aerialist for between 15 and 20 years.
Musical entertainment for the fair will be provided by Joshua LaVangie from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will also be a can raffle and a basket raffle. Members of the Fish & Game Club will be cooking up hamburgers and hot dogs and plenty of local vendors will also be on hand with a wide variety of items to choose from.
Phillipston Police Officer Bill Chapman and his police bloodhound, General, will also provide entertainment. The team will show off General’s tracking abilities, a demonstration that proved very popular at a fair put on by the RSVRC in 2019.
The Up in the Air Fair runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, Sept. 24.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com