High Alpine Aerial founder Marisa Feller has a long performance career in aerial arts, but she still remembers how difficult she found her first aerial class.

“The next day I was so sore, I could barely get my shirt on,” she said.

Though she had danced since she was 6 and trained at many elite programs — including Austin’s Dance Elite, Edge Performing Arts Center, New York City Dance Alliance — this was her first foray into aerial arts.

“It was so hard,” she said. “And that was part of the appeal. I felt like I had hit the ceiling with dance, but with aerial, it feels like there’s no ceiling.”

Some forms of aerial arts, which involves acrobatic and dance movements while the performer is suspended in the air, have been around a long time, but others are more recent. When Feller started in 2014, it took her a year to find a studio to train in aerial arts.

Even then, it required an hour’s drive into Los Angeles. Since then, it has become more popular.“There’s definitely been an increase in popularity since I started,” she said.

Starting in 2018, Feller trained for a year at Portland, Oregon’s, FlyCo, a pre-professional training program at the A-WOL Dance Collective. She worked in silks, lyra, trapeze, doubles, Chinese pole, sling, hand-standing and contortion. (She has yet to choose a favorite aerial apparatus.)

“I got to dip my toes in all these places,” she said. “After that, I felt I was capable of teaching other people.”

She then taught in Portland at the Circus Project, a nonprofit now called Echo West.

Feller moved to Ridgway four years ago, after meeting her husband, Logan, while skiing in Telluride. They lived in Portland for several years, but “he was not a fan of the rain,” she said, laughing. “So we moved back and it was an easy sell. It’s beautiful here.”

Feller has also worked as a real estate agent and she’s also a counselor.

“Personally, moving my body is so important to my mental health,” she said. “If I can force myself to do something difficult, then when something difficult out of my control comes up, it’s a bit easier to manage.”

Last year, Feller founded the Montrose- based High Alpine Aerial program, which offers classes in aerial arts for children and adults.

“I wanted to bring high-level training to this area,” she said.

It has been a success, selling out tickets at the Wright Opera House at its first show in March.

She said aerial is a good fit for the athletes in the region.

“I think that people who live here tend to be super strong and fit and like doing things that would be considered extreme by ‘normal’ people,” she said. “Here specifically, I think sporty people and their artistic side come together in this really natural way.”

Feller and her husband are expecting their first child, but she is still teaching and preparing classes for performances.

“I’m really still in shock and honored that people want to train with me and like aerial as much as I do.”