Class Policies
We only allow students 15 and up into our regularly scheduled adult drop-in and series classes. On occasion, an instructor may make an exception for a specific student.
Please make sure that you arrive at SLAC on time for your class. We start all classes at their scheduled time even if all students are not present.
If it is your first class, we ask that you arrive 10 minutes before your class start time to get situated.
You will be required to warm yourself up appropriately, so if you are late to class you may miss some instruction while you warm up.
If you are more than 15 minutes late to any class, you are welcome to stay and observe, but you will not be allowed to participate.
You can make up a missed class in a series by signing up for one of our drop-in fitness classes, or an open practice.
Please ask your instructor for the coupon code and use it to sign up for your makeup class or open in advance. You may only make up one class per session unless specified otherwise. Your makeup opportunity will expire at the end of the first week of the following session.
If there’s more than one section of your series class, you can ask the instructor about dropping into the other section. You may also be able to drop into a class at a level below yours.
For drop-in fitness classes, you can reschedule to a later date in the session.
If there are no students signed up for a drop-in class twelve hours prior to the class start time, the class may be cancelled. If you want to ensure that we keep a class on the schedule, please sign up in advance.
Series classes must have 2 participants in order to run. If you are the only person enrolled in your class, we will contact you at least two days before the series begins to offer you other options or credit for a future class.
Absolutely no training under the influence of drugs (legal or otherwise) or alcohol is allowed. If your instructor suspects that you may be compromised in this or some other way (i.e. injury, illness, or severe sleep deprivation) you will be asked to sit out and you will not be issued a makeup or refund.
With barefoot students out on the floor, glass or ceramic containers are not worth the risk. Please bring water in other kinds of containers.
Only water is allowed in the practice area. No other drinks, food or gum allowed.
No photography or video recording is allowed without the express permission of the person being photographed or filmed. Videos of other students and videos of instructors may NOT be posted online.
- Be respectful and kind to the instructors, employees, your fellow students, the studio, and yourself.
- No shoes on the mats or apparatus.
- Please be considerate with cell phone use.
- In a space with shared apparatuses and training space, it is important that all students practice good hygiene. We request that everyone avoid heavy fragrances and lotions.
- Do not walk under apparatuses while they are in use.
- In a space as small as SLAC, students must share equipment and mats. Please do not request more than one apparatus at a time.
Everyone must sign a waiver before attending class, training, or engaging in any activity at SLAC.
Payment Policies
Except in the most extenuating of circumstances, we cannot offer refunds for any of our services. In cases where students have given us sufficient notice (48 hours+ for drop-in classes, private lessons, and Open Studios, 4 weeks+ prior to the first class for series enrollments), we can offer an account credit for the amount paid that can be applied to future classes. We do make exceptions for serious injuries or illnesses. For questions about a cancellation or refund, e-mail us at info@stlaerial.org.
To reserve a space in series classes, drop-in classes, open practices, private lessons, parties or workshops, all students must pay in advance.
For series classes over $200, we allow students to make two payments, but both payments must be received before the series begins.
You can make up a missed class in a series by signing up for one of our drop-in fitness classes, or an open practice.
Please ask your instructor for the coupon code and use it to sign up for your makeup class or open in advance. You may only make up one class per session unless specified otherwise. Your makeup opportunity will expire at the end of the first week of the following session.
If there’s more than one section of your series class, you can ask the instructor about dropping into the other section. You may also be able to drop into a class at a level below yours.
For drop-in fitness classes, you can reschedule to a later date in the session.
Please sign up online in advance for all classes, workshops and open practices that we offer. We do not have a dedicated front desk staff to assist walk-in students, and online signup makes it easy to sign the waiver online and get reminders about classes.
If you’d prefer to pay by check or cash, please email us at info@stlaerial.org to arrange a time to come in and pay in advance. We cannot hold spots for students who have not yet paid.
