Aaaand by the skin of my teeth once again, I hereby present to you another monthly YouTube circusy beaut!
I've been incredibly distracted this month by, among other things, a new job (hurrah!). This has meant some terrible blog neglect but I have in fact started back at the NCCA and am trapeze-ing and conditioning with utmost dedication. I can't say that my love for trapeze has returned to full bloom quite yet, but I am back in the zone, so here is some trapeze goodness for your delectation:
I love the old-time look of this video and the fact it's a bit more fun and fast-moving than many. Despite a slight drop in my enthusiasm (don't get me wrong, I still love it, just not quite as mouth-foaming obsessive as previously), this makes me wanna get on a trapeze and improve my skills STAT! She also incorporates some moves that I am working on right now which increases my respect ten-fold, since I now know that they are basically impossible but she just casually throws them in.
Continuing on with the theme of the last post, I here present to you an excellent, entertaining and motivational video of some Ferociously Strong Women!
(Ok, I know strictly speaking this isn't actually 'circus', but there's a fair bit of transferrable skills going on here, no?)
I can't really emphasize enough how much I want to be this strong.
I need to find me a pull-up bar to dangle pathetically off...preferably one that doesn't have lots of scary guys crouched around it, flexing... hmmm. In the meantime I be workin' on ma press-ups uh-huh. (My press-ups are currently shit, I have discovered, after watching some tutorials on how to do them properly)
Please note: my only contact with 'circus skills' over the last 6 weeks has been an occasional conditioning/rope class at Crossfit London. I fear this may be what is leading me into the slightly meatheadish muscle-loving territory evidenced by this being my video of the month. I bloody love that class though - the teacher is great, and because it's Crossfit there's a lot of verbal encouragement that you don't really get at circus places where everyone is way too cool for that kind of thing. I'm not sure how I will cope when I go back to NCCA and no-one is shouting 'NICE, Felicity, YES! One more, come on! THAT's IT! High five!!'
Ah Crossfit, who knew you could make a dyed-in-the-wool, book-reading, crocheting, tree-hugging, hippified nerd like me want to be a muscle head eh?!
Like many humans of the Western female persuasion, I have spent a fair bit of my life attempting to be very slim. It's always seemed a fairly obvious goal to have and in theory not unattainable, since (although I eat like a horse and have a weakness for stodge) I mostly enjoy healthy food, walk everywhere, and am genetically inclined away from obesity. I'm no chubber, but the 'ideal' size and weight has always just been slightly down the road a stretch - there's always seemed a lot of room to be skinnier and smaller, even when I've been at my skinniest and smallest. And somehow I've never questioned whether I should want that or not, or what the implications could be.
But...why should women all want to be physically less? So they can look extra weak and in need of protection at all times? So they can take up less of the precious space that men should rightfully occupy, with their own societally imposed ideal of being Bigger and Stronger? Hmmm. My strident feminist side isn't too keen on either of those ideas.
Im not saying that I'm pro-fat. I am still the product of my own society after all; I spent way too many years (age 11 to age 30 to be precise) devouring fashion magazines to be that mentally liberated. And to be frank, I don't think getting fatter would help me be healthier, feel more energetic or improve my aerial skills, all of which are dear to my heart. But I've decided that I am pro-lady muscles. Not quite world champion body-builder lady muscles, since I find that kind of thing a bit creepy on both sexes, but just some high-standard female buffness.
Maybe this is an inevitable result of doing a bit of aerial conditioning and being obsessed with an activity that requires a fair bit of strength, but I have suddenly become very excited about the idea of being SUPER RIPPED.
This is where I'm at right now:
As you can see, I have... can we just say, a little way to go? before I can lay claim to anything approaching buff. But it's definitely the new goal that I am using to barge the 'get smaller' mindset out of the way. 'Get bigger' feels like a much more satisfying aim to me. Why shouldn't I look like I can handle myself in an arm wrestling contest/move my own furniture/rip your head off with my bare hands? Why shouldn't I take up a bit more space as I move through this world of ours? And - bonus!- this goal will allow me to actually enjoy food rather than increasing the background rumble of guilt that has dogged many a meal (cake binge) of mine over the years.
You never know, maybe one day I will reach the dizzying heights of this CRAZY girl, holy crap she's amazing:
This month's video is in celebration of my decision to sign up for Level 2 Static Trapeze at NCCA starting in September - YES I got on the course this time! Pretty sure I was the first one through on the phone lines the second they opened, thats how determined I was not to have a repeat of last time's fiasco.
In the last few months I have dabbled with a lot of different classes and its been tempting to carry on with the pick n mix style fun i'm having, but I realised that if I didnt carry through my original plan to learn static at NCCA I would always wonder if it would have been better. Or if I would have been better because of it.
