A recipient of the Gerbode Foundation’s 2021 Choreography Award, Veronica is a professional aerialist with 20 years of performing and teaching experience. She is currently Aerial Director for Celebrity Cruises and RWS Entertainment.
Veronica Blair has studied with some of the most celebrated and prominent artists in her field, including trapeze great LaNorma Fox, Ringling Bros. first African-American Aerialist Pa-Mela Hernandez, and the renowned “God Father of the Tissu” Gérard Fasoli of Centre National des Arts du Cirque.
Veronica started her acrobatic career at the age of 14 with Make*A*Circus, a community based circus. In addition she trained Chinese Acrobatics under Master Lu Yi with the San Francisco Youth Circus. Her first professional performance was at the age of 17, making her one of the youngest professional African-American trapeze artists in the U.S. Shortly after, Veronica was personally selected by Cedric Walker, the founder of Universoul Circus, as a single trapeze artist. Under Mr. Walker’s supervision, Veronica rapidly developed as an aerialist, and was the show’s resident aerialist for 5 years.
Veronica has since performed with several other renowned groups and productions around the globe such as Universal Studios Japan, Zaccho Dance Theatre and Germany’s “AFRIKA! AFRIKA!” She was the featured aerialist in KAMAU’s “BooDha” music video for Warner Bros. Music and her work has been featured in the San Francisco Aerial Arts Festival as well as the Seoul Street Arts Festival in Seoul, South Korea.
Veronica’s experience as a show director choreographer has emerged out of her extensive experience as a performer. She is a choreographer who has shown, in the words of Zaccho’s Dance Theatre Founder, Joanna Haigood, “tremendous potential as an artist.” Veronica is a technical virtuoso who uses social themes and storytelling to craft contemporary aerial performances centering around the Black experience in America. The dramatic results yield a new kind of expression that transcend the spectacle of entertainment. Digitally, Veronica has produced three circus films including “THE CROWN”, “ON THE FENCE” and “GORGEOUS”.
Expanding her portfolio beyond performing, Veronica launched the “The Uncle Junior Project” (UJP) in 2010. The multi-media documentary project shines a light on the careers and legacies of African-American circus performers, including Emanual “Uncle Junior” Ruffin who remained largely uncredited for his contributions to American Circus until after his death. With the support of now Mayor London Breed, she created an exhibition based on the project entitled “Entrapment to Entertainment: A Celebration of Blacks in American Circus” in 2013. The exhibition ran for 3 months at the African American Art and Culture Complex in San Francisco’s historic Fillmore district. The exhibition was free of cost and had over 1,000 attendees.
In 2017 she was invited to speak at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival about her experience with circus and filmmaking and served as organizer and moderator on a panel highlighting the African-American circus experience.
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