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.
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...
If you've been paying attention (it's okay if you haven't, I forgive you), you will know that I started my Aerial Level 1 course at the National Centre for Circus Arts this week, YAYYYY! So I thought I'd write a bit about it, mostly to prove that I'm actually going.
The National Centre for Circus Arts (NCCA) is a circus school in Hoxton which runs kids and adult amateur classes, as well as accredited BTEC, BA and Post-grad courses. It says on its website that it is considered one of the top three schools in Europe, and it certainly seems pretty heavily oversubscribed as far as the adult classes go. I was on the waiting list from August to November and had to book my slot on the Aerial 1 course the very same day they went on sale to be sure of getting on.
Pic: www.hackneygazette.co.uk
It's a pretty cool place. I knew this before I turned up on Wednesday, because I went for a admin-y job interview there in the summer and got a magical personal tour of the building (I didn't get the job, sad face. I'm pretty sure it wasn't for lack of circus enthusiasm so it can only have been my complete inability to remember a time when I'd worked well as part of a team/invented a new filing system, or some such rubbish. Pffff).
It's housed in an old Victorian electric light station, so it has this whole red-brick, industrial vibe going on, overlaid with lovely glass and wooden modernity everywhere inside. There are some big, open sports-type halls with all the aerial equipment, office and meeting spaces, studios etc, a library (So much good stuff!! I had to strongly control myself in there, especially around the DVD shelves when my tour guide was like 'yeah there's loads there that you can't find on YouTube'. Nnnngggggg lemme at it. I've since seen rumour of them opening this library to the public. YES PLEASE!!) and best of all, a weird long, narrow, bouncy, spongy, padded-wall room where they do acrobatics training.
Ohhh I wanted that job so bad after they showed me the acrobatics room! It did smell of socks though.
Anyway, the way the aerial course works is; students rotate through Static Trapeze, Flying Trapeze and Rope, 3-4 weeks on each, and you can choose which to start with. I went for Static Trapeze first, as part of a cunning strategy to save Rope until I have built up some upper-body strength (that shit is HARD man), so I was well within my comfort zone for this class. I would even venture to say it was a little too easy, since I'm not a complete beginner. I was glad about that when I could still move my arms the next day though!
Apart from the obvious mount and dismount, which I fear I will never be able to do properly, we covered the three most basic positions. These are as follows:-
Mermaid
Pic: thecircusdictionary.com
Doing this feels a lot scarier than it looks.
Stag
A move so simple I can't even find a picture of it on the internet. In essence it consists of standing on the bar of the trapeze, holding on to the ropes high and leaning forward/backward with one leg held out elegantly. Good for getting used to balancing on only your tippy toes (or parrot claws as I like to think of them) and being up hiiiigh.
Bird's Nest
Pic: thecircusdictionary.com
This is one of my favourites, feels like a Proper Real move but it's not scary at all and you get to have a nice back stretch.
In conclusion then - a successful first week in which I didn't fall off or hit anyone in the face, as has happened in previous lessons, and only embarrassed myself in the sense that I went with Trapeze Outfit No.1: hot pants over leggings paired with knee-length stripey socks. I swear to you that this has been fairly average clothing of students in past classes I've attended, but on this occasion I was THE ONLY ONE in such garb and I therefore felt like a bit of twat. May reconsider this for next week...
