Lifting Her Spirits

In children, this can lead to "gigantism," or extreme height. In Neimanis's case, however, the physical changes were more subtle. Her rib cage and feet expanded (she went from a size 7 1/2 shoe to a 10), while an onslaught of testosterone gave her the surging strength and sense of invincibility.

In time, acromegaly might have crippled or even killed her, as it can lead to joint, heart and kidney problems. Risky brain surgery to remove the tumor was necessary. But from Neimanis's point of view, the tumor was all good. The cure -- which meant shrinking feet, thinner arms -- was nothing to celebrate.

The operation was a success, but, at age 32, the patient was a wreck.

"I was like a heavyweight fighter who had his steroids cut off," Neimanis says. "I wasn't really happy afterwards." The change was radical; the feeling of weakness, immediate. Who was she now? she wondered. How would she go on performing?

"All that stuff I thought was me was actually a tumor," she says dryly. She began pondering how to get her physical power back. One night, she dreamed of stage curtains opening to reveal delighted children swinging on trapezes. And her path became clear.

Aerial performance, says Neimanis, became a way "to recapture that kind of presence of body."

But she wasn't interested in the acrobatic Cirque du Soleil type of aerial work. Neimanis wanted to get off the ground as a way to enhance her acting. She began studying with aerial dance pioneer Terry Sendgraff in Oakland, Calif., who was no stranger to using flying apparatus for self-empowerment. Sendgraff, a breast cancer survivor, performed an aerial work after her mastectomy, wearing nothing but a G-string.

Neimanis has known a few other aerialists who have survived brain tumors, and Sendgraff says women often gravitate to aerial work after a hardship because of its symbolism and the extreme focus it requires.

"You're rising above it all," Sendgraff, 73, said in a phone interview. "It's a challenge to the nervous system. . . . You're not just in your mind anymore."

The especially intense Neimanis, recalls Sendgraff, took to that idea right away: "She was not willing to settle back and be secure."

Neimanis's first aerial work explored her experience with the tumor, down to a surgical scene that took place on a trapeze. "The idea of hanging in midair was a big metaphoric idea -- the idea of suspension, of trusting one's own strength," Neimanis says.

"It really allowed me to tell my story."

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Neimanis still bears vestiges of hormonal overflow; she is so full of extra calcium, she says, that she can fling herself violently around the cockpit in "Air Heart," simulating Earhart's crash, and never break a bone. Her torso has retained its breadth, though the muscles have been rebuilt through hard work.

She has struggled to find a niche for her hybrid art form in the performance world. "I'm too much of an actor for the dancers and too much of a dancer for the actors," she laments. Performance opportunities are limited; mostly, she teaches.

She moved to Baltimore three years ago to pursue an MFA at Towson University, where she met her husband, Bryce Butler, a fellow actor. She wrote the script for "Air Heart"; he directed it. Another key partnership developed through the Creative Alliance's live-work art space, where Neimanis met sculptors Laura Shults and Tim Scofield, who made her plane.

Strength has taken on a different meaning for her now. Neimanis took up aerial work to get back her sense of the superhuman. The irony is it returned to her a powerful notion of humanity. For that is what physical theater lends itself to best. Think of the street-corner mime, or of the Tony Award-winning actor-mime Bill Irwin (Neimanis is a fan). They bring to light the Everyman. They explore why we laugh -- and particularly, why we fail.

Think of Earhart. "We don't like to think of it this way, but Amelia Earhart's story is about failure," Neimanis says. "She failed. But she also triumphed in the failure. Her mystery continues to feed us."

It feeds Neimanis in both complex and simple ways. She relates to the aviator as a woman who would not be bound, as a high-energy daredevil, as an addict of the air. Neimanis's obsession with flight may take a different form from Earhart's, but she feels they have asked a similar question: How can we translate our dreams? "Can my body do what my imagination wants it to do?" Neimanis asks.

"When I go into that studio and I'm playing with the trapeze," she continues, her pale eyes the color of high, open sky, "I feel like I know how she felt when she was up in the air alone -- just her and her plane and she has peace and quiet.

"I am sure -- I am sure-- that it's the same thing I feel."

Air Heart opens Friday at 9 p.m. at the Scientarium, 709 D St. NW. $15. Through July 29. 866-811-4111 or http://www.capfringe.org.