Open Practice Policies
If you are an established aerialist visiting St. Louis from out of town and you would like to attend an open practice, please feel free to sign up! You’ll need to abide by all the rules of open practice, including working only on material you’ve personally learned from an aerial instructor.
If you are self-taught via experimentation or online videos, you’ll need to seek formal instruction before you can join us for open practice.
No photography or video recording is allowed without the express permission of the person being photographed or filmed. Videos of other students and videos of instructors may NOT be posted online.
A crash mat must be used at all times unless you are doing low floor work or conditioning. The crash mats are the 8″ thick mats used in classes. Panel mats, other thin mats in the studio, and the carpeted foam floor do not qualify as crash mats.
St. Louis Aerial Collective allows students to bring and use their own aerial apparatus during open practice. To do this, you must get approval from the studio rigger in advance. This is to ensure that all apparatuses and hardware used in the space are legitimately manufactured and appropriately rated for aerial use. Learn more.
Open practice is for students ages 16 and up. Those under 16 must have instructor permission.
Open practice is for people who have at least a rudimentary knowledge of aerial arts and who can work on their material without instruction. It is not a playground. If you have no aerial experience, please sign up for a trial or drop in class or an intro series to build your foundation in aerial arts, then come practice what you are learning at open studio.
Open practice is for you to practice what you learn in class; do not attempt to execute new moves or to teach other students. The safest way to learn any aerial or circus skill is with a qualified instructor. We do not recommend ANY other method of learning aerial or circus skills.
Do not attempt to rig any equipment, unless you’ve been given permission AND instruction on rigging your own apparatus. Please ask a staff member if you need equipment adjusted for any reason.
With barefoot students out on the floor, glass or ceramic containers are not worth the risk. Please bring water in other kinds of containers.
Only water is allowed in the practice area. No other drinks, food or gum allowed.
- Be respectful and kind to the instructors, employees, your fellow students, the studio, and yourself.
- No shoes on the mats or apparatus.
- Please be considerate with cell phone use.
- In a space with shared apparatuses and training space, it is important that all students practice good hygiene. We request that everyone avoid heavy fragrances and lotions.
- Do not walk under apparatuses while they are in use.
- In a space as small as SLAC, students must share equipment and mats. Please do not request more than one apparatus at a time.
Absolutely no training under the influence of drugs (legal or otherwise) or alcohol is allowed. If your instructor suspects that you may be compromised in this or some other way (i.e. injury, illness, or severe sleep deprivation) you will be asked to sit out and you will not be issued a makeup or refund.
Everyone must sign a waiver before attending class, training, or engaging in any activity at SLAC.
Code of Conduct
Shorter version
St. Louis Aerial Collective (SLAC) is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
This code of conduct applies to all SLAC spaces, including our studio, offices, performances, Facebook pages, Discord server and gatherings/parties. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the staff.
Some SLAC spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
Longer version
St. Louis Aerial Collective (SLAC) is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
This code of conduct applies to all SLAC spaces, including our studio, offices, performances, Facebook pages, Discord server and gatherings/parties. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the staff.
Some SLAC spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
Harassment includes
- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion.
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names.
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behavior in spaces where they’re not appropriate.
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “*hug*” or “*backrub*”) without consent or after a request to stop.
- Threats of violence.
- Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm.
- Deliberate intimidation.
- Stalking or following.
- Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes.
- Sustained disruption of discussion.
- Unwelcome sexual attention.
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.
- Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse.
- Publication of non-harassing private communication.
SLAC values the safety of every member and student. However, SLAC prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. Staff reserves the right not to act on complaints regarding:
- ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
- Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
- Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
- Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
Reporting
If you are being harassed by a member of SLAC, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the staff at admin@stlaerial.org. If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.
This code of conduct applies to SLAC spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of SLAC outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by SLAC members, especially staff, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from SLAC based on their past behavior, including behavior outside SLAC spaces and behavior towards people who are not in SLAC.
In order to protect people from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.
We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of SLAC members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Consequences
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, staff may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all SLAC spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other SLAC members or the general public.