monkeybird

Okay!  There was an incident with the music (short, "don't get me started" version: WMG seems to think their music will do better out in the wide world if no one is allowed to hear it, which seems strange to me, but what the hell do I know) so this week's act has no music.  Background noise, yes...but no music.  Hopefully this is not a recurring problem [laser-beam eyes at YouTube].

I encourage you to put on the song of your choice and pretend.  And then you can also say, "oh, Julia!  You have such good taste in music!"  Everybody wins.

Actually, this week has been full of incidents.  And I have learned many important lessons.  Such as: "Don't work on two sequences at the same time, because neither of them will be very good come Video Reckoning."  And also, "Make sure you know your choreography before you get up on the bar with the camera rolling."  And "If you insist on filming everything, bring extra batteries."  And maybe most importantly, "Invest in better rechargeable batteries, because, seriously?  All I get is TEN MINUTES?"

Important life lessons, friends.

Three unfortunate things:
1) I really did forget my sequence, so I was "improvising," i.e., a lot of this looks suspiciously like my act.  There are also a lot of "why am I up here again?" and "oh, my leg is supposed to be over here, actually," moments.
2) There was supposed to be a toe hang in the beginning, but guess who tore up the front of her foot/ankle* doing toe hangs on Friday? [raises hand]
3) It was much better with music. [more laser eyes]

Three excellent things:
1) It may look like my act, but the sucker is four minutes long!  I'm pretty proud of myself for coming up with anything four minutes long that's not exactly like my act.
2) Changing the speed of the spin in angel (when I stick my arm and leg out, then pull them in): I could do that all day.
3) That final spin?  The one with the one leg back?  Highly recommended.  You can crank up some speed there.  I could also do that all day, although I wouldn't be able to walk in a straight line afterward.

More next week!  Three to go!

--

*Is there a name for that part of the body where you hang in toe hang?  It's not really your foot OR your ankle.  May I propose: the fonkle?

If you didn't catch the post below: I am coming up with (and then posting video of) a new short sequence every week for the next five weeks.  My goals are:

-somewhat fresh choreography
-dust off those skills I don't use in my act...
-new music
-posted Sunday or Monday (YouTube gods willing)

Embarrassing anecdote about the song: for nigh on two years of listening to it, I have been mentally translating the title of this song as "a green bottom."  (Bottom as in what you sit on.)  Only tonight did it occur to me to check my high-school French: verre means glass, not green; turns out I was thinking of vert. (In my defense, they sound the same to my badly-trained ear.)  "A glass back" (i.e., of an object, not a person--according to my French dictionary) is more dignified than my translation, but not nearly as funny.

You guys!  I just had a cool idea:

I've been fooling around with different little mini-sequences on my trapeze, these past weeks.  Different heights (for the bar), lots of different music, whatever.  I'm thinking it would be a good challenge for me to slap together a new sequence every week for a set number of weeks.  Every week, I post the new thing.  Then on to another new thing.  I will try my darndest not to repeat choreography, but since I only know a limited amount of moves, you may also have to use your imagination.  ("Drop to ankles?!  Why, I've never seen the like!")

I'm thinking five weeks, five sequences is pretty good--that gets us right about up to Thanksgiving (crap, really?), when Circus Center's schedule gets wonky.  I'm aiming for two or three minutes each week.  This is extra challenging because at the moment I'm grateful and excited if I can get on my trapeze twice a week.

And it will be extra EXTRA challenging because all but two of these weeks will overlap with the delightful literary mayhem that is National Novel Writing Month.  I'll be writing a fifty thousand word novel in thirty days.  I'm sure I'll have lots of free time!

The first of these sequences, I can already tell you, is going to be fairly cohesive and well-put-together, because I've actually been tinkering with it for a few weeks.  So before you laud my choreographic skills (if...you were going to do that), wait to see next week.  Next week we'll see what I'm made of.

I'll have a video up by Sunday night!  (Monday at the latest.)

Are you psyched?  I'm psyched, are you psyched?!

Oh.  Hello, friends.  Yes, it has been awhile, hasn't it?  It's not even September anymore.

