About the Artists

BENNY OYZON  (he/him) is an artist and civil engineer with 20+ years experience as an aerial acrobat, aerial rigger (on and off Broadway), martial artist, dancer, fire performer, and Pilates instructor. Notable credits include Broadway: Floyd Collins (aerial rigger); Off-Broadway: Breaking Surface (rigger, performer) and multiple projects with Lisa Giobbi, Grounded Aerial, ABCirque, and Only Child Aerial Theatre. He is continually creating different ways to find the beauty in nature and the magic in physics.

NICKI MILLER (she/her) is an interdisciplinary theatre maker, aerial artist, writer, and movement educator uplifting arts practices and performance that ignite the imagination, trouble the intellect, and nourish the body. Notable credits include co-founding artistic director of Only Child Aerial Theatre (with Kendall Rileigh 2012-2021), aerial designer and choreographer for The World is Round (Ripe Time, Brooklyn Academy of Music), and co-creator of Sticks & Stone (with Benjamin E. Oyzon, premiere The Performing Garage, 2022). Residencies include Cirkus Cirkör (Sweden), the 2016/17 New Victory LabWorks Program, the Santa Barbara Floor to Air Festival, Circus Sessions at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, 5th Wall Studio, and the Hupstate Circus Residency. Currently she is a 2026 New York Dance Force Choreographer’s Initiative awardee. She holds an M.F.A. in Theatre (focus on transdisciplinary aerial arts) from Sarah Lawrence College and is also an aerial choreographer and dramaturg for theatre and opera. www.nickimiller.com

Nicki and Benny are based in the ancestral and unceded land of the Esopus and Lenape people (known as the Hudson Valley in New York).

Friends & Supporters:

  • 5th Wall Studio (Brooklyn, NY)

  • Big Top Group

  • CreateART/Performance

  • Hudson Valley Circus Arts (Kingston, NY)

  • Hupstate Circus Residency (Ithaca, NY)

  • Leaps & Bounds/Take the Leap (Gardiner, NY)

  • NY Danceforce

  • O+ Festival (Kingston, NY)

  • The Performing Garage (NYC)

  • Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, NY)

  • Wildheart Center (Wallkill, NY)

  • Wild Arts Collective (Tillson, NY)

Collaborators:

  • Melody Bates (writer/performer All The Birds of the World)

  • Sarah Chien (dancer “The Great Turning”)

  • David Glista (production manager Sticks & Stone)

  • Effy Grey (production photographer)

  • Mandy Hackman (collaborator hypha)

  • Leighann Kowalsky (videographer multiple projects, collaborator hypha)

  • Gabrielle Lenhard (videographer)

  • Ben Lieberman (sound technician “Flesh & Blood”)

  • Mikhail Lipyanskyi (photographer)

  • Kallisti Milatou-Fakountou (production assistant “The Great Turning”)

  • Ethan Mast (stage manager Sticks & Stone)

  • John E. Oyzon (musical composer “Woodenstrawman” for Sticks & Stone; “Feedback Loop”)

  • Wendy Ploger (photographer)

  • Alexander Rivero (production photographer)

  • Adam Taylor (lighting co-designer Sticks & Stone)

  • Miles Wilder (musical composer “We Are Nature,” collaborator hypha)