If you run a studio, you are some of the hardest working people in this industry, and honestly, some of the most under-appreciated. You keep the lights on, hold the space, and show up for your coaches and students, often while running on fumes.

If you’re a coach, you’re probably carrying your own version of that: building your skills, saying yes to classes, and wondering how to afford the training that makes you better at what you do.

Either way, this question probably sounds familiar: HOW can I pay for teacher training and potentially the question may also arise WHO should pay for teacher training?

It’s a question a lot of people quietly wrestle with. This industry is still the wild west. There’s no established playbook, no shared convention, just a lot of people in a lot of different corners of the world doing their best to figure it out as they go.

Teacher training makes coaches better, safer, and more confident. This benefits the studio immensely, resulting in a positive learning environment, fewer incidents, and better student retention. For instructors, it opens doors to new opportunities, strengthens their credentials, and builds skills they’ll bring with them wherever they teach. Both sides benefit, it makes sense to think of the cost as something that could be shared.

How shared? These questions can help.

Does the coach teach only for one studio, or for several?
The more exclusive the relationship, the more the studio benefits, and the more of the cost it makes sense for the studio to carry.

Is there a commitment on both sides?
Training a coach with guaranteed hours and a long-term role is a different investment than training someone who picks up the occasional class. Commitment is what makes a bigger studio investment feel safe.

Is the training required or optional?
If the studio requires the training for safety, liability, or a consistent standard of teaching, it works more like equipment or insurance. It’s the cost of running the business. If it’s optional career development, a shared cost is more natural.

Is the training specific to the studio, or does it follow the coach everywhere?
Studio-specific methods are more the studio’s to fund. A credential that travels with the coach is more of a shared investment.

Seven Ways to Share the Cost

Whatever you land on, we’d encourage starting by deciding what portion the studio can cover, even if it’s small, and then choosing how the rest is handled.

1. Studio Subsidy

Shared Upfront Costs

A straight subsidy of a portion of the training, given as a gift with no payback. The coach takes on only the remainder, through any of the options below. This is the most generous place to start, and it can be layered onto every other model on this list.

2. Pro-rated commitment

Studio Investment or Shared Upfront Costs

The studio covers the full cost or a portion of the cost upfront, and the coach agrees to stay for a set period (say, 18 months). If they leave early, they repay a portion based on the time remaining. It’s often kinder than asking a coach to front the money, and it protects the studio’s investment in a way that feels fair to both sides.

3. Work Exchange

Studio Investment

The studio covers training, and the coach contributes hours in exchange by assisting or subbing classes, proctoring open gym, or working the front desk. If you go this route, value those hours fairly and make sure it’s something the coach chooses, not something that feels expected.

4. Milestone reimbursement

Coach Investment – Studio Reimburses

Tie reimbursement to outcomes. Certificate complete? Reimbursed . First 10 classes taught? Reimbursed. A class hits its target enrollment? Reimbursed. The reimbursement can be partial or full. The studio pays for what actually happens.

5. Tiered reimbursement

Coach Investment – Studio Reimburses

Studio reimburses a percentage the longer they stay: 25% at 6 months, 50% at 12, 100% at 24.

6. Pay-bump incentive

Coach Investment

Once the coach is certified they earn a higher pay rate for as long as they’re with the studio. It’s a lovely gesture and a clear way to honor growth.

7. Studio credit

Coach Investment

Studio offers membership credit, free classes, or open-studio time as credit to help offset part of the cost. It’s a low-cost way to give something that still feels meaningful.

A Quick Note Before You Decide

Rules around paid training time, work-trade, and repayment agreements vary by location, and some are more restricted than you’d expect. It’s worth checking your local labor rules (or talking with your accountant or an employment resource) before you put anything in writing.

One More Way to Lower the Cost: Group Perks

Everything above focuses on how studios and coaches share the cost of teacher training. But the overall price of the training is worth considering, too.

Some training providers offer incentives to studios that enrol multiple coaches. At Paper Doll Militia, for example, we’re introducing a new incentive program for our 2027 teacher trainings to help make training more accessible for studios and their teams.

Group enrollment from the same studio comes with built-in extras:

• 3 staff attend: studio owner or manager attends free
• 4 staff attend: a free studio owner support mentorship session
• 6 staff attend: a private Zoom group session arranged just for your studio

Sending a team also means your coaches train together, share the same language and standards, and can support each other afterward.

The Takeaway

You don’t need a perfect budget to invest in your coaches. You need a model that fits where your studio is right now, and that feels fair to the people you’re asking to grow with you. When coaches feel invested in, they tend to invest right back.

Coaches: if you’re reading this, feel free to share it with your studio owner as a conversation starter.

Studio owners: if you’ve found a creative way to do this in your own studio, we’d genuinely love to hear it. This industry grows when we share what’s working. 💜

Curious about our teacher trainings?

The post Who should pay for Teacher Training? appeared first on Paper Doll Militia.

