Raven: Sylvana Tapia and Kyla Ernst-Alper
Interview conducted on February 05, 2020
by Dan Locke
Daniel Locke: What is an aerial performer?
RAVEN: An aerial performer is a physical performer utilizing an apparatus (or multiple apparatus) suspended from the ceiling. We are primarily known for our performances on Lyra, which is a steel hoop, and straps. For our performances, we do not use safety harnesses or crash mats.
What was your up bring like?
Kyla – I was born in New York, raised in Brattleboro VT, which is a little culturally-rich town filled with New York transplants, and moved to NYC halfway through high school to take a job with a ballet company. My parents are educators who I’ve lovingly called type-A hippies. I always knew that I wanted to be a performer living in NYC, and they supported my determination to make that a reality. When I was 9 I went to a sleep-away ballet summer camp and my parents gave me a troll doll with a pin on it that said “question authority”.
Sylvana – Born in Port Jefferson, NY and raised in a very nothing town called Selden, NY out on Long Island. Third child, youngest, and only girl to two immigrant parents from Ecuador, my household was an odd mix of liberal and conservative. My parents worked for a bunch out in Queens (drove out every morning, came back around (9/10/11 pm) , so I was largely raised by a nanny named Inocencia. She didn’t drive or speak any English, so she rode in cabs with me to and from dance class when I was young. My parents put me in dance class because it was something to do, plus fostering body awareness at a young age makes for a graceful woman down the line. They never intended for me to become a dancer, much less an aerialist in NYC nightclubs.
How did you two meet?
The NYC aerial community is quite small, and an aerialist and circus director named Nicki Miller initially tried to introduce us, saying that we had qualities and backgrounds that seemed very much in sync. We were both wary and awkward, so nothing came of that, however, we both ended up in a show by Cynthia Von Buhler called Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic, in which we spent a great deal of time sitting inside a giant aerial chandelier waiting to descend from the ceiling and perform a group aerial act. A few months later, Sylvana’s aerial partner had an offer she couldn’t refuse, leaving Sylvana with a short contract with The Burlesque Show and no partner. We did The Burlesque Show in Atlantic City, and it went so well that we decided to make two new acts to perform at the Slipper Room back in NYC. Those performances went really well and people responded so enthusiastically to what we were doing together. That was 4 years ago!
Tell me about the Burlesque Show?
It’s a burlesque and variety show that is produced by Alan Valentine at The Borgata in Atlantic City. It was our first gig together.
How did you get your name?
We wanted a stage name that wouldn’t give away the number of people on stage, and so often in cabaret shows, the act name is announced before the act. One of the first acts that we created was an abstract nightmare. It opens with an image of what appears to be one person wrapped in a bedsheet, only to shift and reveal that there are two identical people. We’ve since continued to explore themes of duality, dreams, and nightmares in our acts. We also like to refer to ourselves as a band, and RAVEN is often more than just the two of us. Any act that involves someone pulling lines or operating a motor means that we’re working as a trio – that person is an integral part of the act, and thus they become a part of RAVEN for that performance.
How long have you been performing?
Kyla – I’ve been performing professionally since I was 16. I started my career dancing for Ballet Tech, a contemporary ballet company in NYC directed by Eloit Feld.
Sylvana- I started dancing when I was a child—the usual 2-year-old classes in a “Dolly Dinkle” type studio out in Selden. They throw you on stage during those early years, and as I became a pre-teen I can’t really say that I enjoyed the experience at the time. The girls were mean. There was a weird hierarchy with the girls on the competition team, and I remember an encounter with the studio owner’s daughter, who said she didn’t want to be friends with me because of the color of my skin. It was AWFUL. I didn’t realize that I could sublimate my anxiety into performances until way later–right when I entered high school in 2003. St. John the Baptist DHS had just started their dance program that year, and I became obsessed with this new approach to dance for me–dance as an art, as a way to channel everything I felt was wrong about myself into a dialogue with an audience. Before, I didn’t get the point–it was just another unwelcomed source of anxiety for me.
How do you get ready for a performance?
Kyla – It depends on what the performance is, but generally I like to do a full warmup and training session, then eat and do my hair and makeup, and then do another shorter warmup for 15-20 minutes before performing.
Sylvana- Depends on the day and the gig. There’s the ideal–having time to train earlier in the afternoon, rolling into work, doing your makeup casually, then waking the body up again before hitting the stage. Every day is different and every day I am different. Sometimes I’m emotionally depleted and I need to take a moment to be alone and meditate instead of drilling skin-the-cats before a show.
How do you handle copyright while using music in your performance?
I’d ask a question back as part of our answer — how do DJs and nightclubs handle using copywritten music? Generally, the music that we use is either a custom remix by Beep Iams, our frequent collaborator, or is a track by a musician who is a little less mainstream. We try to reach out to give artists a heads up that we use their music, and generally, they’re thrilled to have their music be used in this way. No one has ever said, “don’t use my music”. Sam Amidon, for example, is a brilliant artist whose song O Death we use for a rope duo, and was super sweet about us using his music. Unions is a fantastic band that created a dope cover of Sex & Candy that we just used for our act at the Teaser Festival (a burlesque festival) in New Orleans… they were awesome and reposted a video of us performing to their track on their Instagram.
What is RAVENradio?
Our frequent collaborator Beep Iams created that series inspired by music that we perform to and places that Sylvana and I traveled to one summer (London, Spain, and France).
Have you done any dancing/aerial for movies, television or video?
