56 posts from 2008

The show went fine!  I only say "fine" because it didn't, like, knock the audience over with its amazing (that would be the act before mine... more on that later), but it's got an exclamation point because the people clapped!  and I didn't fall off!

When I say "the people," I mean "the zillions of people, many of whom were under the age of four."  It was a big crowd-- bigger, I think, than Circus Center was expecting, based on the number of bleachers they'd set up.  When I watched the show before mine I ended up standing off to the side, and all the little kids were herded onto the floor to make room on the bleachers.  It was the same deal for the Professional Program show that night-- standing room only.

The other acts were excellent: there were a few static trapeze numbers (including a cool piece put together by the Static 3 classes, using all three of the trapezes), some silks, a really cute hoop act starring twin sisters, and, um... this strap act.

Okay, so if you're not familiar with the concept, let me just say that it would be hard to even follow a bad strap act: it's a beautiful and impressive apparatus and it requires incredible strength.  But I came right after a good-- dare I even say great-- strap act.  At first I wondered why this guy wasn't in the Professional Program.  Then I began to wonder why he was even in a circus school and not in a circus.  The crowd ate him up.  Did it hurt that the guy was incredibly well-built and shirtless?  No.  No, I think that did not hurt.

Anyway, in spite of the fact that I experienced firsthand the origins of the phrase, "tough act to follow," I did fine.  For the rest of the day people from the audience and fellow students told me that it looked good, and I am pleased to have checked the box for "first ever performance."

But I want to do it again!  More!  I learned a lot from having an audience-- the time it takes for them to decide to clap, for instance, is about two seconds longer than what feels normal for me to hold a position (I figured this out by the end)-- and I know I could continue to learn from doing my act in front of them.  Or, as Daniela said, you have to practice performance just like everything else.  Unfortunately, my next obvious opportunity to perform is in June.  No doubt my act will be way way cool by then-- perhaps I will be a tough act to follow by then-- but June?  June is a very long time from now.  (And that's only if I pass the audition.)

Although I am, frankly, bummed that my one foreseeable performance opportunity has come and gone, I'm excited to see what Daniela has me doing when I come back in the new year.  Do we make a whole new act?  Keep refining this one?  What skills will she teach me?  This coming semester I'm not taking any classes off the regular schedule: my friend Diane and I are splitting a private lesson on static and I'm continuing privately with single point.  And my New Year's resolution is to practice more (five days a week to my current four-- who knows, maybe I can even work in a sixth day, now and then).  So stuff will keep getting better.

In the mean time, I'm going home to Texas for a few weeks, and I'm going to have to think of new and creative ways to condition.  There's a silks studio in Austin where I may get to spend some time, but otherwise it looks like its me and the track near my parents' house.  I run with the speed and grace of a penguin, but there are pull-up bars and sit-up stations and whatnot along the path.  How else am I going to keep my hands from de-callusing?  Sandpaper gloves?  Tune in to find out...

What, WHAT?  Five days?  What?  I'm sorry, I...  I just...

Here, this explains everything:

Dec. 20th, as in five days from now

If you're in the Bay Area, you know you don't want to be outside this weekend.  (If you're not in the Bay Area, you probably don't want to be outside either, but I can't help you.)  It hailed today.  Hail!  That's dangerous.  I wouldn't go outside on Saturday, personally, whereas the Circus Center is a large, warm building filled with magic.  It will keep you safe and fill you with popcorn.  I've heard rumors of $5-per-swing flying trapeze, not to mention face painting and balloons and people doing dangerous things for your entertainment.*

Most importantly (to me), I'm in the 3:30 show.  Which is free!  I mean, come on, the only way this could get better is if it rained kittens.

Though given current meteorological conditions, they might be frozen kittens.

It's The Act!

I'm not too displeased with this.  It was filmed about two and a half weeks ago, and in that time I've fixed a few things, especially the little, "wait, where does my hand go?" moments-- at this time, I'd just settled down on the new (newest) order of skills and I was trying to remember them.

