Straps: Skills & Storytelling
Understanding Act Creation & Athleticism
August 22-29, 2026
Casa Chango Mexico, Puerto Escondido
Instructor: Alisa Mae
One Scholarship for a Mexican or BIPOC student available.
Apply here by May 1.
Spend a WEEK in PARADISE with new friends, the beach, delicious, fresh, local food, and learn loads and loads of new aerial skills!
Are you looking to level up your straps skills or strength? Have you been meaning to make your first act or new act? This workshop is for you!
Learn how to merge athleticism, storytelling, and movement quality to create art you’ll be thrilled to perform. You will work on strengthening your straps technique, and learning concrete tools to expand your creative process.
You’ll learn accessible entry points and progressions for training flares, flags, planches, switches, full twists (aka ‘demi’s), mushus, rollups, swings, center spins, and split balances. You’ll practice skill-specific techniques to condition for stability, strength, power, and shoulder longevity. Deep stretching balances it all out.
You’ll leave with a toolkit of strategies and methods to create acts that are uniquely yours, while gaining anatomical understanding, new conditioning exercises, floor-work skills, flexibility, progressive drills towards your next dream tricks, and of course, new skills and more confidence!
The act creation portion of the workshop may also be done on other apparatuses. So if you would rather work technically on straps and creatively on another apparatus, that is totally welcome!
This retreat has 2 daily classes.
Morning class will be Straps Technique: Unlock new skills by gaining a better understanding of the muscular activation, timing, and pathways required for efficient movement. Our amazing coach will emphasize pathways, placement, and timing on one arm, two arms, or with additional assistance modalities.
Each afternoon will include a Flexibility and Act Creation session. Active mobility drills will allow your body to feel safe to melt into deeper stretches and to use your full range of motion in your choreographic process. We’ll discuss the science of stretching, shoulder maintenance, and specific drills to extend your lines.
Act creation and movement storytelling will help you get comfortable creating. Work on your act using storytelling, choreography and improvisation techniques, prompts, and many other tools that distill your vision, with personal feedback. We’ll also study dance and floor-work techniques for transitioning in and out of the floor with ease, quality of movement, and character specificity.
The week will culminate in an informal showing. Practice presenting your new work in front of a supportive audience, and maybe even get a cool video!
The rest of our time can be spent eating amazing, healthy food, swimming in the warm ocean, reading in hammocks, and breathing the tropical air. There will be time to explore local markets and beaches as well as the local night life.
Advance your Skills!
Students must be able to do 3 inversions of any kind w/o touching the floor, 3 pull-ups, 3 skin the cats, single arm meathook hold (any entry is fine), experience with training flags- ability to hold a 2-arm flag with a spot. Please feel free to email us with any questions about our prerequisites.
Daily Schedule Sample: Everything is optional!
- 7:30-9:30 am: Coffee, Tea and Breakfast
- 10am-12:30pm: Morning StrapsClass
- 1pm: Lunch
- 2-5pm: Pool-time, siesta, relaxing
- 3:30pm: Afternoon Treat
- 4-6:30pm: Afternoon Flexibility & Act Creation Class
- 7pm Dinner
- 8-10pm Evening activities
We will take you to our favorite beaches for swimming, surfing, snorkeling, and releasing baby turtles into the sea. There will be evening adventures to a bioluminescent lagoon and local night market.
Bring your partner, parents, or best buddy! See our significant other and +1 policy here.
About your Coach
My name is Alisa and I perform and teach on straps, lyra, dance trapeze, silks, hammock, and harness. Creating character-driven aerial acts, I aim to impact the audience with both tricks and stories, ranging from gender-bending and political straps acts to aerial burlesque routines in a shrimp costume.
I have traveled the world performing as an aerialist/dancer for shows and companies including: NYC Circus Festival, France’s Got Talent, Company XIV, Royal Caribbean Productions, Broadway Bares, Six Flags, Cirque Dreams, The Box NYC, The Slipper Room, Duane Park, Red Pavilion, House of Yes, The Muse, Busch Gardens, Ouagadougou International Dance Festival, Studio 54, Paramount Hotel, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Joyce Soho, Danspace Project, Vassar College, La Mama, and the Spring of Culture Festival in Bahrain.
As a dancer, I have performed contemporary, modern, ballet, musical theater jazz, experimental dance-theater, and ballroom. I founded my own dance company, Fingerprints Projects, was the Resident Choreographer for Boxed Wine Productions, and was the Assistant Choreographer for Grounded Aerial. I danced for Racoco Productions, Timelapse Dance, and General Mischief Dance Theater.
My goal is to give you the shortcuts and tools I’ve learned over the years to fast-track your career as an aerial artist. I’ll help you level-up your straps skills with proven techniques, while encouraging you to push your creativity.
Using the knowledge I’ve gained through earning my BFAs in Dance and English from N.Y.U., taking multiple college-level anatomy courses, and being a NASM-certified personal trainer for five years, I will help you understand how to unlock your aerial potential efficiently, both through exercise science and creative coaching.
