33 posts from 2009

Oh!  I am kind of behind the times, but I have a show coming up this Saturday.

Yeah, like this Saturday.  Like, I'm not on top of things right now.

Open House time!

It all goes down on Saturday, December 19th, over at Ye Circus Center in San Francisco.

Fun stuff begins at 10am--face painting, balloon animals, circus workshops and lots and lots of kid activities.  Most of it is free.  The flying trapeze net will be up: last year they had a sweet $5-per-swing deal going on, and I think something similar is happening this year.

Then the net comes down and the free show starts at 2:15 (runs until 3:00).  It'll be short and sweet, and I got excited just looking at the roster.  Lots of great acts!  ...And also me!

There is also a not-free show that night at 7:30, courtesy of the Professional Program and the Clown Conservatory.  These shows are generally amazing.  Tickets may be purchased here.

If you are in San Francisco or the Bay Area or the Pacific Time Zone, you should come.  What are you doing on Saturday?  If your answer doesn't include "balloon animals" you are obviously not going to have as much fun there as you'll have here.  Balloon animals.

Okay, so week 5 is kind of a cop-out... I really did run out of ideas, and rather than subject you all to another three minutes of me looking aimless, I decided to apply what I learned.

There were a few things which I found/remembered during this little project that fit into the act; I have a feeling that there might be a couple more, if I can wiggle them into the choreography.  So here is the latest version of my act, complete with a few newish things.  (Mostly the spinning angel and that fancy killer spin at the end.)

(And by "mostly," I mean "entirely."  Anyway...)

I actually was planning on posting this with different music: I've been playing with a few other pieces, and I fall in and out of love with them as time goes by.  But when I put on the ol' Zoe Keating this weekend, it seemed just right.  Apparently I picked this music for a reason.

And that's five weeks!  It was fun and mentally exhausting.  I am especially proud that I came up with five videos (even if the last one was...kindofacopout) in light of the fact that I am entering the last week of NaNoWriMo.  The timing was probably good--if not for this challenge, I might not have seen much of Trappy this month--but I am going to be starting December with 0% creativity juice.  Hopefully the new semester at Circus Center will give me a chance to recharge.

Week four!  Let's do this thing!

(The applause in the beginning is not for me--it's for someone who just did an amazing and difficult thing over on the static trapeze.  But let's pretend...)

I'm not gonna lie: this routine was hard for me.  I kept over-cranking the spin in the beginning and then was spinning so fast that the bar kept getting away from me.  And I was spending a lot of brain power trying to make it sassy and kicky and matching-the-music.  I was working on it on the side for a few weeks and I still would like to keep playing with it, mostly because this song?  Amazing.  Let me treat you to a lyrical sample:

"Some people like to bake a honey-coiled ham.
Some people like to roast a leg of lamb.
Some people have a complicated coat to mend;
We'll all be milking goats in the end."

At every possible opportunity, I plan to try to pass that last line off as a proverb.  "Well, you know what they say: we'll all be milking goats in the end, right?"

Anyway, the song is fun (and goes on for another two and a half minutes), and I am proud of myself for not falling off the ropes in that thing where I hook my knees on one rope and wrap my arms on the other, because it's sort of precarious.  And if I listen to this song on the bus, it's all I can do not to jump up and start dancing.  (Note: not a good idea.)  I think I will keep playing with this routine.

But not next week!  Next week is the last week of my little project...

And I am out of ideas.  No, seriously.  If you have any requests (don't get all smart and request things like back hip circles), ideas, musical inspiration, or general encouragement, let me hear your voice in the comments.  Otherwise next week might bring a video of me sitting on Trappy and twiddling my thumbs.

Hey friends!  It's week three!

This week is a little short, mostly because a) last week was a little long, and b) I am lazy.  The experiment was to see if I could put together something that was slow (hard! arrrgh, so hard!) and entirely under the bar.  I tend not to do a lot of angel/candlestick/whatever because I always have to get back UP on the bar, and there are a limited number of ways to make that interesting.  Also, next week I'm taking the bar low again, and this is my chance to get all the under-the-bar stuff out of my system.

I have a feeling that Andrew Bird--particularly this song--makes everything look twice as amazing as it would without.  (I therefore highly recommend him as your soundtrack for grand entrances, proposals of marriage, and those times when you trip on invisible bumps in the sidewalk.)  Nevertheless, I kind of like this sequence.  I'd like to use some of this stuff in the future, especially (if you couldn't guess) the "slow angel...fast angel!...slow angel" thing.

And oh my, who's that trapeze bar with her fancy black tape?

It's Trappy!

I really like this tape.  My friend Jason brought it with him from Austin when he came to visit and ended up leaving it with me (thanks!).  It's just athletic tape, but it has a stupendously good grip.  The only down side is, yes, you guessed it:

out! out! damn spot!

That was after scrubbing my hands.  The tape was incredibly sticky, but at least it won't look dirty and gross after two days.  That is: my hands might, but the bar won't.

Finally and apropos of nothing: YouTube's new, "used to be beta" video uploader does not work with my computer (which, to be fair, is ancient) and the not-beta (alpha?) version, which worked, has dropped off the face of the earth.  Vox seems to be able to handle this video, but it's given me grief before.  So: can any recommend a good YouTube alternative? (Preferably one that might be compatible with wheezy old iBooks.)  I am currently leaning toward Dailymotion.

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.