August 7 to 9, 2026 [See “Plan Your Visit” below for dates, times, details, and tickets.]

Zaccho Dance Theatre, Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture, and Fort Mason Art present the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival (SFAAF), a three-day celebration of contemporary aerial arts, site-responsive performance, and filmmaking. The festival brings together internationally acclaimed aerial artists, emerging innovators, youth performers, and filmmakers for an action-packed weekend of performances, screenings and special events.

The 2026 festival works examine the resilience of the human body and spirit, the power of collective rage as a force for change, and a journey toward joy, shaped by the pandemic and young motherhood. Together, performances demonstrate the expansive storytelling possibilities of aerial arts while reflecting the rich experiences of contemporary artists.

“This year’s Festival reflects the extraordinary breadth of what aerial arts can be today – deeply personal, politically urgent, visually daring, and rooted in community,” said Joanna Haigood, Festival Director and Co-founder of Zaccho Dance Theatre.

HIGHLIGHTED PERFORMANCES

Aerial dance pioneer and Bandaloop founder Amelia Rudolph brings her new company, ARMA to the stage to examine humanity’s relationship with water as both a vital life source and a vulnerable resource. Through innovative rigging technology, live performance, and original music, the work invites audiences into a visceral encounter with one of Earth’s most essential elements.

Supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Arts Impact Endowment Grant, award-winning aerialist, choreographer, and circus researcher Veronica Blair premieres EleKtric Body, a multidisciplinary performance supported by honoring the resilience of bodies of color and the ancestral energy that empowers us today. Inspired by Robert O. Becker’s The Body Electric, EleKtric Body connects scientific concepts of bioelectricity with ancestral knowledge, illuminating the enduring relationship between energy, remembrance and collective survival.

PERFORMANCES (Continued).

Izzie Award-winning artists Megan Lowe and Roel Seeber premiere Meandering Urbanite, a vertical dance duet inspired by the wilderness of the urban landscape. Drawing from the architecture and rhythms of city life, the work transforms human-made environments into terrain for movement, exploration, and connection.

Artists Clarissa Rivera Dyas and B Dean present RAWHIDE, a performance mixtape of racial solidarity, trans resistance, Black queerness, and the immense grief of our political moment. Combining aerial dance, queer improvisation, and contemporary dance theater, the work explores metamorphosis as a strategy for survival amidst today’s intersecting crises.

The Next Generation Youth Showcase highlights six youth companies from across the region, featuring performers from Zaccho Youth Company, Ashland Aerial Arts, San Francisco Circus Center, Mendocino Center For Circus Art’s CircusMeCCA, People’s Circus Theatre and Circus Spire Youth Company. Among the featured works is Ashland Aerial Arts Performance Company’s humorous aerial adventure, combining silks, partner acrobatics, and plenty of attitude to celebrate cooperation, generosity, and community.

ABOUT THE FILM FESTIVAL

In addition to live works, SFAAF presents a free, curated three-day aerial film festival featuring more than 20 short films from Canada, Portugal, Brazil, the U.S. and beyond. The curated selection in the Gateway Pavilion’s Grey Box Gallery explores themes of climate resilience, environmental stewardship, LGBTQ+ history, ancestral memory, and personal transformation.

Highlights include Jo Kreiter’s Down on the Corner, reflecting on a critical moment in San Francisco history – the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot; Wild Aerial’s and Figment Film’s Embers, a powerful documentary connecting personal loss and climate change in the Canadian Rockies; and A Return to Movement, celebrating the historic restoration of the Klamath River.