You know the drill. Lubricate the joints, wake up the muscles, and if you’re about to attempt something splitty, for the love of god, warm up those hamstrings. We’ve all got that part down.

But there’s something else we could be incorporating into our warm up time…and honestly it’s pretty underutilized.

You can use that time to switch on your sequence brain and practice your flow.

🧠 Sequence Brain

In aerial training, you usually learn skills one at a time, in isolation. Then one day your instructor says “okay, now string a few of these together” and suddenly you realize sequencing is its own whole beast.

It’s a new part of the brain you have to switch on and train, just like any other.

Good news: your warm up is the perfect sneaky place to start training this. It helps you connect movements, focus on transitions, and practice memory recall for movement sequences, all before you ever leave the ground.

Try this in your next warm up 👇

Next time you warm up (or teach a warm up), build a few small flow sequences. Keep it simple, nothing long or complicated.

In circus, our warm ups love to borrow from gymnastics and fitness, which means we default to repetitive drill-style movement.

Instead, for these sequences, think about linking one movement into a new movement until you’ve got a short phrase.

Example: Shoulder Mobility – Drill Style

Example: Shoulder Mobility – Sequence Style

🌊 Finding Flow

Once you know the sequence, start layering in the flow.

“Flow” can mean a lot of things. Here, I mean attention to movement quality. When you start linking movements together, you’re building phrases instead of individual tricks, and your movement quality is what glues the transitions together and gives the phrase style and variety.

This is your chance to stretch your range as a mover. Pick a movement theme and play with it. For example, you can take that same shoulder sequence and now find full extension, letting it ripple from the shoulders and arms into the torso, the head, and the eyeline.

Example: Shoulder Mobility – Focus on Extension

If you’ve been wanting to level up your sequence and flow game in the air, start here, on the floor, in your warm up.

Need inspiration? Dance classes are already doing this brilliantly. Vinyasa flow yoga is another great place to steal ideas from.

Instructors, try this in your next class. Already doing something similar? Play with different movement themes to layer on top of a sequence:

🔹 Make a melty lunge sequence
🔹 Create a floppy cardio jump sequence
🔹 Draw floor circles with your feet

I know warm ups can go stale fast, and I know the urge to blow through them just to get to “the real training.” (Guilty 🙋‍♀️ more often than I’d like to admit.) Hopefully, this shakes up your warm-up routine a little.

The post Is This Missing From Your Warm ups appeared first on Paper Doll Militia.

Anyone who’s taken a dance class or two knows that there’s a structure to most dance classes. 1) Start with warm-up 2) move into technique practice and 3) finish with choreography. Meaning….you learn the teacher’s choreographed routine. (set to music!) This is one of the primary tools that dancers use when developing their craft.

It was ingrained in me early on that stepping into someone else’s choreography was an integral part of the artistic process. It wasn’t just about learning the moves—it was about learning how to move through someone else’s vision, and expanding your own creative style in the process.

So, when I found my way into the world of circus and aerial arts, I was actually a bit surprised to see the classes seemed to be missing this very important element. Of course it makes sense to be focused on building strength, skills and mastery of the apparatus, especially in the beginning. But once the student has developed enough skills and endurance to execute sequences that would be a ripe time to start learning aerial choreography, right? But when it comes to aerialists, the learning trajectory is often quite different.

It’s much more common to have the aerialist’s entry point into performance be… drum roll please….Act Creation! Usually in some form of student showcase event. A lot of attention (and pressure) is put on the student to create their own piece, and find their own unique style. Now don’t get me wrong, one of the things that I LOVE about aerial arts, that sets it apart from the path of the dancer or actor, is the permission to be your own artist and creator. Aerialists, by the nature of our art form, frequently create our own acts, embracing the freedom of personal style development. While this autonomy is fantastic, it leaves many aerialists with a gap in their education: learning other artists’ choreography.

Now I know I’m making a giant generalization, and there are some fantastic choreography classes out there that do exactly this…teach their students to learn aerial choreography. But I didn’t experience this in my own circus education at all. Then later, when traveling the world and visiting dozens upon dozens of studios I would say that this is the exception, not the rule.

Is it a sequence, or choreography?

Before we go any further, I think it’s important to distinguish the difference between an aerial sequence and a piece of choreography. An aerial sequence is the bones of the choreography. It’s the foundation that everything else will be layered upon. What are the layers? Musical cues, movement quality, gestures and dynamic tempo changes. Choreography also can introduce concept, story, and character work into the movement.

Ok, so what’s the benefit?

Why does this matter? Why should an aerialist spend time learning other people’s choreography? I see SO many benefits to this practice that are far-reaching and can transform your artistic practice in ways you might not expect.

1. Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

We all have certain moves, tricks, and sequences that we love to do. It’s what makes our style our style. But, sticking only to what you know can limit your growth. When you learn someone else’s choreography, you’re essentially stepping into their creative mind, pushing yourself to try movements you wouldn’t normally choose. This might mean learning new aerial transitions or even discovering unconventional ways of combining moves you already know.

