46 posts tagged “trapeze”

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?!

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!

At one time, when I'd fallen in love with circus but decided (incorrectly) that it wasn't something I could ever do, I set my sights instead on working backstage in some capacity.  The logic was that if I couldn't be onstage, backstage was just as good.

Hoo boy was I wrong about that.  I mean, I'm sure there are things that are better for body and soul than getting up in front of people, doing something you love, and basking in their adoration--but those other things are probably illegal.  Performance is intoxicating.  Circus is intoxicating--I kind of knew that, already, what with the waiting hungrily for ten years to go to circus school, but still: whoa.  I love watching other people put on their makeup in the green room (more proficiently than me); I love Nancy the stage manager (who, like all the crew, rocks) walking through to tell us we have fifteen minutes, five minutes, two minutes; I love the opening procession, where no one but the Youth Circus and the clowns seem to know where they're going; I love the look of blank jumpiness on performers' faces when they're about to go onstage, and the sweaty elation when they come off; I love hearing muted applause from the green room; I love the happy traffic jam in the lobby after the show.  You guys, I am totally hooked.

Most of all I love the three minutes of my act.  Not surprisingly, they are the fastest minutes of the day.  (Also not surprising: the twenty minutes between the start of the show and my act are the longest minutes of the day.)  As soon as they're over, I am both intensely relieved and also I want to be back on the other side of those three minutes.  Last night and tonight both went fabulously for me: all my skills came off like they're supposed to--and even if they didn't, nobody knew the difference. 

I had been a bit worried about getting onstage, since there's a lot of striking (putting away) of mats and ropes from the previous act, and my trapeze has to be brought out and hung up.  The crew are impressively fast, but there was nothing to cover it up, and my walk onstage was conducted in awkward silence.  (The previously-mentioned tango act was moved earlier in the show, so I didn't get to hitch a ride on their coattails.)

Thank goodness for clowns.  The Pi Clowns noticed my predicament and kindly offered to provide a little distraction and a clever way to get me onstage.  Now I hide behind them as they cross the stage in a clump; they drop me off at my trapeze and continue on their way.  It's super cute.  Also, I'm pretty sure that mere association with the Pi Clowns will make you a better performer.

The new ending has also sorted itself out: people clap as soon as I hit the mat.  I don't think I'm faking anyone out with the fall, as Stefan perhaps intended, but at least I haven't heard giggles.  Last night I did miscalculate the edge of the mat when I was getting up, and nearly rolled off, but they didn't even laugh at me then.  Bless them.

(If you are reading this and you were in Thursday or Friday's audience, bless you in particular.  If you are reading this and you are planning to come to one of the shows, know that these guys have set the bar high.) 

The most pleasant surprise of this experience has been the discovery that people clap for everything.  Everything.  Before Thursday, I only ever performed this incarnation of the act before other performers who have seen (and often, done) everything that I do before.  But now the audiences are, if anything, biased in our favor; most of them have friends or family in the show. I'm certainly not complaining--it blows my mind.  I had no idea people would applaud things like my ankle hang.  Friggin amazing.  It even keeps me from rushing, since I want to linger and soak it in.

So now, all that's left is the weekend.  Between my three shows, I will have had nine minutes of pure, unadulterated solo trapeze time.  That means I am owed six more minutes of fame... but I think I am going to need more than that.