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WATCH: Aerial fitness students show off their skills

Aerialists Nora Catlin and Candice Paparo showed off their silk skills to a packed audience who gathered to watch their circus-like performance Saturday night at Aerial Fitness in Riverhead.

The two have been students at the studio for two years now, supplementing weekly aerial fitness classes with others offered at the studio, including pilates and yoga.

Aerial Fitness owner April Yakaboski said the performance was the studio’s first, making it a very special event.

Ms. Catlin is a floriculture specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension and Ms. Paparo is a senior mammal and animal trailer at Long Island Aquarium.

Ms. Catlin said she’s been hooked on doing aerial exercise since her first class two years ago, though she said at that time she wasn’t able to do much of anything and it took her months to learn how to do a tuck inversion, where one pulls herself up onto the silks, turns upside down and then slowly turns over again, coming to rest on the ground.

GIANNA VOLPE PHOTO | Aerialists Nora Catlin and Candice Paparo showed off their silk skills to a packed audience at Aerial Fitness in Riverhead Saturday.