I watched it right after Diane filmed it (yay instant gratification!) and then last night I sat down with a pen and paper to make notes.  These are my notes:

-take time in the beginning
-straddle properly!
-fix knees on climb up [from ankle hang]
-better legs coming out of flag
-slow down dancey parts
-take time before rope pullover
-take time in pullover/feet in ropes
[Then at this point I discovered the theme and just wrote:]
-everything slower!

What also struck me was that the "dancey parts"-- all the little flourishes and leg/arm movements-- can be not only more relaxed, but they can be bigger.  This is another case of "Huh, Daniela said that but I didn't quite believe her."  Well, she was right.  Everything can be much bigger than it feels like it needs to be.  If you feel like a dork, you're probably doing just barely enough.

(Side note: Daniela teaches teenagers, too, and she said it's difficult to get them to go all the way into dorkdom because they're so intent on being cool.  I have a hard time with it, and I gave up trying to be cool, well, right about when I gave up being a teenager.  It makes me wonder how performing arts high schools like the one I went to [HSPVA! woo!] can even exist.)

Anyway, the video was highly educational for me, as always, but far be it from me to refuse a little more learnin'.  Tell me your feedback, friends!  I have a mere two and a half weeks until my show.

In other news, the final piece of my costume came in the mail today (they actually make stirrup tights!  Maybe this means I can stop destroying all my tights and socks by cutting the toes and heels out of them) so I'm going to put it all together this weekend and see how it works.

AND and and! I did my first non-assisted Russian roll during class today.  Finally: if "Russian roll" sounds familiar, that's because I posted about it (with video of someone else doing it) in July.  July!  Granted, we've done it maybe twice in class since then and I wasn't able to do it without assistance, so practicing on my own was only kind of helpful.  I would always get stuck with my butt at the very top of the roll.  But then today Daniela helped me do a couple today and then my butt was all, "Oh!  I get it, now!" and there was no problem.  I did three of them on my own and only stopped because this one will give you weird bruises right below your elbows if you overdo it.

Daniela also gave me some sage advice that helped me out: "You know when you were a little kid, and you would sit sideways on the toilet and fall in?  That's what your butt needs to do."  I have no way to prove it to you, but that is exactly what it's like.  The woman is a genius.

This has been an exciting week in trapezedom for me.  I have managed to either whack myself with the bar or... um... fall off the trapeze three times in the past seven days.

I think I have met my quota.

Incident #1: Bar pass arabesque while spinning, resulting in me getting whacked in the nose.  I realize that my previous illustration of this skill was... less than clear (not to mention that it's officially "bar pass arabesque" not "arabesque bar pass"), but happily I just found a video via the lovely new Troupe Développé in which there is a very similar skill, which is executed without injury.  The whole video is, in fact, delightful:

Okay, look at 2:09.  It's not exactly bar pass arabesque, but it's bar pass arabesque-esque (I just wanted to say that).  You're upside down, you drop the bar with one foot, you catch it with the other-- all these things are the same.  Also, note the swinging bar.  Swinging, metal, surprisingly heavy bar. 

I can do this skill just fine on static trapeze.  I always catch the bar when it swings forward, and I usually even catch the middle of the bar with my toes.  It is magical to behold.

But things get weird when you spin.  I'm yet to find a single point video that includes this skill, so I'm not 100% sure what is supposed to happen, but when I did it last Monday, the bar hit the top of my foot when it swung forward (instead of landing neatly beneath my awaiting toes) then ricocheted into my nose.  The resulting sound is most often heard on football fields.  Daniela was rather alarmed by it, and offered me ice, and made me sit down until we were sure nothing was bleeding.  Nothing was: my eyes watered up and I had a weird sinus headache for the rest of the day, and my nose is still slightly tender, but that was the worst of it.  I popped up and did it again without a spin, and it was find.

Incident #2: Bar pass arabesque on single point but not spinning, resulting in me getting whacked in the jaw.  I don't really know what happened.  I wasn't spinning!  It should have been fine!  But my foot caught the bar in the corner (where the bar attaches to the rope) and the other end smacked me?  I had a witness and even she didn't know what I did, but it hurt.

Increasingly, I believe that I have never seen a video of this skill on a single point trapeze-- spinning or no-- because it is not done.  And increasingly, I fear that I will have to set aside this rather cool and impressive-looking skill for a theoretical (and frankly unlikely) static trapeze act.

