Students trained each year
Class visits every year
Years combined instructor experience
Average rating on Google
As Thieves of Flight, the troupe has anchored the Lawrence Busker Festival year after year and performed everywhere from Union Station to the Nelson-Atkins to Starlight Theater, and the performers on those stages train right here in this studio. The classes and the stage have never been separate: students who want to perform get real audiences, as big as the Kauffman Center, and a few alumni have gone on to Cirque du Soleil and The Wynn or opened studios of their own.
Before Voler existed, Rachel McMeachin watched a student walk out of a movement class in tears, crushed by scorekeeping that had nothing to do with getting stronger. She decided Kansas City needed a different kind of studio.
Five years later Rachel bought a former Russian Orthodox church, built in 1917, with twenty-foot ceilings and the original congregational windows. We’ve been flying there ever since.
The recognition came the same way the students did, on its own. Our students put Voler on the ballot for The Pitch’s Best of KC, where it won Best Fitness Class and Best Fitness Instructor. Rachel’s way of describing the job hasn’t changed since the loft days: “I teach a person to climb so they know how to rise.”
Voler runs on a simple belief: nobody should have to already be an athlete to build physical strength, and have fun doing it.
So there are no tryouts here and nobody keeps score. Every class relies on safety progressions, where you learn each skill low and take it higher once you’re confident. Every body is welcome, and that includes neurodivergent students, who often find that the rest of the world drops away once they’re in the air.
If leaving the floor sounds like too much for day one, aerial yoga keeps your feet close to it while you build the same strength.
Founder & Lead Instructor
20+ years performing and teaching movement
Rachel opened Voler in 2007 and has been teaching Kansas City aerial arts ever since. The Pitch named her Best Fitness Instructor in its Best of KC awards, on a ballot her students put her on. Her teaching mantra: “Play as you go!”
Dance Instructor & Youth Program Co-Lead
25+ years performing and teaching movement
Jade is a classically trained dancer, and movement is the lens she teaches through. She co-leads the kids and teens program, where she makes space for the kids who don’t always know where they fit in yet, because that’s who she was.
Wellness Instructor & Youth Program Co-Lead
15+ years teaching movement, Pilates, and bodywork
Emily is a certified Pilates instructor and aerial artist, and she leads Voler’s wellness side, including aerial Pilates and sound baths. She co-leads Voler’s kids and teens program.
Aerial Instructor
25+ years performing and teaching movement
Ann holds a BFA in Dance Performance from the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance and directs the Youth Dance Theater at City in Motion. She is also a licensed physical therapy assistant, which is exactly the eye you want on a body twenty feet up.
Start with intro aerial, or ease in through aerial yoga.
We warm you up and teach every skill low before you take it higher.
Watch "I can't" turn into strength in a room that cheers you on.
