When dance takes flight
Rachael Lincoln doesn’t just dance on stages. She dances on walls, floats above the ground and teaches her students to rethink their relationship with gravity.
You never know what you’ll see on campus, but you probably don’t expect your professor to be dancing on the side of Meany Hall, unless, of course, your professor is Rachael Lincoln.
Lincoln, a professor and graduate program coordinator in the Department of Dance at the University of Washington, has danced on vertical surfaces all over the world. Now she has returned to the side of Meany Hall.
For Lincoln, though, the wall is just another place to dance.
Lincoln balances against the side of Meany Hall, suspended above the ground.
“Every time I walk by, I've wondered if I'd get to dance on that wall again."
Lincoln first performed vertical dance on the side of Meany Hall in 2016, performing Trisha Brown’s work, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, on the southwest façade of the building.
She performs with BANDALOOP, a pioneering vertical dance company that Lincoln has danced with since 1997.
“I had no idea that I’d be doing it 27 years later,” she says. “I do this all over the world, performing on structures often as free, public art, but it’s pretty rare that I actually get to do it in places that are the closest to home for me.”
This year, she finally got the chance.
Two dancers are suspended above Meany Hall, their silhouettes moving through choreography against the building’s brick wall. The video shifts between different angles, capturing the dancers’ movements from multiple perspectives.
Lincoln and her colleague Juliet McMains, a professor in the Department of Dance at UW, received the Kreielsheimer and Jones Large Grant. The pair set out to create a dance film that would activate spaces around Meany, working with dancer Wailana Simcock and a film crew over two weeks.
“Juliet is a burgeoning dance filmmaker and she’s really excited about opportunities for experimentation and learning within this genre,” Lincoln says. “And I’ve been looking for an excuse to get back on this wall for years.”
As a choreographer, Lincoln is especially interested in site-reactive work, using movement to respond to the place where a performance happens.
Rachael Lincoln (left) and dancer Wailana Simcock (right) perform a suspended dance sequence against the brick wall of Meany Hall. The dancers use harnesses and ropes to move through the choreography above the ground.
Lincoln (left) and Simcock (right) perform suspended movements along the exterior of Meany Hall, while their elongated shadows capture and echo their choreography across the brick facade.
Lincoln (left) and Simcock (right) move through a suspended sequence along the upper edge of Meany Hall.
Lincoln (left) and Simcock (right) are suspended at different points along the towering facade of Meany Hall.
Lincoln (left) and Simcock (right) perform suspended choreography above Meany Hall, using harnesses and ropes to move through the air in contrasting poses.
“I’m always interested in dance being responsive to the environment, which includes the viewers."
That connection between the environment and the audience is part of what makes vertical dance so compelling for her.
“I get excited when people see art in public spaces that changes their relationship to the places they might walk by everyday,” Lincoln says. “It can be disorienting in the best way.”
That relationship with gravity also follows Lincoln into her classroom. At UW, she teaches a yearly Low-Fly course in the Department of Dance, a form of vertical dance that takes place just a few feet above the ground.
Lincoln(middle) teaches a Low-Fly class at the University of Washington, guiding dancers through vertical dance techniques using ropes and harnesses close to the ground. Students practice floating, swinging and shifting their weight while moving through the studio.
“In Low Fly we use ropes and harnesses to work with momentum and weight close to the ground. Though it may not be as spectacular as dancing 60 feet up, there is still the ability to float, swing, and fly.”
The practice can affect how students move even after they leave the harness.
“The subtlest shift can affect how you make contact with the floor,” Lincoln says. “It can transform a dancers’ understanding of how to use weight, which translates back to dancing outside of a harness as well.”
Lincoln performs her own vertical dance choreography on the exterior of Meany Hall, extending her arms and lifting one leg as she moves along the brick facade.
After performing around the world, Lincoln says returning to UW carries a different kind of meaning. Meany, in particular, is where she teaches and spends much of her time.
“It bridges the research I do outside of teaching to my daily workplace,” Lincoln says. “It’s really gratifying to get to spend these two weeks with Juliet, the film crew, and Wailana focusing on making art together.”
For Lincoln, dance does not always need a stage. Sometimes, all it needs is a wall — and a willingness to see it differently.
Story by Emma Schwichtenberg // Photos by Samantha Stratman and College of Arts & Sciences, video by Juliet McMains
Originally published September 2026
