Dari talks with Ardor Active about over a decade of experience as a professional aerialist, the importance of dance, performing at the VMAs with Missy Elliot, and the complexities of getting jobs as a black woman in her field.

Darielle Williams is a professional aerialist, dancer, and actress based in Los Angeles. She performs mostly on aerial silks and aerial hoop but does everything from Spanish web to fire dancing. She started dancing in Trinidad at the late age of 16 after training as a gymnast and swimmer. She continued her dance education at Florida International University where she worked with Brazz Dance Theater. She was introduced to the world of aerial arts after college when another company she worked for began training dancers to do harness and bungee work. Her first aerial apparatus was Spanish web. She then started learning hammock, silks, and aerial hoop. In 2010 she started doing pole and made the shift into circus full time. Recently she’s performed in the Little Mermaid Live and a Fight 4 the Amazon event for Global Green.

The first large scale production she was hired for was Le Rêve, described as “a thrilling acrobatic fantasy world, set inside an aqua theater-in-the-round” in Las Vegas. While missing the feeling of being on stage with larger productions like those she experienced during her dance career, she auditioned for Le Rêve while living in Miami and doing freelance gigs. “Next thing you know I’m accepted and I’m excited because I got exactly what I wanted, but then I have to prove myself”. There were a lot of ups and downs. After months of training one apparatus they felt like it wasn’t a good fit for her. “I started panicking because they were like - listen you need to find three acts to stay in the show. What are you going to do?” It’s a show where everyone is a generalist, different from a Cirque du Soleil show where you do your main act and a couple of different cues. In Le Rêve, the acts are shorter and you do about 7 acts and cues in one 90 minute show. She ended up doing aerial chair and gross bertha, an apparatus where people are sitting on suspended chairs and tables that move around in a circle. The third act was the high dive.

The dive was an astonishing 50 feet high. Although Williams felt terrified, she couldn’t show her fear. There’s always the threat of being dropped from your contract, especially in your first year on a large scale production. “They’re watching you like a hawk, you have to be perfect which you never are because it’s your first year and you’re stumbling through”. They started her with a 10 foot dive and went up from there. It has to be precise. You have to fall straight because falling slightly forward will cause you to feel like your face just hit a brick. Fall slightly backward and you’ll hurt your tailbone, and don’t forget to squeeze your legs closed! It’s anxiety inducing - each time.

Photoshoot by Michael Kern and Welikesmall for Adobe

How does she deal with nerves when performing? “I try to pretend like I’m in the training room and I’m doing a rehearsal run”. She typically trains on her own, with twelve years of experience under her belt it’s not necessary to have a coach, but she loves being a student and continues to take straps and rope classes. So she blocks them out - partially at least. A performer still needs to connect with the audience. “We’re such perfectionists as performers. You want everything to go well and you concentrate on that when you’re in the rehearsal room very well but it’s easy to be in front of an audience and be like oh shit, everybody’s looking at me! What am I doing again?” So she focuses on the marks she wants hit such as when to open up and when to reach for the audience. “It gets me through to a point that I’m satisfied with it - like okay I did all the things I wanted to do.”

On the Importance of Dance: “It makes a difference, even if you’re not dancing on the ground. In the way you extend your lines and being able to feel your center in a spin is just so much easier for a ballerina or something. If you’ve never found your center before it’s difficult to suddenly find that in a spin, just little things like that. Dancers know how to press their shoulders down when they lift their arms so their arms don’t look heavy. It makes a difference for sure.” She regrets leaving dance behind and is glad she’s picked it up again last year.

Dari (center) floating above Béyonce during the Formation World Tour (2016)

What was it like on Beyoncé’s Formation World Tour?

“It was a unique experience. It was crazy and I loved it. I love to travel so that was my favorite part although we were in each place for about 48 hours, whatever time off we had - when people were sleeping I was out doing tourist things, I was not going to waste this opportunity.” She enjoyed tour life and is looking for the opportunity to do it again before settling down. She’s visited London and Paris before but on tour they covered Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Brussels, and many other cities and smaller towns in six months. It felt longer because they would stay in one city for just two days. More time was spent in larger cities like London, Paris, New York, and LA where it was around a week but overall they were constantly on the move.

In reality, it wasn’t necessarily a World Tour. “We went all over America and we did pretty much all over Europe and it was supposed to keep going but it didn’t. They went back to America, did another run there and then that was it. We didn’t know why. It was one of the most expensive tours, it was also one of the most dangerous tours because of that monolith - the big square that turns around and opens up. It’s based around a huge cube so they had to build in the next city ahead of time because it took so long. It was also really dangerous and the turnover time was crazy. We spent two days in each city which is unusual for a tour. Usually people spend around a week or five days and we were going and going. It became very precarious for the crew working on the tour. We were all wondering is it the danger, is it because it’s too expensive is it unfeasible to bring to Asia, why is it stopping? We didn’t really know, and then months later you found out she was pregnant!”

