Jill Maio dangles from a silk. ~Photos by Emily Blackwood

By Emily Blackwood

At AirCraft Aerial Arts, the circus is always in town.

Colorful silks, lyras, cloud swings – and other apparatuses you didn’t think a human being could hang from – dangle off the 20-foot ceiling of the studio’s two spacious rooms in Union Square. After teaching in the back of a gym and inside a towing garage, AirCraft found its home in 2010 at 14 Tyler Street, Somerville.

Jill Maio, the studio’s owner, founded the studio after falling in love with circus fitness herself. A fiction writer and university instructor, Maio was looking for a physical hobby that would get her out of her head when she overheard someone saying they had tried out trapeze.

“It’s exhilarating,” she said. “And you feel really good afterward because you worked a lot of muscles.”

Lauren Weiler practices her favorite moves before class.

Beyond that, the small classes and uncomfortable moves make for fast, close friendships. The community created at AirCraft has led to wedding guests and children attending classes whose mothers were training when they were pregnant.

Currently, in their spring session (which runs through the end of April), AirCraft’s sessions meet eight times, once a week. They do monthly performances at their studio and other locations. People who aren’t sure if they want to sign up for the session can take a 90-minute “taster” class to learn the basic skills it takes to hang on the different kinds of apparatuses.

“It’s very gentle, even going upside down on the silks,” Maio said. “It’s amazing, people are in disbelief that it’s gonna support them but it does.”

She said the hardest part is hanging from unexpected parts of your body, like the heels, toes, neck or elbows.

“The most difficult thing is like putting your arm behind your back,” she said. “The drops are exciting, but they’re not so hard.”

Anyone interested in getting more information on the studio can visit www.aircraftaerialarts.com.

Monica Weber hangs upside down on the silks.

Mary Langlois said she loves aerial arts because it speaks to her inner thrill seeker.

AirCraft Aerial Arts opened in 2009.