As Aurelia Anne Cohen spun her silk tower at Bisbee’s 2026 New Year’s Eve Celebration, the audience gasped at midnight as she lit the fuse in a shower of sparks from the top of her threaded spire as high as the crane would allow her to fly. It seemed to rhyme with the coming dangerous year as below from her backside under the 1930’s band shell, the Bisbee band Locomundi scored her whirling tumult in her costume that would put a French Revolution back into action. And down below her, this version of Toy Box did just that, a court of jesters and protesters on stilts and carrying signs in the truly dazzling and bejeweled lily white and coatimundi-striped costumes as they danced and marched their predicaments in the mist of the night preceded by an equally audacious parade that refused to bow to rain.
Directed and choreographed by Aurelia and Nadia Hagen with the daredevil acrobatic, pyrotechnic and circus theatre of Flam Chen from Tucson, and sponsored by the Bisbee Arts Commission. It was a much desired return to an old relationship between the group and Bisbee’s NYE. When not being a very special mom, or musician, or wearing her many other hats as an artist, Aurelia Anne Cohen has often been visible as one of their stars in many of their extravagances. She also has been active with many other groups over the years, such as for the non–profit Many Mouths One Stomach; a developer of the Tucson Circus Arts Aerial program; a principle performer with The Carpetbag Brigade; an aerialist, dancer and designer with Anatomia Dance Collective, and for Shadow Tender as an assistant director/costume designer and choreographer. Shadow Tender was presented in the 2017 World Stage Design Festival in Taipei. flamchen.com/happy-new-year-from-bisbee/
Aurelia Anne Cohen is an aerialist and pyrotechnic acrobat, an actor, vocalist, freak designer, choreographer, songwriter, director, and player of multiple musical instruments with natural beauty and tension. For every of her projects in any of these areas she often wears multiple
figurative and literal hats, such as she did with the unforgettable Toy Box production in Bisbee. By the weekend of this article she’ll have performed her new album release The Magnolia Sessions at The Drifter Gallery starting at 6pm Friday, January 30th 2026. The Magnolia Sessions is a whole collaborative project on it’s own through Anti-Corp Music. This recent installment featured two new albums including this one from Aurelia Anne Cohen. Find out more with all the You Tube and album links at https://newnoisemagazine.com/news-the-magnolia-sessions-series-returns-with-new-albums
But she doesn’t stop there because this powerful Bisbee show kicks off her beautifully peopled yet solo tour for the month of February (so far ending March 3rd in Phoenix) spanning Prescott AZ, Washington State, Los Angeles, California, and many obscure but interesting small towns along the way. She’ll be playing her haunting folk ballads, often with her Bisbee Barnswallows bandmate, the beautifully gifted muse of the rails Maybel’s Fables. ( instagram.com/maybelsfables ) Many other talented friends will be joining Aurelia along the way in what seems like an alchemical tour of lifelong collaborations from the road. Further into the Spring, and into the summer, hopefully we can catch Auralia sitting in with some of the artists and groups she has grown with in Bisbee, such as Juniper Djinn, The Barnswallows, Intuitive Compus and Jason Dea West, as well as others. Aurelia also teaches aerial stretch classes, tutors aerial arts, and contracts as an event/fitness consultant: email at aerialacrobataa@gmail.com. It was in 2010 that Aurelia met the troubadour singer and songwriter of the road, Jason Dea West, prompting her dive into her long desired drive to learn an instrument to back up her singing and songwriting. Aurelia has created original music and toured extensively with Dea West since then as the group Intuitive Compass. instagram.com/jasondeawest instagram.com/aureliaannecohenintuitive-compass.com aureliaannecohen.bandcamp.com/track/father-time
“Originally from Tucson Arizona, Aurelia trained in Classical Ballet, Folk Dance and Theater in her youth. Her grandmother, Stephanie Stigers Varon, a celebrated ballerina began her granddaughter’s training at age 3. Moving to the Navajo reservation at age 8 and then down to the boarder of Mexico at 11 caused her life view to diversify at an early age. At 14 years old, she discovered the aerial arts, joining a dance company as the youngest performing member and soon entered the world of professional physical theater, spectacle and circus arts. She began traveling, teaching, and performing internationally in 2006 and hasn’t stopped. Having learned the structure and discipline of ballet early on, she was drawn to alternative movement methods as a way to process grief, joy, fear and the wide array of human experiences and emotions. The practice of channeling reality through the filter of living art is her medium.” – https://www.aureliacohen.com/
Photos credited to Karel Moonen, Jeff Smith and others found at Aurelia’s website above.
Ken Boe is an artist and poet living in Bisbee, Arizona. You may subscribe to his Poem At Night series and more at www.patreon.com/kenboe or visit his website www.kenboe.com He is the founder and provocateur of the Bisbee Poetry Normalization Project. #BPNP Find more Strange Beauty articles by Ken Boe at the Bisbee Buzz, www.bisbeeAZ.com