Oh my goodness! So much excitement!

There is so much excitement happening that you should probably sit down and back up from your monitor a little bit, otherwise you will be dazzled and blinded by the exclamation points!

The First Excitement!

I am going to be in the Student Showcase at Circus Center next month!  I will be getting up in front of people who paid to be there!  They even have days of rehearsal beforehand! 

There are six shows, and I will be in three of them.  Most slots for different acts have been split among two or three people in order to get as many people as possible into the show (without it being, like, six hours long).

I have about six weeks between now and then to tone my act.  I've been asked to cut out the swinging middle section, either because the choreography's a bit drab or in the interest of time (I would accept either explanation).  That means having to rethink a bunch of my music cues.  I also have to find a costume of some type.  And I have to devise a grand entrance.  The amazing Helene, who is organizing this madness, told me that the clowns will be helping with stage entrances and exits, so if I could think of anything for them to do... and then I stopped listening, because I was floored by this revelation:

I will be escorted by clowns to and from my trapeze.

How can you not be excited by that?  And then there's---

The Second Excitement:

My parents have very casually offered to buy me a trapeze for my birthday.  A trapeze!  My attempts to warn them that they didn't know what they're getting into (trapezes ain't cheap) fell on deaf and generous ears, so I've spent the past couple of weeks acquainting myself with the thousands and thousands of technical specifications that come with buying a trapeze.  Or that's what it felt like.  How wide do you want the bar?  What diameter should it be?  Solid or hollow?  How long should the ropes be, and what should they be made of? What diameter should they be? Cables in the ropes or no?  And on and on and on.

After soliciting the professional advice of, let's see, everyone at Circus Center, I have at last reached a conclusion.  I will soon be in possession of this beauty.

No, go on.  Click.  Take your time.  Soak it in.

You'll notice that this is really and truly a single-point trapeze, not a static trapeze adapted to single point.  There's nothing wrong with the latter--it's what I've been using since I started--but the ropes have a tendency to twist around each other when they're hooked together.  Suddenly, you stand up and have no space, though there is three feet of twisted rope above you.  This can be fixed with hardware (something like this.  No, that's not brass knuckles...for, um, a person with six fingers) or by cleverly splicing the ropes together, as in this (my) trapeze.

Getting a trapeze is like bringing home a new puppy.  You have to buy it a bed to sleep in and a crate and dog food and so on--but in this case that's a bag to carry it in, and a locker for it to live in at Circus Center, and, um, tape to eat?  And when it comes I expect there will be a little house-training, namely me learning my way around it.  The ropes have cables in them, which means that they are stiffer if you're rolling up into them (as I do), and the whole trapeze has less "bounce."  It'll take a little adjustment, but if all goes according to plan, I'll be squared away with it in plenty of time for the Showcase.

Which I am in.

With my own trapeze.

Let's celebrate with a video!