Much as I would like to tell you that I have spent the past month in a delirium of performance opportunities and have been far too busy to write, that is not the case.  My inner pessimist was telling me that as soon as my act, costume, and music were performance-ready, I would find no performance opportunities...and she was right.  Well played, pessimist.

In the midst of this resounding silence, I have been slogging along.  Slogging.  IT HAS BEEN BAD TIMES, FRIENDS.

First, I once again have no teacher: I encourage everyone to go see Marina perform at Teatro ZInzanni and tell her to come back and teach.*  With no one to boss me around, I am bored with my act.  Circus is failing to entertain me.  The gym seems ridiculously crowded this semester; at this point, if I see twenty-five people running around in there, I am likely to go walk in the park instead.  I feel jaded.  The fact that San Francisco has entered its fleeting, irrational summer does not help: chilly, gloomy gym versus a sunny beach and a book of pirate stories?**  Pirates always win.

I have another problem, too.  Even if there were performance opportunities being thrown at me, I've recently realized that performing for free is bad news for other aerialists.  Essentially, no one gets paid when people offer to perform for free (the fact that performers who require payment generally have much better acts does not slow down event organizers as much as you might think).  This was news to me, though it shouldn't have been: when I was being trained as a yoga teacher, we were cautioned never to teach for free for this exact reason.  My act is not to the same level as those who (rightly) ask to be paid, meaning that I don't feel right asking.  So.  Problematic.  Theoretically problematic, given the dearth of performance opportunities--but still problematic.

So all of these things get rolled up into a ball and the end result is that my love for the circus is unremitting, but my desire to perform is no longer consuming.  I feel like I have a better grasp all the time of what it would actually take to be employable by a real, honest-to-god circus, and I do not currently possess those things, nor the desire to possess them.  Furthermore, if I don't take a step back, now, then I run the risk of becoming seriously and irrevocably jaded.

It's difficult to describe, but realizing that I am not on a long, narrow road to performance stardom is actually a relief.  It's a scary relief, but still.  I'm fine with just showing up to the gym when I want to and using what space is available.  If this means--as it has more than once, lately--that I carve out a space behind the trampoline and stretch for an hour, so be it.  If I can hang Trappy, I can play with different music in my act--or different choreography, or fooling around on static trapeze or hoop instead.  Hey, remember when circus was "fun"?  I remember those days.  Those were good days.

Sure, if someone offers me a fantastic paying gig next weekend, I'll take it.  Watch, maybe it'll happen: maybe I just had to take a step back.  My inner pessimist can't win them all.

--
*Further proof that not everyone is caught up in a performance drought: Marsha recently took her admirable act to Supper Club and was nice enough to provide video for those not lucky enough to be there.  Dig the purple lights!
**Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer--highly recommended, especially with the addition of a beach and/or ocean.

WOOO!  YEAH!  Are you psyched?  I'm psyched!  Are YOU PSYCHED for TOE HANGS?!

Cause here they are, baby!  Immortalized in video, my first two totally-unassisted toe hangs--no ropes, no spotter--performed in the context of my act.  WOOO!

Here's what this sounds like inside my head:

"Okay, knee hang knee hang knee hang.  Place the foot, place the other foot, okay this is good. Let go of the bar.

Errungh...I don't want to...

The camera's running: show the people!  Let go of the bar.  Do it DO IT DO IT--

OH GOD.  WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?  WHY IS THE BAR SO FAR AWAY FROM MY HANDS?

(Oh hey, this is fine, actually.)

OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH, GRAB THE BAR GRAB THE BAR GRAB THE--oh thank goodness."

I always have a moment of, "see? my head's not broken! this is terrific!" but it gets kind of drowned out with all of the screaming.  Such dramatics.

So yeah, I know: I need to get my hips forward, and hold it a bit longer than the 0.002 seconds I've managed so far, but it's still very exciting.  I am hanging from the tops of my feet, people.*

This being the last day of my self-imposed deadline to show-readiness, the toe hangs have come in the nick of time.  Everything else is more or less in place, too: I've got a costume that fits and doesn't look stupid; I've got my musical and cue issues more or less sorted out; there are even plans in the works to get me some card/postcards or something with which to broadcast my fame to my adoring public.