Incident #3: sitting drop to angel, resulting in me falling off the bar.

For real.

I'm yet to find a video that includes this skill.  This is the final position.  The starting position is just sitting on the bar.  How hard is that, right?  I think I did this once in lines before I was okay'd to do it on my own.

I didn't do anything wrong when I fell off.  The hand that was holding onto the bar just slid off.  Fatigue?  Slipperiness?  Maybe I was over-gripping and my skin got pinched and my hand instinctively let go a little bit, which was a little bit too much?  Daniela said something like, "I've seen people fall off doing that skill before, but never when they were doing it right."  That's what makes me special!

Here's the strange thing, though: look at that picture.  See how she's facing down?  I landed face up.  The bar is hung about five and a half feet above the mat (because I'm short).  By the time I was under the bar in angel-- however briefly-- I would say I was maybe four and a half feet up.  But I somehow managed to rotate 180 degrees in the time it took me to fall that very small distance onto the mat.  It happened so fast that when I landed on my back, Daniela hadn't had time to process the fact that I had fallen, and my first thought was "why is she just standing there?" (Immediately after, of course, she went "oh my god!  Are you okay?!")

So I take back what I said about mats not saving me.  Mats are friggin amazing.  I want to buy the mat that caught me a drink.  Also, I retract any criticism of my own reflexes.  Granted, I was already rotating as I dropped from sitting to angel, but still: I'm like a cat, you guys.  Except I always land on my back, not my feet... this is questionably useful.

I was fine, incidentally.  The brain damage, in all three cases, obviously precedes the injuries.

P.S.  November is almost over!  I swear I'll be back once I've kicked my novel's ass!  And I will have videos, because the fabulous Diane filmed my act over the weekend.  Sadly, none of my pratfalls have been caught on film, but it's merely a matter of time...

OH MAN, YOU GUYS.  Static trapeze class yesterday was exciting.

About three quarters of the way through class, Daniela whipped out the gloves (for her) and fashionable belts (for us) and popped us up into lines.  The class mantra is "Julia will demonstrate."  Any time Daniela announces that next we will do some new/slightly obscure skill, someone else in the class will not have seen it before and Daniela will say, "Julia will demonstrate."  It's okay, I don't mind.  I just know to go get some chalk as soon as people start furrowing their brows.

Gazelle

1 comment

That's a long way of saying that I went up into lines first.  Daniela had me start with gazelle to ankles, which is a drop that we'd been working, either in lines or with Daniela hand-spotting, for the whole semester and earlier.  I'd been getting the hang of it, especially as my brain got used to the fact that hanging by your ankles is actually a pretty secure way of being on a trapeze.

We did it a couple of times.  Then Daniela asked me to pass her one of the lines.  I figured I'd somehow managed to get it tangled and did so... but she kept it.  I was only hooked up on one side of my belt.  This way, she told me, she could save my life if I fell off the bar, but she couldn't help me.  And she asked my classmate to get off the bar to the right of mine, since I only had the right-side line attached and in event of life-saving, I'd swing way the heck out to the right.

This made me a little bit nervous, but I've "tested" the lines before:  Daniela caught me, a couple weeks ago, when I fell off the bar from a heel hang.  She flew across the mats, but I landed on my feet.   The lines work.

So I did the skill: gazelle, extend leg, flex feet, square hips, slide to ankles.  Done and done.  We did it twice.  I continued to not fall off the bar.

"Now pass me the other line," said Daniela.

The woman knows how to ratchet up the suspense, you have to say.  My classmates goggled up from the floor, and I sat back up on the bar with no lines.

I've heard people say that they like this scenario: you're wearing the goofy safety belt, you can see the teacher holding the lines, and your brain feels safe enough to do the skill on your own.  I'm not so sure this false sense of security is a great thing-- not that I ever do tricks deliberately sloppy, but I don't want to be relaxed when my ankles are the only thing between me and a fifteen foot fall.