I have taught at Cirque Haus, Vital Climbing Gym, Body and Pole, and The Muse Brooklyn, and have watched my students launch aerial careers of their own. Maybe yours will be next!
See Alisa on Instagram @aerialalisa. Website Aerialisa.com
“You made straps accessible in a way that I hadn’t experienced before before you or since you!”
@hallo_wren
“Alisa was the first coach I ever took straps with. They take the time to figure out what cues work for your individual body, are invested in your goals, and offer specific exercises that will help you reach them. They create a space where you can show up fully as yourself which I value so deeply as a queer and nonbinary person with a somewhat complicated relationship to movement.”
Nadia Hannan
“Your flexibility class at VITAL is the reason I have a full split
Jen T @amovingjen
today! And I always appreciated the precision and clarity of your cueing in silks classes. I always appreciated how encouraging you were in silks classes and your sense of humor had me giggling through every class!”
“Alisa’s knowledge of aerials is unparalleled and can help anyone improve regardless of their prior experience”
Rex Glassman
What’s included:
- Ground transportation from the Puerto Escondido Airport (PXM) to Casa Chango if participants arrive to PXM on the specific arrival/departure dates listed.
- Arrive on August 22. Depart on August 29, 2026.
- Private or shared accommodations at Casa Chango eco-chic resort. Click here to take a look at your options.
- Daily cleaning service.
- 3 nourishing meals a day in our beautiful open-air kitchen. Click here to learn more about meals.
- Breakfast: 7:30-9:30am
- Lunch: 1-1:45pm
- Afternoon treat & ice coffee: 3:30pm
- Dinner & Dessert: 7-7:45pm
- Communal space for personal food storage in our kitchen.
- Use of all community areas:
- Swimming pool & hot tub
- Lounge with couches, books & a movie projector
- Kitchen & dining area
- Amazing 2000 square foot open-air Circus Gym
- Dance studio
- Hammocks for lounging
- Private hiking trail down to the Colotepec River
- 2 Daily Classes:
- Aerial photo shoot (w access to up to 15 photos)
- High Speed Starlink Internet
- Access to our network of Spanish teachers who provide private or group classes on-site.
- Access to our on-site massage space and network of body-work practitioners for hire who come on-site.
- Recommendations and guidance to enjoy all that Puerto Escondido has to offer. Beaches, nature excursions, tours, surf lessons, networking events, dance classes, and so much more. Click here for an idea of what you have to look forward to.
Retreat Pricing in USD
| Room | Early Bird Price | Full Price |
| Shared Dorm (mixed gender) | $2000 | $2300 |
| Shared Private Room (2 friends sharing a room) 1 king size bed or 2 individual beds | $2200 | $2500 |
| Private Room w Shared Bathroom | $2500 | $2800 |
| Private Room w Private Bathroom | $2800 | $3100 |
| Private Room w Private Bathroom & Air Conditioner | $3100 | $3400 |
$500 Deposit is required to secure your spot.
Early bird prices end 3 months before arrival date.
Full tuition is due by one month before the first day of the retreat.
Rates refer to cost of one person’s tuition.
Couples must sign up together.
Significant others and friends who are not taking classes are welcome at a special price.
Dorms are mixed gender.
Click here for room descriptions.
inks for more information:
- Accommodations – room descriptions
- Meals and Food
- How to get here. Info and advice on booking your travel
- Weather in Puerto Escondido
- Testimonials
- Excursions
Discounts
- Sign up early to get the Early Bird Discount
- Sign up with a friend and get a $100 referral discount. (You get $100 discount for each person you refer to any of our focused retreats.)
- Sign up on our mailing list to find out about more discounts.
ECO RETREAT CENTER
Casa Chango is an Eco Retreat Center. We do our best to live in harmony with the natural world. We are off grid, and use 100% solar power. We have dry composting toilets and use the humanure and food waste to create soil to feed the amazing plants and trees all around the property. We ask all of our staff and guests to come with the mindset of learning about and respecting nature. The gray water from our sinks and showers filter out to water the plants. Therefore we ask you to bring natural shampoos, conditioners, and toothpaste to your retreat. All of our buildings were designed and built to be cool and comfortable, and we hope you enjoy your stay with us.
Casa Chango is an animal friendly place. There are several friendly animals on site including dogs and cats. They will not enter your rooms, but they will be on property and in common areas during your retreat. Animal lovers will be in their happy place.
Native insects live in this area of Mexico. We fumigate regularly to keep insects away and out of your rooms. We also acknowledge that the insects are an important part of keeping nature in balance. Most of the community spaces at Casa Chango, including the gym, dining area, pool, lounge are open air which means there are no walls. You can expect to see a variety of native insects, birds, and lizards during your visit. We hope you enjoy the experience of living more connected to nature.
Questions? Email us at SweetRetreatsMexico@gmail.com
*Food service begins with a snack and dinner on arrival day, and ends with breakfast on departure day. All meals are provided. The food is amazing! ** Your taxi to/from the PXM airport is included if you arrive/depart on designated days. Click here for info about getting to Puerto Escondido.