Do you hear that, adoring public?  I AM SHOW-READY.  CALL ME.

I had better stop now before I'm cited for Caps Lock Abuse.

Three things to note:
1) Whoa.  Windows.  I knew there was a reason I never film from this angle.
2) Toe hang. There is no toe hang.  PROBLEMATIC.
3)  That upside-down thing at 2:30? (I call it "kiki twist"--I don't know any of its real names.)  That looks really good in this video, for some reason.

Also, if anyone knows where my costume is at this time, I will pay ransom money for it.

Three things to note:
1) Whoa.  Windows.  I knew there was a reason I never film from this angle.
2) Toe hang. There is no toe hang.  PROBLEMATIC.
3)  That upside-down thing at 2:30? (I call it "kiki twist"--I don't know any of its real names.)  That looks really good in this video, for some reason.

Also, if anyone knows where my costume is at this time, I will pay ransom money for it.

I turn my back for a week and August disappears.  This is so typical.

Okay, so it was a BAD idea to give myself a one-month deadline in a month when I'm away from my trapeze (and city) for a full week.  Duly noted.

I had a good time cavorting in the sunshine of Lake Tahoe, but the month of August suddenly seems a lot shorter.  Now I am back and I have a great deal of work to do in--let's see here--sixteen days.  Here's how she breaks down:

• New choreography: Check.  I even had the gratifying and rare experience of planning out a combination and having it work exactly as planned.  That never happens.  I would describe what it is, but it involves a pose with no known name (we here call it "Jen twist" after the Jen who created it/introduced it to Circus Center) and one with about fourteen names (unicorn, seahorse, gazelle twist...), so that might be less than instructive.  I will try to come up with some video.
• Music: Check. I came up with several musical options, all of them my old music ("We Insist") plus something else.  Marina has cast her vote for "We Insist" with the last forty seconds of another Zoe Keating piece called "Coda" patched onto the end.  (I am getting handy with Audacity.)  I agree with her.  Now I just have to:
• Fit choreography and music together: No Check.  No matter how much stuff I add, I always end at the same point in the music.  It's starting to weird me out a little.  Once I slow the heck down, I may need to re-re-tweak my musical selection or the choreography.  Or both.
• Costume: Mostly Check.  I've ordered something that retains the back and red color scheme of yore and has something of the same striped/slashed look, but it does not look prone to getting stupidly stretched-out and floppy after a dozen uses, unlike certain costumes I could name.  But it hasn't arrived yet, so I can't say whether or not it fits like I want it to.
• Self-promotion: No check.  I'm thinking that if I'm to be able to successfully volunteer for gigs, I need to have a more-or-less current video to show people at minimum.  I'm not sure what else I ought to be doing on this front, so if anyone knows better than me, your advice will be warmly accepted.

Of course, now that I need to shake a leg and get all my ducks in a row (to wantonly mix metaphors) my body has decided that it really enjoyed not being on a hoop or trapeze for over a week.  Last night I took a hoop class and then trained afterward.  Today, my wrist is grumbling (in fairness, I did wake up this morning and find that I'd slept on it funny), these stupid callouses I have from toe-hangs are already bothering me again, and all the parts of my body which I would expect to be sore are definitely sore.  Come on body!  Get your head in the game!

Aragh.  Urgh.  Okay.  Here's a typical conversation between me and my brain, these post-Showcase days:

Me: I want to perform!  Why am I not performing? I could so perform right this second!  Grr!  Argh!

And then the lovely, talented, and extremely motivated Marsha forwarded me along to a fellow over at yon Supper Club, asking me to perform tonight and tomorrow night.

So I went for it, right?  Well, actually...

