Featured Aerialist Sarah Fenn: An Extraordinary Talent Training Performers Beyond Their Craft

After years of training and performing in dance, aerial and aqua performance, Fenn also helps artists and athletes build skills outside their disciplines to make them more valuable and employable.

Sarah Fenn has spent much of her career learning how to do more than the job she first entered the industry to do. She began as a dancer, later added aerial work and aqua performance, and eventually moved into training and cast captaincy, and choreography and directing. That experience now shapes one of the areas she cares about most: helping performers expand beyond their original discipline. Fenn sees that kind of cross-training as increasingly important in live entertainment, especially in productions that bring together artists and athletes with very different technical backgrounds.

“I think performers should always keep learning new skills, no matter where they are in their careers,” Fenn said. “Someone may be hired for one discipline and then discover another skill they can add to what they already do.”

Fenn works with multi-talented casts that can include divers, high divers, artistic swimmers, slackliners, highliners, dancers, contortionists, skateboarders, acrobats, musicians, singers and circus performers. Her role has included training people in aerial and dance while also helping direct the shows in which those skills are used. Her range of talent means she is often working with performers whose skillset looks nothing like her own.

That is part of what makes the work interesting to Fenn. She does not see a performer’s primary discipline as the boundary of what they can become. Her own career has repeatedly crossed those boundaries, and she has learned and performed on around 20 different aerial apparatuses over the years. That technical range gives her a broad base when she is introducing aerial work to performers who may be approaching it from dance, sport, gymnastic or another performance discipline.

“I believe performers should always keep learning new skills, no matter where they are in their careers,” Fenn said. “You can keep excelling in your own discipline while adding something new.”

Fenn has been in leader and trainer roles for about 15 years, working as a dance captain, aqua captain, aerial captain, company manager, aerial trainer, choreographer and director. Those positions have placed her in the middle of both performance and development. She is not simply responsible for her own performances, but also helping other performers grow what she can do herself while keeping the larger production moving and improving. She is among the rare few in her industry who both performs at a high level and trains other artists simultaneously. She has been a featured aerialist for many years now and continues to evolve and expand her craft.

The industry trend she identifies is straightforward: performers are being encouraged to learn skills outside the discipline for which they were originally hired. Fenn supports that shift because she believes additional skills can give artists and athletes more ways to participate in a production. Feedback from her casts throughout the years is that broadening their performance skills has made their work more enjoyable and rewarding, while also making their resumes more impressive.

“Learning something new does not take away from the skill you already have,” Fenn says. “It gives you another way to grow and another way to contribute.”

Fenn’s own career gives her first-hand experience with that transition. She entered the industry as a dancer before adding aerial and aqua performance, which means she has repeatedly moved beyond the discipline in which she first trained. And that growth has seen her become the featured artist in dozens of highly acclaimed shows, both on land and at sea.

Fenn has worked alongside people whose backgrounds include The Olympic Games, Guinness World Records, America’s Got Talent and Britain’s Got Talent. That range reflects the variety of experience she encounters in productions that bring together athletes and artists from different specialties. And such talented athletes are naturally attuned to taking on new challenges and excelling at them.

“I love seeing people continue to grow after they are already working professionally,” Fenn said. “There is always another skill to learn and another way to improve and enhance one’s career.”

Fenn wants to continue working as an aerialist and dancer while expanding her work as an aerial trainer and director. She also hopes to create new aerial numbers and productions that bring different disciplines together. Her own career has shown her how much a performer can change and progress without abandoning the foundation that brought them into the industry in the first place.

For Sarah Fenn, that is the value of cross-training. A new skill does not erase the performer who came before it. It adds another possibility. After years of making that transition and growing herself, she now spends a lot of her work helping other performers discover what they can add next.