Therefore, as I did the skill again I was mentally screaming "FLEX YOUR FEET FLEX YOUR FEET FLEX-- oh thank god we've stopped moving."  It was totally fine.  I came down after practicing another drop (back balance to ankles-- it's the back balance that sucks, not the actual drop) WITH lines, and then hopped up on another bar and did gazelle to ankles without lines/belt/false sense of security.  I have broken it in.

That's the "good news!" of the title.  The "good news?" arrived in my inbox this morning.  Something called the Circus Center Open House is happening in late December, and Daniela suggested that I do my act-- in whatever form-- for the occasion.  I literally know nothing else about it, except that it's during the afternoon on the weekend and it's "very casual."  I assume this means my act doesn't have to be polished... but that I do have to have something that doesn't look totally goofy and provoke onlookers to say to each other, "is she in Static 1?" or "Oh cute!  She must have just started!"

As I mentioned previously, Daniela has been plotting to put me in front of an audience in December anyway.  Her original suggestion was for me to pick a Friday evening (not too crowded), summon/bribe/blackmail friends and coworkers into coming round to Circus Center, and showing them my larval-stage act.  I agreed to this proposal with nausea and dread, and my reaction to today's e-mail was initially the same.  But now I'm starting to feel a bit better about it: I didn't like the idea of having a "fake" performance-- just me, with only people who I knew in attendance.  These people, because they mostly like me (except for the blackmail), are unlikely to provide useful (i.e, realistic) feedback, and there's the possibility that I'd show up for work the next morning and my coworkers would be all secretly, "dude, she's a terrible trapeze artist."  Awkward.

Instead, I now have to face the possibility that a bunch of near-or-total strangers will walk away thinking "TERRIBLE" and who cares?  I'll probably never see them again, the losers.  Plus, there will be other aerialists and whatnot performing at the same time, meaning I don't have to carry the show.  Steal it, maybe, but not carry it.  I do actually want to perform: I just want to perform well.

Guess what that means?  A month and a half of serious practicing.

I, uh, still don't know what "dolphin" is.

But I have something which must be better.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: arabesque bar pass:

Please pardon the obvious issues which my poor little movie is having: I've been arguing with different pieces of software for the better part of an hour, and I've learned that iMovie and Vox are utterly baffled by a stick figure on a white background.  Clearly I am pushing the limits of available technology with such a complex piece of art.  Click on the video above for a slightly bigger (and... fuzzier) version; if it sticks (why? why? why?) you can click on the bar to jump past the sticky place and it will keep playing.  Perhaps someday computers will catch up with my visionary talents...

I hope you manage to get the general idea, because this is a way awesome skill that involves several of my favorite things:
1) being upside down
2) splits! (wish mine were as good as my stick figure's!)
3) flipping around

It also involves several of my non-favorite things:
1) holding onto the ropes for a very long time, prompting an unironic "oh god oh god we're going to die" voice in my head.*
2) potentially being thwacked in the head with the bar

I haven't been thwacked, yet, but as Daniela puts it, "It's kind of a rite of passage with this skill."  That's something to look forward to.  I only made it all the way around once, since my brain was also utterly baffled by this skill.  I can get upside down, I can release the bar, I can even catch it with my other foot, but then my body wants to go back the way it came, rather than stand up (down?) on the bar.  It's the same rotation as flipping to stand (which I feel like I must have illustrated... somewhere... otherwise you can take my word for it), but my body still gets confused.

But I will learn, because this is high on my list of cool skills I've learned.

Also, please note:

why November is the best month

--
*It helps that it's Alan Tudyk's voice, but only a little.

Forgive my lack of posting: it's been pretty much the same old thing around here.  I take class, I practice, I work, I practice some more, I marvel over my new bruises, etc.  This is very tiring, which is why today's post is illustrated by

who knows?

There hasn't been too much in the way of new skills, lately, although today Daniela taught us something called "cheek turn" which I'm not even going to try to describe-- I could use the words "backwards," "twisting," and "hanging from one arm," but I don't think I could make you visualize what it looks like.  I can't properly visualize it, and I'm supposed to have learned it.  It didn't exactly work for me, though.

yep, dolphins

However, I've been promised a number of new and exciting things during my next single point lesson-- cheek turn was one of them (and that turned out to be the "I'm going to have to practice this for months" kind of exciting), but so was something about rolling down from standing while in a split, as well as the ever-enigmatic "dolphin."  I have no idea what dolphin is, and Google only offers me images from Sea World's aerial show.*

I've also brushed up a few of my formerly-nemesis moves: flipping to stand, for instance.  It's a fancy way of getting to standing: from sitting, you pike your legs overhead, and keep going until your toes come back down to the bar-- voila, standing.