So here we have an appropriately static trap-focussed video. I mainly like it cause its unbelievably cute. This guy is like some kind of flexible baby deer rolling around the trapeze in cosy pajamas. (I mean he's also really good, but thats a given).
I have recently become intrigued by the discipline of Aerial Straps, which seems to kind of combine the best of all the aerials. It also looks the most like flying and a whole lot of airy fun, I want to try it so bad! They don't really do adult amateur classes in straps though, presumably because you have to be SUPER HARDCORE to even attempt it for the first time, *sigh*. Maybe one day...
So I've been watching a few videos of these insanely strong straps people and thought this one was definitely worth sharing. There are some performance videos on this guy's YouTube channel as well, but I've decided I much prefer the videos of people practising. I read this E.B. White quote in a book a while back and it's stuck in my head - so true!
'The circus is at its best before it has been put together... Under the bright lights of the finished show, a performer need only reflect the electric candle power that is directed upon him; but in the dark and dirty old training rings and in the make-shift cages, whatever light is generated, whatever excitement, whatever beauty, must come from original sources - from internal fires of professional hunger and delight, from the exuberance and gravity of youth. It is the difference between planetary light and the combustion of stars.'
Anyway, here we are, some nice dreamy viewing for a Sunday afternoon:
Right then, time for an update on my personal aerial progress. I may have been rubbish at keeping this as an online diary, but I have been going to class, I promise!
Over the last 6 weeks things have settled into a nice routine of 1 x hoop class, 1 x dance class and 1-2 x yoga classes per week. I feel like by rights this should be making some kind of amazing difference to my physique, but in actual fact my body has seamlessly assimilated the new regime into it's usual inflexible, puny and flabby state of being. There has been basically no change, grrr. I need to do more, moooooore...
Having said that though, some exciting (for me) landmarks have been reached / passed:
1. I can now successfully do around 5 press ups in a row, OH YEAH. That may sound utterly shit, but I have never been able to do those bastards and now that I can I feel mighty. Bring on the giant upper arms!
2. I can (mostly accurately) follow a very slow, very easy, sequence of dance choreography. I still look ridiculous doing it but at least I'm not bumping into the people around me or weeping with humiliation.
3. In contrast to past times, I can still manage to get up onto the damn hoop by the end of the class when my muscles are tired. This comes in pretty handy.
4. This one week, I successfully managed to do a pike roll!! Click here to see a pike roll.
So apart from these exciting, if tiny, improvements, what are the main differences between what now and the old times at NCCA?
Well the most glaring difference is the equipment, I suppose, being that I'm learning hoop rather than trapeze et al. That's AERIAL hoop, by the way, NOT HULA hoop as everyone seems to assume. (Pff! is all I have to say to that). If you're still confused, this should help clarify things:
(please note, this is just to show the beauty that's possible on the aerial breed of hoop. This guy is amazing and has probably been practicing daily since birth. What I am able to do looks nothing like this)
Another difference is that the atmosphere at the current place is much less 'herd the large groups of students around the P.E. hall shouting instructions' and much more 'hey 3-4 people whose names I know, let's hang out and do some aerial shit'. Which is a long way to say, it's smaller and friendlier. This is nice and helps counteract the fact that it's a drop-in class with mostly non-regular attendees (as mentioned previously).
And a final difference is that it's mixed level. As also mentioned in past posts, this combined with the drop-in factor means that there is a much less obvious line of progression and I'm not going to lie, it is a little bit frustrating. I want to see clear results dammit! I want to keep doing the same moves week after week until I get them or kill myself trying! I'm having fun in these classes, I'm getting stronger and I am obviously still learning moves, but we often cover completely different things each week. Quite frankly I generally make a pig's ear of all of them and then forget them completely. Booo.
The other aspect of the mixed-level-ness is that I'm learning with people who are a lot, lot better than me. To give you an idea, the last three classes I've been to have also been attended by this girl (who whilst ridiculously nice and modest, is just so clearly in a entirely different world of skill):
This has it's advantages in that I can see others doing things well and try to copy them, and also be inspired/entertained. But it also has some disadvantages, in that it's kind of demoralising to see everyone else effortlessly gliding through things, while you're falling on your head about 60% of the time, and being caught by the teacher the other 40%. It's mostly meant that, despite the best efforts of the teachers (who have been at least as good, if not better, than the ones at NCCA - I'm not criticising them at all) to include something for everyone, the moves have often been pitched at a much higher level than I'm at, so there has been a lot of failure. AND WE ALL KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT FAILURE.
