Artistic Director, Mara Neimanis
Mara Neimanis creates theatre in the air using trapeze and invented aerial apparatus that include floating and suspended steel sculptures. Drawing on traditions of Mask Performance, Clown, and Commedia dell’Arte, her work integrates circus arts with physical acting to create stories, text, and characters which explore the rich interplay of imagination between air and ground.

Mara trained at The San Francisco School of Circus Arts, Trapeze Arts, Oakland, and The Toronto School of Circus. She was a protégé of aerial pioneer, Terry Sendgraff, and a graduate of The Dell'Arte International School Of Physical Theatre where she served as an instructor and company member for seven years. In Baltimore, Mara was a Creative Alliance Resident Artist from 2004-2007, where she created her hit solo aerial show, Air Heart.

Mara has toured aerial performances and taught residencies internationally in Israel, Latvia, Canada and Costa Rica. She is a collaborator and instructor for Teatro Abya Yala in Costa Rica and for the past year served as aerial director and instructor for Abya Yala’s most recent production, Vacio. One of her proudest collaborations was the 2003 production, Borders and Borderless, written and performed with elders and youth of the Yurok Nation. She has served as a guest artist at the UNA University in Hereria Costa Rica, at Rhodes College in Memphis, University of Missouri at Kansas City, University of Missouri at Springfield, University of Toronto, Cal Arts, MICA.

In-Flight Theater is the creator and producer of the annual Baltimore Alley Aerial Festival, scheduled for its 3rd year in September of 2011. Recent projects include: The Beauty of Their Dreams, a collaboration with Arachne Aerial Arts for the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival in Reston, Virginia; The Snow Queen, an aerial adaptation of the famous dark fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen using a mixed hearing and deaf ensemble; Gravity Stories, developed at Stevenson University with theatre students and students in the Sociology department.

Mara teaches classes in Mask Performance, Aerial Performance, and Circus Skills at her Aerial studio at Load Of Fun in the Station North Arts District in Baltimore. Neimanis is a guild certified Feldenkrais practitioner and teaches Awareness Through Movement® as a part of Aerial Studies.

Degrees
BFA, English and Theatre, Niagara University
MFA, Theatre, Towson University

Grants, Awards And Honors
2010 Baltimore B Grant Award
2009 Recipient of Baltimore City Community Arts Grant
2008 Recipient of The Ellis Rabb Fund for Visiting Artists, Rhodes College
Recipient of the 2008 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award
2007 Quest Fest For The Deaf commission for new works
2003 Recipient of The Native Cultures Grant of California, created/ produced Borders & Borderless with the Yurok and Hoopa tribes of Northern California