15 posts tagged “single-point trapeze”

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.

I think I had a dream in which I posted this video to this blog.  It's entirely possible, because I have really, intensely boring dreams.  (Like, the whole dream will be packing a suitcase to go on a trip, for what feels like HOURS, but I never actually go on the trip.)

Anyway, I didn't post it, but here it is now.  This is the dress rehearsal, since although there were a plethora of videographers/photographers around the Showcase, I've yet to see any of their footage.  This was shot by the marvelous Marsha:

So, that was June 17th.  In the almost-a-month since then, Marina and I have been plotting to make the act longer and fancier.  The goal is to have four and a half minutes, and to throw in a bunch of new skills, some of which I have pining to learn for months (like extending your front leg in unicorn).  Here's what I've got as of this weekend:

But it's not like the act is done.  What you see above is the first time I ran it through from beginning to end with all the new material--and even then, some of the new material is conspicuously absent...like the toe hang.  I still need to run it another 100,000 times before it's smooth and polished and I don't get my legs confused when I'm standing on the bar (or at any other time, actually).  And that toe hang...lordy.  Technically, I can do it without safety ropes, though I still use them when I'm training on my own (in class with Marina, I use her spotting reflexes, though so far I haven't had to use them).  Now it's more of a mental undertaking than a physical one: in spite of repeated bashings, the tops of my feet still feel like toe hangs go beyond the call of duty.  Whine, whine, whine, that's all I ever hear.

The semester is a week from being over!  That went by fast.  And that means that Daniela is leaving after next week, which is still very sad.  The pain has been eased somewhat by knowing that my new teacher, Gretchen, is seven kinds of amazing.  She came to my last lesson and co-taught/conspired with Daniela.  I discovered that when your teachers are muttering about you just off to the side, it is virtually impossible to do a correct straddle-up.  Daniela asked if they were making me nervous.  No no, not at all...

We spent awhile on the swinging section of my act (you didn't know it had a swinging section?  neither did I, until recently), and although Gretchen claimed that she had never swung on single point before, she proved her genius by hopping up and doing some brilliant with it, which was exactly what I needed to do (she swung sharply and powerfully, which I hadn't figured out how to do, but which happens to be just what the music and the mood of that section calls for).  Gretchen appears to be the mistress of all the things I am not good at, such as:

-acting
-having straight legs (like, circus straight-- not regular-style, standing-up-on-them straight)
-being very flexible

"Do you have anyone stretching you?" she asked at the end of the lesson.  Well, I do now.  She assured me that we wouldn't just work on leg-straightening and backbends, but that is very much what I need: learning new skills is fun, but for the moment I'm actually quite satisfied with what's in my act.  I'm still working on things that will someday be added-- heel hangs, for example-- as well as skin the cats and meat hooks and all of THAT fun-as-it-sounds stuff, but now it's becoming clear that there are other aesthetic areas that are lacking, such as the straightness of my legs.  You're going to be able to roll dimes down these things, once Gretchen is done with them.  Hopefully I will still also be able to walk.

These last few weeks in static, Diane and I have been working on some fun things: neck hangs, the neck being the only place a trapeze has not yet bruised or scraped me; also something called knee spin.  Knee spin is one of these skills that require you to hang onto the rope, lift yourself from the bar, and wait for yourself to twist all the way around the rope, back to the bar.  This works in theory because the rope is twisted in one direction, and you can turn yourself with it just by holding on and waiting for it to spin you (very slowly).  In practice, one sometimes comes to a complete stop, for no known reason, 180 degrees into the revolution around the rope, when it is impossible to grab the bar.  That's how I spent my Tuesday: upside down hanging by my knees and one hand from the rope, and wondering where the bar is.

Finally, hip circles:

Nothing will make you clean up your fly beats like watching yourself do dozens of them over a month's worth of video clips.  Seriously.

Hey, what do you know!  The 18,000th try really is the charm.  The sound, sadly, was apparently a casualty of my War To Get My Video On YouTube.  Only the strong survived (and the music wasn't super audible in the first place).  I encourage you to hum the tune of your choice as you watch:

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...

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...

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.

--
*Tuba, if you were wondering