Given this, I'm thinking of making some kind of radical overhaul to my learning strategy: streamlining, economising, obtaining some way of measuring my progress etc. Watch this space...
This month's video is something different again - nothing to do with aerial, not really amateur and, being a Broadway thing, more of a commercial style than I would normally enjoy, BUT. It's been compulsive repeat viewing for me and is kind of amazing, so I figured why not share it?
I think hand-to-hand acrobatics is my all-time favourite thing to watch. Following my enamorment with Stateless, I went to see A Simple Space a few weeks ago and absolutely loved that too (so clever). Sadly I think it's probably also the thing I am most unsuited to doing myself, since the few gymnastics classes I've taken just felt terribly hard and uncomfortable. Have I mentioned my extreme galumphing-ness and lack of flexibility? Humbug. I'm still holding out hope that handstand stuff could be a possibility for me though - next on my list to try!
Anyway, so the video. These guys are Charlotte O'Sullivan and Nicolas Jelmoni, from the cast of Pippin the Musical, a Broadway show that combines musical with circus. Their act is some kind of magical fluid blend of dance and acrobatics that does funny things to my insides (errm, it might be that feeling known as 'jealousy' acidically melting my guts). I feel like I may be overusing this word in my description of circus acts, but well, it's beautiful! Check it out:
Please excuse the long month's hiatus on here. Rain stopped play for a bit - by which I mean I was distracted by a little personal life melodrama, and deflated by a touch of circus-related disappointment (of which more later) - BUT I'm about ready to get back on the blogging horse...
... starting with this beauty of a YouTube item!
For some reason, of all the circus styles that have jumbled their way through my mind's eye since this obsession began, none have included a troubadour-ish, Shakespearean, rose-twined production such as this one seems to have been. But thinking about it, it's actually kind of obvious. Surely that's where various elements of circus would have originated, in the traveling acrobats and jugglers of ye olden dayes etc.? I should probably brush up on my history.
'Delicately-lit' and 'peachy' are not qualities I would have previously associated with a rope act or hand-to-hand acrobatics, but here they undeniably are. And romping around to the ghostly, lilting accompaniment of a live Marika Hackman no less. I bet this was AMAZING to watch, wish I had been there at the actual performance.
Repeatedly allowing myself to be mesmerised into a midsummer night's village green dream by the video, though - nice work Mad Adam, the maker - is better than nothing. And it's about 50% of what's got me through the last few weeks of upheaval and upset, so thanks Marika and Tangerino (who appear to be NCCA degree students in their 3rd year, the lucky lucky talented bastards)!
Also, if this isn't an advert for being an alabaster-skinned English rose type then I don't know what is. IN YOUR FACE fake tan purveyors.
'When we watch another human being making a movement, whether it is sticking out a tongue, carrying packages, swerving, dancing, eating or clapping their hands, our neurons fire in the same way, as if we ourselves were making the movement.'
'The brain has a built-in empathic and mimicking capacity. It translates what is seen through the eyes into the equivalent of doing and is structured to absorb and prepare itself for what we may not yet have mastered.'
Susie Orbach
I came across this quote the other day and am taking it to mean that watching hours and hours of YouTube videos of OTHER PEOPLE doing circus skills, is entirely constructive and useful.
Thanks Susie!
P.S. this video is insane, and is making me want to take rope next term. I am so confused right now.
Rope or trapeze?
ROPE OR TRAPEZE?
If anyone has any opinion at all on this, please let me know.
It's fair to say that the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a challenge in terms of my personal circus skills development. While I've been getting on nicely with the supporting classes I'm doing (flexibility and yoga, plus dabbling with odd bits of ballet and gymnastics for geriatric hephalump dummies), the actual skills classes have not gone so well...
My final flying trapeze class was awful, involving a complete lack of motivation on my part, and doing terribe clingy, jerky take-offs that were worse than my first attempts and which practically wrenched the poor pectoral muscles out of my body. To round things off nicely, at the end of the class the teacher informed me that I was not good enough to be signed-off for level 2 (at the end of each block of classes, they assesses whether you will be able to progress to the next level with that piece of equipment, should you so choose). I already knew that I don't want to take flying trapeze next term, but it still did NOT feel good to know that I had failed it, wah! I would be lying if I said this didn't put a dent in my rabid aerial enthusiasm.
I am not someone who deals well with failure. My usual method of coping with even the risk of failing at something is to avoid it at all costs and stick to what I'm good at, or can learn quickly. So in actual fact, this experience was an excellent lesson for me in humility and acceptance. So I'm a bit rubbish at flying trapeze? Whatever. At least I had a go right? And if I really loved it I would just pay another £250 and repeat the course until I was good enough for level 2. After a few hours of grumpy moping, I realised this and moved on (ish).