The unnerving part is that you can't see the bar unless it happens to swing into your line of sight.  And then if you go too far down, your feet are beneath the bar and it's awkward to get them back on.  It's basically the same movement as skin the cat-- which I do all the time-- but I had a mental block around it because I was worried about getting stuck or not being able to get my toes to the bar.  It's not one of those things that has a "bail out" option.  But after many thousands of skin the cats-- which are getting stronger all the time-- I pushed through the mental block, and now it works... even if it still makes me a little nervous.

I'm finding, as a general rule, that any skill which takes place in the ropes requires about five times more effort and practice for me to learn.  Perhaps I should have picked an apparatus that wasn't well over two-thirds rope.  Too late now (though I do have a hankerin' to someday learn hoop, which is mostly not-rope).  I don't know which is more uncomfortable: learning to trust my hands on the ropes (I have an inescapable sense of sliding down even when I'm not) or developing a whole new set of rope-specific calluses.

That said, unicorn is no longer a nemesis skill, either, despite the amount of rope involved (a lot).  I still have to climb more than strictly necessary to get into it, but that's just fine-tuning.  The important part is that I don't collapse in a sweaty heap like I used to.  I've more or less figured it out with a good spin, too.

this one is of a unicorn

I've always wondered whose legs those are.

Most of the show was music, which was actually cool, because Sweet Can has an awesome band.  The performers, including Daniela, either squeezed their acts in at the front of the stage or wandered through the audience-- usually the latter, since, as Kerri explained at the beginning, they were all about breaking the fourth wall that night.  They did actually bring one of their acrobatic acts right through the middle of the bar, making people move aside.  The performers were being super careful, but the people immediately around them did have to duck occasionally; it occurred to me at this point that sometimes the fourth wall is a safety barrier.  Diane and I ended up sitting on the bar so that we could see, and my favorite moment was when the accordionist instructed someone to dance with the bartender, who was then waltzed up and down behind the bar.  (I hope everybody gave him good tips.)

In spite of the not-very-high ceilings, they did a couple of aerial acts, too: there was a kind of mini straps act during the first half.  I was dead sure he was going to kick the lights above the stage, but thankfully that didn't happen.  They brought out a ladder during intermission to change out the apparatus, but Diane and I are both old ladies, apparently, and we decided to bail because it was past our bedtimes.   As we were leaving, we were intrigued to see that the new thing being hung up was-- apparently?-- a rope with a carabiner at the end.  Like, the end that wasn't attached to anything.  Did they attach it to something?  Was it half a trapeze, minus the bar?  Guess what!

the world may never know

--
* I've seen it, and it was good.  But I have to say, no power in the 'verse could get me to dive into whale-water.  I just... I don't know.  I like whales and all, but I've never felt the particular urge to dive into an aquarium.

I can't recall if I've mentioned this already-- probably not, since I've been quietly hoping it will go away if no one talks about it-- but Daniela is recommending that I put on a very small performance for some invited friends in December.  We reckon that I'll have about three or four minutes of material to show by then.  The idea is that I'll have a chance to wet my feet in performance well before I have to audition for the Showcase (round about April, I think).

I am a little reluctant to do this.  I feel dopey about dragging people out to Circus Center to watch me spin around for three minutes.  I mean, they'll spend more time finding parking then they will watching me.  And part of me feels like it can't be much different than hopping up to do it in front of Daniela and whatever people in the gym are half-watching as they stretch.  (I certainly do this.  Stretching is hella boring.)  But I'm probably wrong about that.  I understand, grudgingly, that this is a necessary first step, and that you have to practice performance just like you have to practice everything else.  Starting with a small, friendly audience is the equivalent of having safety lines.  Except that I can't feed my safety lines cookies afterwards to ensure positive reviews.

