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.