That class was also an excellent lesson in how much learning something, at least with physical-skill stuff, is about mental attitude. I arrived not feeling very energetic or motivated, and instead of bucking myself up and going for it anyway, I gave in to the inclination to be a lame-ass. I had the thought lurking at the back of my mind 'well, I don't want to do this next term anyway, so who cares if I improve this week' and it really showed in my attitude, my body and each little aspect of what I was doing. Clinging to the platform with my toes, not concentrating or getting into the rhythm of the swings properly and dismounting like a jellyfish. I knew it, and the teacher could see it too - hence the big fat fail.
This week we moved on to Rope, much to my relief. However that session didn't go 100% smoothly either! It wasn't an unmitigated disaster (I managed to execute some clumsy basic climbs and foot wraps), but the rope is quite a harsh piece of equipment, involving a lot of burn/bruising risk and - well, basically you really need to be s.t.r.o.n.g. to do it well. This made everything feel hard and intimidating.
Luckily we have a really nice teacher for this piece of equipment, one who started the class by telling us not to compare ourselves negatively to other people in the group, as everyone is different and learns at their own speed. We should each just try to improve from our own starting points over the 4 weeks. I tried to bear this in mind as I repeatedly failed to achieve what I believe is a hiplock from scissors (I didn't really take this in during the class as my brain was just going 'Arrrrghghghghgh?!?!?!?') while the annoyingly high muscle-to-fat ratio guys in the class got it straight away. Bah humbug.
The move is demonstrated expertly here by this guy who TAUGHT HIMSELF to do it, holy crap.
I came away from the session feeling slightly defeated and starting to wonder whether I should even bother finishing the course, or if Rope is just too much of a pointless mountain to climb (seeing as I always intended to do static trapeze next term anyway). But that's just too depressing - such a mindset cannot be allowed to continue!
Remember the old '1% inspiration, 99% perspiration' adage? Well I know the idea of that is to encourage people to put a bit more elbow grease into things, but actually I think I've been getting too bogged down in the perspiration bit and was in need of a bit more of the inspiration (is it really only supposed to be 1%?). I have spent the last few days happily burrowing my way down a new YouTube rabbit hole full of people doing amazing things on ropes. There's TONS of good videos, one of them will definitely be video of the month for March.
The result of this has been a big surge of motivation to keep trying on Rope, and actually to also keep an open mind about what I will continue with after Easter. Even if I'm not a natural at it, I'm sure if go in with a good attitude next week and try to focus a bit more instead of letting my mind spin off into a wild panic of incomprehension, I can improve at least a little bit. Burning new neural pathways and all that (thanks militant teacher from January!). If I can get that blummin scissor hiplock thing down by the end of term I will judge myself to have succeeded, RRARRGH. And even if I don't, at the very least I'm building upper body strength, which basically helps with everything.
There will be no giving up, not on my watch dammit!
Something a little bit different this month! I have been watching all the circus documentaries I can find for free online (which, although there are tons that you have to pay for, isn't actually that many, booooo. I'm waiting on tenterhooks for 'Grazing the Sky' to go on sale...) and this is hands down the best.
It's an Al Jazeera feature from 2012, about a circus enterprise in Morocco called Cirque Shems'y. Cirque Shems'y started out as a social circus project for disadvantaged kids, but then became the first national circus in Morocco.
It's definitely worth taking 25 minutes out of your day to watch this, for the following reasons:
It's aesthetically very enjoyable! The contrast between the shots of sweltering, arid Morroccan scenery, deprived areas of town, etc. and the energy and design of the acts / show makes for a really striking effect.
Every single person in it has passion and love shining out of them.
There's no pretension, just genuine excitement to be part of something and to be creating something new, as well as having the chance to do what they love and transcending the problems that they had in their lives before.
It shows the director massively losing his shit somewhere in the middle, which makes it clear how much he cares about the show (it's very endearing) and creates some nice narrative tension, meaning that you can share in a bit of the pleasure when the show goes well.
The live band which accompanies the performance at the end. Not only do they play beautiful music, they also just look BRILLIANT. I want to join them!
The soundbites from the performers (see below)
One of the best things about it is the way you see the radiant positivity of the performers transferred to the members of the audience who are interviewed after they watch the show. This feels really important to me - maybe it's the point of spending all those hours honing and creating something amazing? Communicating a part of your passion and inspiration to other people, who maybe aren't able to spend the time connecting with those things through physical training, but can benefit from sharing them nonetheless?