Kyla – I’ve been in some music videos, I’ve been on FBI on CBS (basically as myself, an aerialist rehearsing aerial fabric in a nightclub before doors open), High Maintenence and Younger (as an aerial performer in a nightclub)
Sylvana- Yes! I’m bad at keeping track of these but my resume reminds me, I was on “Younger” and “The Detour” hanging out on an aerial moon. I also did some tissu for “Live Your Light,” a documentary film by Jendra Jarnagin for Canon. Oh! I’ve done a few music videos–I’m blanking on the last one I did, but you can catch me for a moment doing tissu in “No Me Acuerdo” with Thalia and Natti Natasha and if you want a laugh you can YouTube Jon Hugo’s “Make Out With Me” to see what I looked like without long hair or facial piercings ages ago. 😉
Sylvana- What type of photography do you do?
Analog is my jam. I still shoot in color film when I travel to keep my eye sharp. I haven’t had the time to delve into photography the way I used to, but one of my favorite projects involved photographing the body without having the full subject present or in a frame. I took “samples” from people I cared about and made black and white, blown-up contact prints as a form of abstract portraiture for a while. On the more commercial side, I used to shoot headshots and dance shots for my homies and had a penchant for shooting live bands during my more emo days.
Sylvana- Have you looked into video?
I’ve thought about video, not necessarily looked into it though! The closest I came was making a few stop motions in college, but that’s just because it’s an extension of my love for analog practices. I’m still a photo nerd though–I love the feeling of holding my breath when I snap the shutter, even more when the image begs for perfect timing. You have to see the future.
Sylvana- Tell me about Sister to the Sun and how it lies between human and animal ego and instinct?
If I’m going to be the most real here, I’ll let you know that sister to the sun is my long time internet handle (from circa 2005/2006) inspired by a My Chemical Romance song called “Sister to Sleep.” I’ve looked to the moon for guidance and reassurance in Self for a long time, and so I figured to myself, “if the sister to Sleep is Death, then the sister to the Sun must be the Moon.” It’s funny how an internet handle can be so “you” that it just becomes your stage name.
The moon has its own shadow side and light side, much like we have our instincts and our ego. I see and study this dynamic in my personal life and give myself license to explore this further as a performer. It’s a sort of therapy, really.
Kyla- What was the Chicago Party?
Several of our acts are to remixes created by one of our main musical collaborators, Beep Iams (bpms), a Chicago native now based in NYC.
The Chicago Party shows that I produced with Beep resurrected the 1982 UHF public-access television show called The Chicago Party, which was filmed at the CopHer Box II nightclub. In an attempt to evolve from a post-disco era, the nightclub hosts presented electronic soul groups, r&b singers, and punk-funk bands. Local variety talent performed acts and skits to the music, crafting an entertaining (and occasionally absurd) peak into Saturday nights in the club.
In 2015 Numero Group released a compilation of remastered music from the original Chicago Party, “Ultra High Frequencies: The Chicago Party” which was packaged with video clips from the 23 episodes. Beep received the compilation as a gift and was immediately inspired to create a remix album. We used his first remix, using the song Burning Up, for a comedic aerial act inspired by Solid Gold dancers and the Chicago Party dancers, and the idea for a full-length Chicago Party show was born.
We produced two versions of The Chicago Party, and maybe someday when we have time and brain space, we’ll produce it again!
Kyla- How are you going to take your video production to the next level? You have already done things for clients like MAC Cosmetics, Twitter, Logitech, AOL, CBS, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery, Playboy and Nephcure Foundation. What is your next step?
Producing – video or live shows – is something I can always go back to, but performing at this level is my focus for now. It is really hard to be a great aerial technician and a great producer at the same time.
Sylvana and I are lucky to perform all over the world, with brilliant and unique people, and we have had many bizarre, wild, and special experiences. We often talk about writing a book someday and I have loose plans to use recaps of our adventures as material for a tv series in the style of High Maintenance.
Have you tried to combine both art form photography/video and dance?
Kyla – I produced a dance on camera project for a few years called UnderOneDances, and with another collaborator, my dear friend Maxx Passion, I created a short film based on that series called UnderOneDances: in transit that was shown at the New York Transit Museum.
As RAVEN, we would love to do more with video, but it really comes down to time and resources. We have worked with some phenomenal photographers and really love doing photoshoot collaborations. I especially love when photographers come into a collaboration with their own ideas that were sparked by seeing us perform.
Sylvana- Absolutely! It comes down to time and timing–right now isn’t the time because there are other exciting things to work on. But during a slower period, like August–that’s when some passion projects can take flight.
How do you see yourself in 5 years?
We would love to work more frequently and directly with live music and DJs. Touring with a band or musician is a big goal of ours. This past year we performed at a private event and Lion Babe also performed. When Lion Babe was doing their soundcheck we were also rehearsing. Our focus was more on the height and space, it was an act we’ve done a million times to all different music tracks and DJ sets, so we just rehearsed our act to their music and had so much fun (Lion Babe is fire). We later found out that they were hoping that we would perform with them for the event show, but unfortunately the event producers hadn’t planned for that. We’re hoping to get to a point where those sorts of collaborations can actually happen!
Anything in closing?
Performing in clubs and at festivals is something we really love, but we always wish that we had more of a direct connection with the DJs. We generally have little to zero contact with the DJs, who often don’t seem to know that we are going to be performing throughout the night. Some DJs are really dope and it sounds like they make choices that are based on us being in the air, and it’s so magical, all that creative energy coming together with the people running lights and video walls, giving the crowd a few ultra-special moments… So yeah, integrating more with DJs is another goal.
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