Hanging from a rope, a harness or a hoop, Iranian women are flocking to gyms to perform aerial dance and sharing videos of their routines on social media. Others are quietly practising another form of self-expression – pole-dancing – in underground venues hidden from Iran’s security forces. In a theocracy where women are banned from riding motorbikes, singing in public or appearing outside without a hijab, aerial dance and pole dancing are revolutionary acts. Nearly three years after the death of Mahsa Amini kicked off the “Woman Life Freedom” protests, women’s gyms across Iran are offering a new sport: aerial dancing, or “aerial” for short. The demand is so high that, as one coach puts it, “you can’t find a gym without an aerial class”. Aerial dance is a form of acrobatic performance that has gained popularity around the world since the 1970s. It involves dancers executing athletic and artistic movements while suspended in the air, hanging from an apparatus such as a rope, a hoop, or a horizontal bar. In order to avoid repression by Iran’s Islamic regime, promoters of aerial dance …