The aspect of this video that really stayed with me, though, are some of the things the performers say near the end:
'when you are onstage, you feel a sense of real joy. You have to really concentrate and you get a really nice feeling...'
'When we're in this ordinary everyday world, we feel ordinary. But when I'm in the circus and I'm up in the air doing a sequence I know really well, I have a feeling of lightness... like a dove flying free. I feel really free.'
'When I get on stage, it's just like I'm dreaming. I forget everything in my head, everything vanishes. I'm not there, my body is just doing things unconsciously.'
I think this really helps explain why learning circus skills can have such a strong effect on people. The words 'freedom' and 'joy' come up again and again in talk about the experience of doing things like aerial and acrobatics. And the idea of concentration and forgetting yourself fits exactly with the whole theory of 'flow' - the younger boy in the film even uses that very word: 'I just flow with the show, flow and flow...til I feel it's over.' You've probably encountered it before, but basically 'flow' is the mental state that is supposed to occur when someone is immersed in an activity which is neither too difficult or too easy, but is perfectly pitched to their abilities with clear, achievable goals. When you are in flow, you are so absorbed in what you're doing that you lose all sense of time, or yourself, and your emotions are spontaneously positive and energised. Flow is pretty much the key to happiness - if you believe what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says anyway (I think I do).
This all may be particularly interesting to me because I'm so into the idea of the 'benefits' of doing circus (and because I have a bit of an unrequited desire to visit Morocco), but I really think this is an excellent piece of human interest documentary. Hopefully you do too!
I know I'm a day late with this post, but shhhhh, maybe no-one else has noticed!
It's that time again! Time for me to share another fabulous diamond in the rough of circus videos on YouTube. This feature is kind of like Humans of New York - except, I don't interview the subjects, share their moving life stories, have an incredibly popular Facebook page, or the slightest clue what I'm doing.
It's absolutely nothing like Humans of New York.
ANYWAY, here is this month's offering. To be fair it's not really much of a secret, this one. The video actually comes up on the first page when you search 'static trapeze', but it is one of the most-watched trapeze videos for a very good reason - it's lovely.
The trapezista here is Shannon Gray Collier, whose personal website unfortunately seems to have expired, but from what I can determine is American, does a fair bit of performing and was big on competitive athletics growing up. There's a more polished version of this act on her YouTube page, but I prefer this one. I don't know why, there's just something about it that is totally captivating. Maybe it's to do with the small venue? And the fact that she speaks to the audience whilst dangling from the bar, looking like a gangly teenager, before unceremoniously launching into a whole load of stunning mundane-reality-transcendence?
The fact she is incredibly skilled and graceful goes without saying, but Shannon has this lyrical, emotional quality to her movement that I haven't seen anywhere else on trapeze. This, together with her total concentration, delicate control and ability to be completely absorbed in what she is communicating somehow makes it really moving.
When you combine all of this with the connection and responsiveness to the music it just equals infinitely watchable - and when I say infinitely, I actually don't think it's possible to get tired of watching this video! (Of course it helps that the song is SO GOOD. Whatever happened to The Cinematic Orchestra? Are they still around? I need to look into this).
Having spent an embarrassing amount of time wistfully watching circus videos on YouTube, I feel I'm well placed to bring you its finest offerings. To, er, save you the trouble - a public service if you will.
There's a lot of boring crap dribbling around on YouTube in the way of amateur trapeze videos (not that there's anything wrong with that - hopefully one day one of them will be mine! however they are quite dull to watch if you're not the subject's close relative), but there's also some blimmin' amazing stuff that will have you Googling your nearest beginners classes within seconds, mark my words. Unless you're DEAD INSIDE. The video below is my all-time favourite, which may mean I've peaked too soon with this, but I don't care.
This lady is Angelica Bongiovonni. According to her website, she's a pro circus performer who started learning static trapeze when she was five, has a dance background, has won a variety of awards and has toured with some major outfits like Cirque Eloize (all of which is very depressing to my hopes of ever achieving anything slightly like this, but that's beside the point).
Since I'm pretty ignorant about the finer points of aerial technique, the reasons I love this are simple: as well as doing all sorts of amazing tricks, Ms Bongiovonni manages to make the most beautiful, graceful shapes with her body throughout every single moment of the act, the whole thing is totally absorbing and exciting, and the music is a brilliant choice. I also like the way there's lots of spinning, as my personal preference is for a bit more movement than the classic static trapeze (whilst not being flying trapeze either).
It seems she's moved on to Cyr wheel now, which to me is baffling when you can whip out a trapeze performance like this, but ... yeah... she's pretty good at Cyr wheel too. Bah humbug.
