Forchion then climbed into a harness dangling from a red oak tree in her backyard. “Keep your body still and long,” she said as she demonstrated how to climb a tree without hitting your head on it. “Kicking, climbing, coming in — and hugging a tree. … Very floating.”

“Arch … like a rainbow,” she later instructed a woman swinging from a white oak tree. “I want you to open.” She stretched her arm up and out as ambient music played from a speaker in her backyard.

At 53, Forchion says she loves tree dancing because it’s gentle on the body. “You can do somersaults, you can dance, you can fly, but you don’t have to worry so much about landing or the impact on your body,” she said. “The older I get as an artist, the more freedom I have in my possibilities.”

It also recalls her childhood, which she spent with her twin sister Elsie Smith and her settler parents on a tree nursery in the town of Huntington in western Massachusetts.

It wasn’t until their teens that the twins fell in love with acrobatics – thanks to Club Med. “We had the chance to fly on a trapeze,” Forchion said, adding that teachers noticed the sisters’ “naturally straight legs and pointed toes.” Both Serenity and Elsie won scholarships to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but left school halfway through to apprentice at a summer camp with a circus program. Smith went to Canada, where she taught trampoline lessons while Forchion went on a national tour with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.

“I did an aerial act with a group, rode elephants and danced,” said Forchion. “It was incredible. I wish I had realized how cool it was back then.”

After stints with Cirque du Soleil and a trapeze duo performance in Europe and China, the sisters landed in southern Vermont, where their father runs a sawmill and raises cattle. They used his barn as a trapeze rehearsal space and formed their own theater company, Nimble Arts, in 2002, which hosts the tree dancing workshops. Five years later, they founded the nonprofit training school New England Center for Circus Arts. In 2017, after a decade of growth, the sisters were fired by the board, a move that sparked strikes and resignations; within weeks, they were reinstated in their leadership positions.

Forchion discovered harness racing while working in England and brought it back to Brattleboro. In “Vertical Dance,” she said, “we dance on walls, which is really fun because you can kind of paint with people’s bodies.” When COVID-19 hit, she moved her performance venue outside and eventually crossed paths with her future collaborator, Mark Przekurat, her aerialist’s arborist. Among other things, they share an interest in the human impact on trees, including the effects of climate change.

Though it’s more dance than dendrology, Forchion’s tree dancing workshop also includes a tour of the woods that border her home. On Sunday afternoon, she led participants through “the history of the land,” pointing out white and red oaks (“The trees we climb are 50-75 years old”), sugar maples (threatened by climate change), diseased beech trees (“That’s a tree we’ll never dance in”), the habitat of a barred owl, her neighbor’s favorite meditation spot during the pandemic, her compost pile (“Salamander!” someone said excitedly), and finally, the blackberry bushes where a bear cub was recently found snacking.

Finally, Forchion shared some thoughts on land management. The obvious remained unsaid: anyone can dance At a tree, but you can’t dance with a tree, if you don’t understand. The cost of this entire training is about $500 for the weekend, including lunch and treats like a homemade plum tart. But for many of the participants, the experience is invaluable, and everyone has a different reason for doing it.

Michelle Mazzarella, who worked as Forchion’s assistant, travels the country as a circus performer and magician’s assistant, performing aerial feats and being sawed in half. Dancing in the tree offers variety. She loves the peace and quiet of the tree canopy – such a contrast to the other big top – and the fact that “every tree is unique,” she said. “Every time, it’s a different landscape to navigate as a dancer.”

Stuart Tsubota, a retired biology professor who has joined the Chinese staff, enjoys somersaults and cartwheels. “You can’t be averse to being upside down,” he says.

Boo Gershun of Bedford flies and likes to “fly high,” she said.

While tree dancing draws circus lovers, it also draws tree species like Hale Morrell, a Walpole, NH, forester who advises private landowners like Forchion. Morrell is a rock climber and had never tree danced until Sunday morning, when she climbed into the canopy of a white oak, hooked her legs around a branch and hung upside down, “just like you would on a jungle gym,” she said, adding that she was surprised by the sturdiness of the highest branches. “They’re not as delicate as you would think.”

Morrell isn’t sure how the tree dance experience will affect her work, but she thinks it will. At the very least, it has already given her a greater appreciation of the whole tree – “not just the trunk that you get your sawlogs and lumber from,” but also a sense of “what it’s like to be up in the canopy and among the leaves,” she said, smiling.

“The view of the animal world.”

The next tree dance workshop will take place from October 4th to 6th. For more information visit nimblearts.org.

You can reach Brooke Hauser at [email protected]. Follow her @brookehauser.