Akrosphere Aerial & Circus Arts

Hi there. Jen here, owner of Akrosphere. I'm sorry your experience at Akrosphere was not what you wished it to be.We do have videos of the past student showcase that show the skills the students in their class have learned. (They were in the Akronauts class, which performed on the Saturday Showcase...a link to download your showcase was emailed to you, and you also had the opportunity to attend the show in person as well. Email us at [email protected] and let me know if you didn't download the show from the link, and I will send you a new link). The Akronauts students performed on aerial silks (knotted into a sling) at this particular performance, and each child performed the moves they chose to showcase: moves they were taught leading up to the showcase were the back straddle, the pigeon, the climb up to spider, the press-out, sit to stand, boots, cocoon, front and back sail, and a number of other moves on aerial silks / sling. (They work on other apparatuses as well.). They are all outlined in our standardized class syllabus for 5-7 year olds.Scheduled make-up classes are necessary in a circus studio, and it's true we do not allow "drop-in make-ups". This is so that no class reaches a number higher than 10-12 students; we keep our classes small for safety reasons and also to ensure all students get enough time on the equipment. For their Akronauts class, we employ 1 head coach plus 2-3 coaching assistants, depending on the number of students in the class and which apparatus they are working on that day. That number of coaches is necessary for that number of students that age, and suddenly adding a student or two dropping in to make up a class changes the hired number of coaches necessary for that class. It's a safety issue, a coaching issue, and an "equal time on the apparatuses that day" issue. (We rig the appropriate number of apparatuses for the number of students attending.). So yes, we schedule our make-ups.Classes missed within a month of showtime are allowed to make up the classes AFTER the performance. The month leading up to showtime we do not schedule make-ups because each class is working on their own performance piece, and these pieces are different from class to class. So if a student tried to make up a class during that time, they would end up sitting and watching the other class rehearse. This is why we schedule those missed classes for after the performance.Our money return policies are pretty much the same as most dance studios.All of our policies are discussed on our Studio Policies Page available on our website, and upon signing up, parents check boxes to agree to the policies. So none of these are "surprises". They are also all outlined in our New Family studio handbook, which gets emailed out to families who join our studio. (We also send reminders throughout the year about things like "starting in two weeks we enter our no make-ups time in preparation for showcase". We always encourage all parents to read the studio policies in full prior to signing up, and we mention this multiple times (with links) on our website.I am truly sorry your experience at Akrosphere was not what you wanted it to be. Your children are missed, and they are welcome back any time.