By: Ruby Karen (Founder – Aerial Arts America)
September 30, 2026
At Aerial Arts America, our mission has always centered on one goal: providing every aerialist, regardless of background, training environment, or coaching style, a fair and equal platform to compete and grow. As our sport continues to expand rapidly, we want to take a moment to explain the thinking behind our skill level system and why we believe it’s the most equitable approach available to us today.
The Challenge of a Growing, Undefined Vocabulary
Unlike gymnastics or figure skating, aerial arts does not yet have a single, standardized vocabulary. Aerial dance itself only emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s, growing out of postmodern dance experimentation, and it has continued to absorb vocabulary from the many disciplines that feed into it. A dancer might describe a shape using a term like “arabesque” or a turn using “pirouette.” A gymnast might describe a body position using “pike” or “layout,” or a rotation using “barani.” Others come to aerial through yoga, circus arts, or contact improvisation, each bringing their own descriptive language along with them. These aren’t equivalent terms describing the same movement — they’re each rooted in the vocabulary of the discipline that produced them, applied to new apparatus and new contexts. On top of that, the aerial community has coined plenty of its own original terms along the way, for movements that didn’t exist anywhere else first.
This isn’t a flaw in our community — it’s a natural sign of a young, creative, and still-forming discipline. But it does create a real challenge when building a competition framework that’s fair to everyone. Without shared, standardized terminology, it becomes very difficult to build a skill-by-skill rulebook that means the same thing to every coach, in every studio, across the country.
An Evolving Pedagogy
Compounding this, aerial training pedagogy itself is still maturing. Some coaches teach a structured progression, where students build toward a skill by first mastering its component parts. Others teach a series of moves more directly, with students memorizing the sequence needed to execute a specific trick. As new skills circulate widely on social media and begin to look approachable or “trending,” some coaches introduce them into their students’ training simply because the skill has become visible and popular — not necessarily because a clear developmental pathway toward that skill has been established in their own program.
None of this reflects poorly on any individual coach or studio. It reflects where our sport currently is: a community still developing consensus on both language and teaching methodology.
Why Time Is Our Foundation
Given all of this, AAA had to identify a single variable that remains consistent no matter which studio, coaching philosophy, or vocabulary a competitor comes from. That variable is time: the number of years and hours an athlete has actually spent training.
Time doesn’t rely on shared terminology. It doesn’t depend on whether a coach teaches holistically or sequentially. It’s measurable, verifiable, and the same for every competitor, regardless of background. This is why AAA places competitors into skill levels based primarily on training time, and why each division establishes both Mandatory Skills — the minimum technical requirements expected at that level — and Prohibited Skills — the maximum allowable technical level for that division.
How This Plays Out in Practice
Consider a Novice-level student who has been training for one year. Her coach wants to include a neck hang in her routine. However, because a neck hang requires a level of strength, control, and risk tolerance that AAA considers beyond the maximum allowable technical level for Novice, it falls under that division’s Prohibited Skills.
The coach has two options: remove the skill from the routine, or request to upgrade the student into the Amateur division, where she will be competing against others who have trained long enough for that skill to fall within the expected range. Upgrades must be requested no later than October 1; once registered, a competitor may upgrade but may not downgrade. Either path keeps the competition fair — because judging then becomes about how well a skill is executed relative to appropriate peers, not whether a routine simply includes the most difficult trick a student can physically attempt.
Why the Skill Lists Aren’t Exhaustive
We also want to be upfront about something coaches sometimes ask us about: the Mandatory and Prohibited Skills lists for each division are intentionally described as representative rather than exhaustive. As aerial arts continues to evolve, our Compliance Committee may determine that a skill or variation is non-compliant if its technical characteristics exceed the intended level of a division, even if that specific skill isn’t named on the list yet. We recognize this requires coaches to apply judgment rather than simply checking a name off a list — but given how quickly new skills and variations emerge in this sport, a fixed, finite list would become outdated within a single season and would fail to serve the fairness and safety goals it’s meant to protect.
Where We Go From Here
We want to be transparent that this approach is still in its early stages, and we expect it to evolve. As the aerial community continues to develop shared training standards and safer, more consistent pedagogical pathways, AAA intends to evolve alongside it. In time, we hope to give judges more structured education and scoring flexibility — including the ability to factor in how well a highly difficult skill is executed even when performed below its typical level, rather than relying solely on restriction.
Until that framework exists, however, AAA will continue to set clear parameters around skill level and training time. We do this not to limit creativity or ambition, but to protect what we believe matters most: a fair, equal, and safe competitive environment for every aerialist who steps onto our stage.
