Monarca in Flight returns to the Taste of Annandale

A Monarca in Flight performer at the 2017 Taste of Annandale.

Monarca in Flight, the aerial dance troupe that wowed the crowd at the 2016 and 2017 Taste of Annandale festivals, will be back for the 2019 event.

The Taste of Annandale, Oct. 5, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., on Tom Davis Drive, features live music and dance, food trucks, restaurants, a 5K, pet show, beer garden, children’s entertainment, vendors, and more.

Performers with the Monarca in Flight studio will carry out graceful acrobatic movements suspended in the air – on a vertical rope, a length of fabric like a hammock, and a steel hoop called a lyra.

Acoatzin Torres, who founded the Monarca in Flight studio, at 3431-F Carlin Springs Road, Bailey’s Crossroads, in 2016, describes what they do as “aerial dance performing art.”

The studio offers a variety of classes and workshops for people age 14 and up with all levels of ability in the circus arts and related skills, including trapeze, aerial sling, aerial yoga, flexibility, capoeira, dance flow, and juggling.

Torres, a native of Tabasco, Mexico, has a background in dance, martial arts, and costume design. After giving private lessons in aerial dance for a few years, Torres says opening his own studio was his lifelong dream.

He named it Monarca in Flight because the performers are graceful, like the monarch butterfly, and what they do is “like flying, it’s like dancing in the air.”