Me: Whoa, tonight?  Tonight's not good.  Neither is tomorrow.  No.  Tomorrow is not good, either.  I don't have a costume--that is, the Showcase costume is a little fall-y apart-y  And I have a new costume that I haven't quite (cough!) tried out on the trapeze yet...and the new stuff isn't smooth, yet I don't want to go back to just the old stuff.  And that toe hang is SO not there yet.  Oh, geez, and I don't even have the right length music anymore.  No.  Tonight is not good...

Ah, now I see: this is what they call eating your words.

I realize two important things: one, these gigs come up very last-second (there was another one last weekend, which I genuinely couldn't do because I was scheduled to be at work).  And two, I work very well on a deadline, and there is no deadline in sight.  Left to my own devices, I could probably putter around my act indefinitely and tweak this and fix that and add this and find a better costume...and never actually be "ready" to perform my act, much less at the drop of a hat.  In fact, this would be the easiest thing in the world to do.  (And now I think I have some insight into these perplexing people at Circus Center, who are immensely talented and should really be performing somewhere...but aren't.)

It would be very easy--the kind of comfortable trap that I would fall into and never kick myself out of.  Because the world outside Circus Center is harsh and uninviting, and that's the world I have to go into if my act is ever to see the light of day, much less (looking at the big picture) the lights of a real, flesh-and-blood circus.

So!  I'm making my own damn deadline: my act will be ready to roll out at a moment's notice by August 31st.  That is the first day of the fall semester at Circus Center; it is also a full two months, plus change, after the Showcase: even given that I'm missing a week for my cousin's wedding, this should be ample time for me to get my ducks in a row.  If I don't have a new costume by then, or that stupid, stupid toe hang isn't where it belongs, that's just too bad.  I will at least have a contingency plan: the point is that I will be ready.

I will also work on my spontaneity/willingness to drop things in favor of going out and performing.  Also organization: I'm not entirely sure where my makeup bag is right now, and that would probably be handy.

I heartily invite you, friends, to hold me to it.  If, come mid-August, I'm making noises about it being "too soon" and I'm "not ready," you are free to scold me, or heckle me, or draw me pictures of your profound disappointment.  I.e.,

I probably don't know all of you reading this, but I would never want to cause you that kind of pain.

Let's do this.

--
*Yesterday, during my lesson with Marina, she cheerfully announced that I should also think about finding a place for a heel hang in my act.  My heels are, if anything, more sketchy than my toes, which means I get to go through this whole process of "it's so close but it's not quite there" for another skill.  And after that?  Yep: it'll be neck hang.
**This is surely my greatest work of art to date.  Like I even needed to tell you that.

I think I had a dream in which I posted this video to this blog.  It's entirely possible, because I have really, intensely boring dreams.  (Like, the whole dream will be packing a suitcase to go on a trip, for what feels like HOURS, but I never actually go on the trip.)

Anyway, I didn't post it, but here it is now.  This is the dress rehearsal, since although there were a plethora of videographers/photographers around the Showcase, I've yet to see any of their footage.  This was shot by the marvelous Marsha:

So, that was June 17th.  In the almost-a-month since then, Marina and I have been plotting to make the act longer and fancier.  The goal is to have four and a half minutes, and to throw in a bunch of new skills, some of which I have pining to learn for months (like extending your front leg in unicorn).  Here's what I've got as of this weekend:

Not bad, for three weeks.  I had thought that lengthening an act would take as much time as making it in the first place, especially if I'm lengthening it by 50%.  I was wrong: as you can see, and as I was very surprised to learn, I am at the stated goal of 4 1/2 minutes.

But it's not like the act is done.  What you see above is the first time I ran it through from beginning to end with all the new material--and even then, some of the new material is conspicuously absent...like the toe hang.  I still need to run it another 100,000 times before it's smooth and polished and I don't get my legs confused when I'm standing on the bar (or at any other time, actually).  And that toe hang...lordy.  Technically, I can do it without safety ropes, though I still use them when I'm training on my own (in class with Marina, I use her spotting reflexes, though so far I haven't had to use them).  Now it's more of a mental undertaking than a physical one: in spite of repeated bashings, the tops of my feet still feel like toe hangs go beyond the call of duty.  Whine, whine, whine, that's all I ever hear.