Young girls flying high during circus aerial summer camp

 

Behind a nondescript door in an industrial park in near the airport 11 girls are suspended from hoops, cubes and hammocks several feet off the ground. The young aerial artists are attending The Ruby Karen Project’s Aerial Circus Summer Camp in Costa Mesa.

Once a professional ballerina, Ruby Karen went on to try body building and power lifting and then acrobatics. She opened the aerial and performing arts school in 2009.

She runs the school year round, but said the summer camps “help kids discover skills they don’t know they have.”

Four Circus Aerial Summer Camp sessions are offered, each a week long. They end with a performance.

The camp lets the kids try various aerial apparatus such as silks, a cube made of pipes and ropes, along with spinning plates and stilts – everything you might see at a circus.

Karen, and her husband, Luca Cecchini, operate the school and coach the campers. They also built all the aerial equipment and stilts from scratch.

Kylie Lykos, 12, who spent a half-hour walking around in two-foot stilts, said her favorite part about the camp has been the aerial hammock. It let’s you “learn cool tricks that you can’t do on other materials,” she said.

Karen said along with getting exercise, she likes seeing kids off their electronic devices and meeting new people.

“It introduces them to circus and helps expand their social network,” she said. “The kids learn new skill they can use in daily life.”

The school also offers a summer Aerial Acrobatic Intensive Workshop for three days in July. Camps run through Aug. 9 with some of the weeks already filled up. For more information go to rubykarenproject.com or call 714-846-6143.