Anyway, I've had the prospect of a mini-showcase hanging over my head in a general way for, ooh, about six weeks, and then Daniela brought it up again (my "don't mention it and maybe we'll all forget" idea having failed) last week.  She then asked me to nail down a piece of music for my act-- oh yes, I have an act now; it's even more of a mind job than my "training sessions"-- and to start perusing YouTube videos with an eye on costumes.  The music comes first, though:  next week she wants me to bring something in to try, and the week after we'll settle on a piece for December and beyond.  Again, I must grudgingly admit that she's right, since I know that the music will help me determine the tone and the character and all the artistic stuff that I'm lousy at.

At least, I thought I was lousy at it, until I found this song.  Mash "play" and listen for a little bit.

01 Amor Porteño (feat. Calexico)

Gotan Project

You guys!  I have this killer-awesome bruise on the back of my ankle, today, from doing heel hangs.  I would show you, but I'm going on a trip tomorrow (wedding!) and it's already packed.  Oh, don't look so disappointed.  There will be plenty more where that came from.

Daniela had me go up and do my toe and heel hangs (refresher) at the very end of class, while in lines.  When I practice on my own, I hang two ropes from the trapeze and hold onto those for dear life, so that not all my weight is on my feet.  In lines, Daniela is holding me up (to varying degrees), so there are no ropes to ease the transition.  Heel hang went well, though I needed Daniela's assistance in getting my hands back to the bar.  Toe hang... is kind of a mess.  Imagine touching your toes while upside down: gravity is working against you (but, like, when isn't it?)  and whatever part of your body-- hands or feet-- isn't holding your weight wants to flop right down.  Hands on the bar?  Good luck getting the tops of your feet to stick.  Feet on the bar?  You have to climb back up there somehow, and hurry, because apparently humans have not evolved much in the way of tough top-of-foot skin.  The hearty stuff is all on the bottom for some reason.

I'm not exactly bummed, though: toe hang is impressive, to be sure, but I find heel hang more aesthetically pleasing (other than unsightly bruises), and I'm okay if I get one sooner than the other.

Oh, that reminds me: I went to class this morning trying to remember to minimize the number of unsightly bruises-- insofar as it's in my power-- because I have to get all dressed up for this wedding.  And I doubt the bride would appreciate it if I showed up accessorizing with open sores.  But then all my brainpower went toward not falling off the bar and I completely forgot my own prohibition against bruising.  Possibly I will be dabbing my ankles and triceps with foundation before the ceremony.

But it's not all fun and bruises.  No!  So, Daniela and I have been building a combination (routine, whatever) almost since Day 1.  At last count, it's about two and a half minutes long, and I've done is about sixty times so it's fairly seamless.  Every lesson, we run it several times with music, and Daniela typically asks me to do something extra with the music-- find a scene or character or emotion in it.  Or just find a character outside of the music: maybe I'm having some sort of conversation with the bar, or with someone watching me, etc.  The idea is that I'm not just stringing together a series of poses, but telling a story through those poses and making them look like... yes... a dance.

She is ingenious with her suggestions, but we have basically stumbled upon my kryptonite.  I am Very Bad at Dancing (it gets capital letters because it's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt).  Poor Daniela spent most of last lesson trying to coax me into some kind of character while I stood there, drawing a mental blank and feeling like a trapeze robot.

But I'm not!  In fact, I have a rich imagination: whenever I'm cleaning or cooking or walking to the bus, my brain is feverishly making crap up.  I tell myself little stories while I'm on the bus (silently; I'm not "that person," with whom you determinedly avoid eye contact).  In fact, I have written an entire novel about a guy whose rich imaginative life takes over his real life.  Do you see what I'm saying, here?  My imaginary friends have imaginary friends.  I should be really good at this stuff.

Alas, when I step up to a trapeze, it's like I spend all that time twiddling my mental thumbs.  Totally blank.  The best explanation I've been able to give myself is that I'm not trained as a dancer or an actor, and so there are substantial barriers between my internal world and my external behavior.  In general, I think this is a good thing; people who lack such barriers, not to put too fine a point on it, act crazy.  But now it would be helpful to have some sort of training and practice in acting slightly crazy in well-defined situations.

