4 posts from August 2009

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!