Her favorite city? Amsterdam. “I know everybody says that but it’s really cool”.

On Stage at the VMAs: When Missy Elliot received the Video Vanguard Award at the 2019 VMAs, Williams was one of the aerialists in her memorable performance. “It’s always so amazing to be in rehearsal with the celebrity and watch them work. It’s fascinating, a front row seat to something that not many people get to see. You see them in their zone, getting into character, getting into their steps and blocking everything that they’re supposed to do. It’s really cool to sit back and watch” She went just a week before, the job required her to do about thirty seconds of harness work. “It’s fun when the job is easy and you don’t have to stress too much, but then you also make sure you don’t mess up because you only have 30 seconds. Don’t mess up your two seconds on camera!”

The VMA’s were special because Missy Elliot requested four black aerialists, which was a rare opportunity for Williams and others. Unfortunately that’s what it takes for them to get work. She performed along side Pamela Donohoo, who was the first black woman in Le Rêve, Lexi Powell , and Jessica Castro. “I have a lot of friends that think I’m really good at aerial but they don’t think about me when jobs come up until somebody’s like “I need a black aerialist for such and such”. People here forget to ask me to do things because they forget that their black aerialist friend is also an aerialist and then they only remember me when someone is looking for a black aerialist.”

In Miami where she started about 10-12 years ago, she’s been blankly rejected several times and asked to send a different girl because they didn’t want an aerialist to look like her. “We want the blonde girl or the brunette girl but not this girl” and they would just say that to your face. I don’t know if it differs from city to city or if it’s just the times. I don’t know if Miami is different now.”

She’s found that LA is more open to black performers because of commercial and hip hop culture. The numbers still aren’t high but getting hired is less complicated. Sometimes - for example: someone’s had a 50th birthday celebration and they wanted black aerialists. Her regular club job performing aerial started from an r&b night. It’s annoying but it’s often how she gets gigs. It’s not impossible for her to get a gig where her race doesn’t matter, or they needed multiple aerialists and she’s one of them. “That’s all I want, I just want equality.”

The first black female aerialist she discovered online was Veronica Blair, who she looked up to and later got the opportunity to connect with. Now there is more of a network of black aerialists, meeting through auditions and social media. “There’s a company I was working with here in LA called Troupe Vertigo and there was a particular piece that the choreographer was focusing on with just five women, three big white boxes, and we all do this hour long show of aerial, contortion, and dance. It was a poetic show with just five women, music, and circus movement. We ended up doing and arts festival in San Francisco where Veronica lives, so finally I was able to meet her and she was able to see me perform. I came to see her train and talk to her a little bit, and I was geeking out like finally I met Veronica Blair! We’re in talks about doing a future work together, the two of us and a couple of other people from New York ask well.”

*“You may need to carve your own path because I’m starting to come to terms with the idea that waiting around for someone to hand me a job was going to keep me waiting forever.”*
Photo by Marlon James

To keep herself busy during lockdown, she’s been choosing from the countless number of free dance classes available on instagram (haven’t we all?), getting back into pole, and taking flexibility classes with Pheonix Kazree. She's even got a rig set up in her backyard where she trains and does social distancing privates! She’s also teaching zoom classes. Dance for non dancers on Tuesdays and Fridays at noon starts with a bit of ballet barre and ends with contemporary choreography. “I know a lot of people that start aerial as a hobby or just take a couple of class just to try it out when they realize they really love it. Then they want to do a student show and then they want to go professional”. (It happens a lot!) “I feel like sometimes the distinguishing marker when I look at high level professionals and people who are really good from the studio and are able to do crazy tricks. There’s some kind of refinement that may be lacking and it’s obvious to the trained eye and it may not be obvious to them. So there’s just a little bit of a gap where people in the aerial world may not have had dance training before and I just wanted to bridge that gap a little bit.”

Advice to newer aerialists navigating the Circus World?

“Just keep training no matter how good you think you are. Do all of the supplementary things you need for aerial. That includes dance, handstands, and learn ground things as well because aerial is not always an option at every venue. So learn either acrobatics or contortion or hand stands or stilt walking or fire dancing or something like that. That’s just skill level. Also, I had to learn the hard way over the years to take good video of everything especially if you’re in a performance because I was terrible at that for years. People would want to hire me for a job and ask me to send video and I have no video for like 8 years. Also, I would say just keep working hard and especially if you’re a black aerialist, you may need to carve your own path because I’m starting to come to terms with the idea that waiting around for someone to hand me a job was going to keep me waiting forever. So create your own acts, make it so badass that someone will want it no matter what you look like and just show them who you are. Don’t let them show you who you are.

You can find Dari on her website or instagram . We’re excited to see what she does next and will be keeping up! Check out her zoom classes and if you get a chance in the future, go see her perform.

Conversation with Dari Williams: Carving Her Own Path as an Aerialist, touring with Beyoncé, and Equality