All you need is love – and a well-aimed hurricane kick

Michelle Bolong

Ariel Artist Michelle Bolong. Photo by Nicola Marsh

Computers can crash. Is there anything scarier than flying 30 feet above the heads of a crowd in a harness attached to computerized rigging? Yes: flying without a harness. Dancer, aerialist and Taekwondo master Michelle Bolong has done both.

After three years of swooping over the stage to the sound of the Beatles in the Cirque du Soleil production “Love,” the Peninsula High alum returned to the South Bay to share her knowledge. In January 2009 she opened the Power Plant Aerial & Martial Arts Center in Manhattan Beach. Now, about 100 adults and children as young as two-and-a-half are empowering themselves by fearlessly swinging on silks or trapezes and by mastering self-defense.

Blame it on London. On the road to academia — she planned to be an English professor — Bolong swerved. A few years later, instead of standing at a lectern, she was soaring over the heads of thousands of spectators at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

Bolong grew up from age four in Rancho Palos Verdes, tagging along with her older brother, Michael, and his friends, playing their rough and tumble games. When he studied martial arts so did she.

Starting high school at Peninsula was a challenge for Michelle. She was no longer the big fish in a small pond which she had been at St. John Fisher, where she was student body president. Many of her friends continued in Catholic high school. Harder still, Michael left for college.

An English teacher became her mentor. Bolong had been writing journals her whole life (and still does, every day), but “tough, cynical and sarcastic” Mr. Marineau was the first to tell her she could turn her love for writing into a career. “He changed my life,” she says.

After high school, Bolong decided to challenge herself by moving away from Southern California and headed to U.C. Santa Cruz to major in English. After a year-and-a-half she ventured farther from home and deeper into English literature, enrolling in a Shakespeare program at the University of London. That’s when everything changed.

It wasn’t the university, but the city that turned her around.

“I was going to classes during the day, but at night I was exposed to theater, museums, cutting-edge art,” she says. Inspired, she put her studies on hold. Her six-month trip turned into five years.

She took a few dance classes and found her martial arts background gave her a leg-up. Deciding to abandon English literature in favor of dance, she auditioned and was accepted into the noted Laban Dance Academy. For several years she trained and performed in Europe – until she began to miss America.

At age 24 Bolong moved to San Francisco. Intense, competitive London made her a professional. San Francisco nurtured her, presenting a wealth of opportunities within easy reach in the compact city. She stayed there for five years, training hard, performing a lot, but making little money.

Not wanting to give up martial arts for dance, Bolong blended them into “Martialdance,” combining the gracefulness of dance with the explosiveness of martial arts. (Watch her at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwFORgzGBIg.) In San Francisco she found her identity as an artist and learned that she was a good teacher. She enjoyed the sense of community, but felt that to grow as an artist she would have to return to L.A.

There, things happened quickly, with success in L.A.’s “off-Broadway” shows. She was a fearless acrobatic dancer, but says, “I wasn’t a dancer who had trained since she was five and had ballet technique.” She found her niche in circus companies, especially with a group called Diavolo, which creates athletic spectacles.

“[Diavolo] is very intense. It’s not like Cirque du Soleil because we don’t have harnesses. We take-off on 30-foot drops and depend on technique to catch each other. It was crazy — in a really brilliant way.”

Photo of Michelle Bolong by Angela Weiss

While touring the U.S. and Mexico with Diavolo, she was recruited by Cirque du Soleil. She flew to Montreal to try out for a production based on the music of the Beatles. Bolong was one of 10 artists from around the world who workshopped ideas with director Dominic Champagne for a week. From those 10, they picked three dancers to continue in a three-month-long workshop with seven acrobats.

“We were the guinea pigs,” Bolong says. The directors pushed the dancers and acrobats to their limits. “You don’t have a contract yet, so you are on a constant audition for three months. Our whole life was in this [rehearsal] warehouse… You put your life on hold” in the hope of snagging a two-year contract.

The last week most of the cast, including Bolong, learned they had a contract. After a summer, they joined 50 other cast members to spend a year refining the routines invented by the original group.

“You find yourself working on choreography for a certain song, and then in a moment’s notice it could be scratched.” Even though Sir George Martin, who arranged and produced many of the Beatles’ hits, was the music director, Bolong says, “We had to deal with Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s [widow].” They had to approve Champagne’s vision for each song. “We had occasional performances for a whole range of people. It was so frustrating that our director walked out for a whole month.”

Bolong created several characters for “Love.”

“In the beginning you want to do everything. I was a dancer in a black dress with yellow polka dots. I was also in ‘Something in the Way She Moves’ in the air as a harness dancer… We had to learn multiple parts because when injuries happen you would have to go in as a replacement,” she says.

Most injuries occur during performances: sprains and occasionally concussions as aerialists collide. “You are dealing with artists meet technology. You have stage sets moving and shifting. And sometimes, like any computer system, it crashes. So, if you’re in the air, that was the biggest scare for me.

“The best part of the whole experience [was] the cast… You get spoiled by everyone’s talent. You have 60 performers who have been all over the world in a place that we all never thought we would live [in]… We’re such a tightly knit family. We always stay connected.”

While under contract with Cirque du Soleil, she daydreamed about establishing an aerial and martial arts school.

“I’d be on the floor cutting magazine pictures and making collages of what I thought the Power Plant would look like. It was a dream of mine when I was a kid, but I didn’t put it on paper until I was in Cirque.

“I quickly discovered that aerial arts was something people hadn’t seen before and that the demand was so strong,” she says. That became the focus, with martial arts only for adults. Stunt world professionals discovered the Power Plant and began studying there.

Kids who are serious about aerial arts can join the “academy.” They start with a certain color shirt, study a curriculum and test to the next level. There are also family classes with kids as young as two-and-a-half.

“I wanted aerial arts to be an approachable art form, not just something you see on TV or a show like Cirque du Soleil – something approachable and fun.” PEN

Power Plant Aerial & Martial Arts Center is located at 1727 Artesia Blvd. Manhattan Beach. 310-292-5035.

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