Oh well.  I can't exactly blame my past self for not being interested in dance or acting.  I'm still not, or at least not directly.  But I have to learn to act and dance for the purposes of trapeze, and I expect it will be a long uphill slog with Daniela dragging me all the way.  If nothing else I have to learn to act like I'm dancing and acting.  One of the laws of circus, I'm finding, is that if something isn't easy, painless, or beautiful, you fake it so that other people think it is.  That, at least, is the kind of make-believe I can do.

I'm slowly learning to use a new word, and that word is "training."  I hear people talk about training all the time at Circus Center.  The passing-the-time-of-day question around there is "how's your training going?"  When people ask me this, I tend to get a shifty expression and say in a false-hearty tone, "Oh yeah, training!  The training is great!  I'm definitely training, yes... definitely not just... screwing around on a trapeze..."

It's such a serious word: I associate "training" with marathons and triathlons and the Olympics.  At Circus Center, I apply it to people in the Professional Program; people with acts; people with insane abs; people who have a whole skill set of things I can't do. (In fact, I may have walled myself in here: "people who train" is pretty much defined, in my brain, as "people who do things I can't do."  Hm.)  I call my trapeze activities "practice," probably as a holdover from the days of band.*  

But I'm teaching myself to use the verb "train" in application to myself-- the quotes are, if you will, my training wheels (hee)-- and also teaching myself not to mentally scoff when I do.  It's true that I have a serious mindset: I have a checklist when I "train" on my own, and I aim to be on a bar five days a week.  I always drag myself through some kind of conditioning, and I stretch like my life depends on it.  (My shoulders actually do.)  My brain feels more serious than my body and my skill set look.  This might make me delusional, or it might mean I'm "training."

I also feel a little like I'm training because, um, how to put this delicately?  "Training" isn't... fun.  Does it sound fun to you?  It doesn't to me.  Even "practice" was pushing it.  I'm not saying I don't enjoy trapeze, but it's more like "I find satisfaction in seeing my eventual progress."  Not so much fun.  There are, however, a number of circus-related fun things to do in San Francisco.  (There might be non-circus-related fun things, too, but I... might not care.)  The Bay Area is the self-proclaimed home of both AcroYoga and aerial dance, and the seriously a lot of aerial dance companies often host intro-level workshops.  I know this because I just missed several.  Likewise, there are a stunning number of AcroYoga events coming up around town, most of which I am going to be out of town for.  But it's on my radar, now.

I especially feel that I should give aerial dance a shot; my apparatus of choice is, after all, known as "dance trapeze."  Unfortunately, the last time I danced, I was five and mainly in it for the tutu (a damn fine tutu, might I add).  My feet are exponentially less intelligent than my hands, and I reluctantly entrust them with anything more complicated than walking.  Acrobatics and gymnastics are problematic for the same reason: switching between my hands and feet in rapid succession is a recipe for disaster.  This is why I'm yet to touch an acrobatics class.  But maybe I wouldn't be so bad off in aerial dance.  A lot of it is harness-based, which I suppose could go either way, but their apparatuses (apparati?  I still haven't worked this one out) tend to be metal objects hung from a single point, which sounds an awful lot like what I do when I'm-- here we go-- "training."

Besides, I hear so much about this "fun" thing that I feel like I should try it.

In the mean time, I continue to train.  Success is still measured by tiny increments.  My skin the cats go a little deeper without me getting stuck; my meat hooks aren't quite so precarious (still only the one side, though); hat used to feel like a super fast spin that might pull me off the bar now feels more or less like a normal spin.  And during my last lesson with Daniela, we revisited unicorn.  I have not been practicing unicorn: it was so abysmal when I tried it that Daniela and I tacitly agreed that it should be put aside for awhile.  Well, we came back to it and it still sucks.  There's still a lot of climbing, a lot of hoisting, a lot of manhandling the ropes to get them where I want them to be-- but it's incrementally less sucky than before.  The skill has actually improved without my practicing it, which is tangible proof that all the tiny increments of progress do add up over time.

Or  maybe it's magic.  I'm not picky.  The skill's called unicorn, after all; may as well be magic.

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*Tuba, if you were wondering