I’ll be honest—there’s a vulnerability in learning choreography that’s different from creating your own. When you’re improvising or crafting a routine, you’re following your own creative impulses. It feels safe, familiar. But when you step into someone else’s choreography, you’re in unknown territory. You’re not just learning steps—you’re absorbing another person’s artistic vision, which can be uncomfortable at first.

Choreography, especially someone else’s, often requires you to move in ways that feel foreign. That’s a good thing. It stretches your movement vocabulary and shows you there’s more than one way to express the same idea in the air.

2. Expanding Your Movement Vocabulary

One of the best parts about learning choreography is gaining access to a completely different language of movement. Each choreographer brings their own life experience, body awareness, and creative vision into their work. When you learn choreography from someone else, you’re borrowing pieces of that language. Over time, this builds a rich movement vocabulary that you can draw on in your own work.

For aerialists, this is especially important because it helps break away from the common patterns and tricks we might get stuck in. Learning someone else’s choreography opens your eyes to different methods of storytelling, musicality, and spatial awareness. Bonus, it also challenges your body in ways that ultimately make you stronger and more versatile.

3. Finding Inspiration for Your Own Work

Ironically, one of the best ways to find your own voice as a performer is to dive into someone else’s. As you learn another’s choreography, you inevitably stumble upon moments that resonate with you—whether it’s a particular movement phrase, an emotional tone, or a way of transitioning between tricks. These moments plant seeds of inspiration that can later bloom into your own unique ideas.For aerialists, choreography can unlock new ideas for rigging, apparatus exploration, or even combining floor and aerial work in unexpected ways. By studying a variety of choreographic styles, you become more adept at crafting your own, developing a style that’s informed, rich, and distinctly yours.

4. It Opens Doors

Being able to learn and perform choreography is a skill that can set you apart. If you’re only accustomed to working solo, in your own style, you might miss out on group work, collaborative performances, or even the chance to tour with established companies.

Many choreographers and directors look for aerialists who are flexible not just physically but artistically—those who can adapt to different choreographic styles, learn material quickly, and bring a fresh perspective. If you’ve trained yourself to learn other people’s choreography, you’re giving yourself a valuable edge.

5. Cultivating Discipline and Focus

Learning choreography isn’t always easy. It requires discipline, attention to detail, and patience—all traits that are crucial for growth in the performing arts. You have to commit to remembering sequences, perfecting timing, and refining your technique. This focused practice helps build the discipline you need not just for aerial but for any creative endeavor.

For aerialists, this can be particularly challenging because the choreography may also involve timing your movements with rigging, understanding spatial awareness in the air. But with this challenge comes incredible reward, as you gain agility in both your mind and body.

Looking ahead – Work with us!

For aerialists who are used to flying solo in more ways than one, learning other people’s choreography might feel like a strange and unfamiliar path. But the benefits are undeniable (and it’s fun!) So, if your studio or instructor offers an opportunity to learn someone else’s choreography, take it! If you have a training group, try an exchange where each aerialist develops a short piece of choreography for the others to learn. You might just find that this practice unlocks new levels of artistry and creativity.

Many moons ago, I offered a choreography-based series at Kinetic Arts Center in Oakland, CA, and it was one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taught. Well, I’m getting back to it again, with a very special online workshop series with Saffron Van Rossem.Join us for a 3-part online workshop series, as we delve into concept-driven aerial choreography. Drawing from our current aerial theatre project, Homeostasis, which visually represents the human nervous system through rope and explores the “fight, flight, freeze, and fawn” responses, we’ll share our methods and discoveries.

Choreography Workshop on Aerial Silks | Surge: Fight Mode

With Rain Anya

Apparatus: Aerial Silks

Saturday, October 5th @ 2pm-4pm EST

Choreography Workshop on Aerial Sling | Soar: Flight Mode

With Saffron Van Rossem

Apparatus: Aerial Sling

Saturday, October 12th @ 2- 4pm EST

Creative Workshop on ANY apparatus | Somatic Theatre – The Stories of the Body

With Rain Anya & Saffron Van Rossem

Any Apparatus

Saturday, October 19th @ 2pm-4pm EST

Cost: $50 (live workshop or replay)

Only 8 slots available for each live workshop

These workshops are geared toward aerialists at an intermediate or advanced level.

All proceeds go towards the production costs of creating Homeostasis, an aerial theatre production currently in its development phase. In the United States, raising funds for the arts is an ongoing challenge, as creative projects often struggle to receive the financial backing they deserve. By supporting working artists, you help sustain the lifeblood of cultural innovation, ensuring that vital stories and unique perspectives continue to reach and inspire communities. For those who would like to donate additional funds toward the project, here’s a link to donate.

The post Borrowed Moves, Original Growth: The Art of Learning Choreography appeared first on Paper Doll Militia.