Circus Video of the Month - June

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:

All the Hoop-La!

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...

Circus Video of the Month - May

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:

Bitten and Bruised

Bitten...

I've been chatting to a few other aerial class attendees over the past few weeks and am reassured to find that I'm not the only person the circus lion has taken in his hot, obsessive jaws.  I've discovered at least two others who are as addicted as me, or more - one of whom is signed up for four classes a week and the other who is doing an intensive course. My new enabler, Gravity Circus, do an incredibly tempting-sounding 'prep' course, which entails six weeks of 13 hours training per week (all in the evenings and weekends so that normal working mortals can join), covering rope, conditioning, silks, stretches, hoop, pilates, handstand and tumbling. It costs £800, which is quite an investment, so I'm pretty sure anyone who does this course has it REAL bad for circus skills.

The girl I spoke to said she'd already been doing aerial for about a year and a half, and has no designs on becoming a professional or anything, she just loves it so much she wanted to do the prep deal.  YES, I feel you lady! Apart from the whole £800 bit. Maybe if I miraculously win the lottery... She also told me that when she first started learning she did a few different taster classes and realised that strength was the key to getting anywhere, no matter which piece of equipment you go with, so she literally just did aerial conditioning (strength development exercises) and nothing else for the first 6 months. Now that is hardcore dedication! I am inspired. Although I don't think I can handle just conditioning alone - there has to be some fun in there somewhere for me - those kinds of classes are a bit cheaper, so mixing some in could be good.

...and Bruised 

This here is a v bad quality photo of my very own personal post-rope-class leg.  The bruises looked way more dramatic in real life I swear.

I've also found myself pondering the pain aspect of learning aerial and/or acrobatics a lot recently, mostly because, well OWW, hurting myself on a regular basis!  It is really quite hard on your body, at least when you're crap at it (my theory is that the better you get, the less you hurt yourself in a muscle pain, bruisey-burny way, but the more likely you are to have a big injury like breaking a bone). When I creak around the office unable to lift my arms, or show people the giant bruises on the my legs, they are mostly appalled and baffled as to why I would want to do this to myself*.  In the classes themselves, also, there is a fair bit of 'oww'ing and complaining about how much certain things hurt. Yet this is an integral, predictable part of learning pretty much every discipline I've tried, and anyone who's done more than one class knows it.

So why do we keep coming back for more? Well, apart from all the obvious and wonderful benefits of aerial which I have blathered on about it in past posts, I think there's also a big element of testing your limits, seeing how far you can push your body, how much you can take before you give up.  This is actually inherent in the learning process. For example, getting to the point where you can happily hang from equipment by the back of one knee, or your heels, your toes, etc. involves spending as long as you can in each position before the pain gets too much, i.e. hanging for 10 seconds each class, then 15, then 20. It hurts, yeah, but it's also kind of... interesting? Like a scientific experiment with pain.

I also think there's a weird kind of enjoyment in seeing the evidence of your labour and hardship displayed on your body, like battle scars I guess. I'm not quite sure of the psychology behind this, but I've never met anyone who can resist showing people when they've sustained some kind of injury, whether its a crazy rainbow bruise or a giant wound. And so it is with circus bruises - there's even a Twitter handle: @circushurts and hashtag (#circushurts), to satisfy this very need!

Lastly, and this is possibly more controversial, I do slightly wonder whether there's a hint of masochism going on?  It's kind of taking pleasure in pain after all.  If you don't enjoy pain even a tiny bit, then going to classes which involve systematically hurting yourself probably isn't going to be for you.  So by that logic, does that mean all aerial fanatics are masochists? Hmmm, might need to think about that one for a bit longer...

* This is a partial truth - their actual reaction is usually more along the lines of 'MM-HMM, yes MORE bruises Felicity, yaawwwwn'

Back On The Old Equine Beast

Borrowed from http://thatcuriousloveofgreen.com

If you've been following closely you'll remember that at the end of last month I was all fired up about aerial rope and in a quandry over whether to carry on with that, or stick to my 'first love' of static trapeze. Well! As it turns out, THAT was a big fat waste of brain space, since on the day the classes went on sale I spent 45 minutes trying to get through to the National Centre for Circus Arts on the phone, only to be told all the places on Aerial 2 were sold out.

No static trapeze OR rope for me then.

F*$%ing Sh*&ting B*&%$cks!!

To say I was disappointed is a radical understatement, possibly showing that I have far too much tied up with this whole circus skills business, but also testament to the fact that the classes at NCCA are just really good.  Because they are grouped by skill level and have a progressive nature, it means you get (in theory anyway) teaching tailored to your ability and a feeling of personal development. Plus, because you have to sign up for a whole term at once, people on the courses are more committed and come back every week, which makes it feel consistent.  This is quite comforting and slightly 'sense-of-community building' in a city where everyone is in a big transient, unreliable state of flow.

London is just ridiculous. There is literally frenzied competition for everything, even things that involve you spending lots of money on the relatively inessential. It is also really difficult to achieve a feeling of stability - at least as an incomer - because of the constant changeability and lack of commitment.  Everyone and everything is available, but everyone and everything is replaceable. You can escape anything you don't like, the second it becomes tiresome, and never think about it again - but equally, the smallest eddy of the city's current can just wash away part of your life that you were really enjoying.

Aww look at it though, it's kinda lovely no? This was the view from Cambridge Heath train station a few nights ago...

There are times when I absolutely hate London and can't think what the hell I'm doing here (especially when looking for a reasonably priced, non-horrific, new place to live, which I have been doing unsuccessfully for the last month) yet somehow I can't quite process the thought of leaving now either. Crap.

I'll be clinging on for a bit then.

And (having grumbled bitterly into my beard, licked my wounds, and sulked in my room for a few weeks) switching my god damn circus class loyalty to Gravity Circus in Leyton, where I have started doing Aerial Hoop. Raarrrrgh! YOU CAN'T KILL MY OBSESSION THAT EASILY.  Not quite the same as doing Aerial 2 at NCCA, since the classes are drop-in and even the teacher just temporary cover, but hopefully achieving a similar effect - at the moment mostly hand blisters and copious bruising.

Yup, if you've been refused the chance to pay large amounts of money to experience pain and intense physical challenge in one place in London, there'll always be another where you can! And that's why I love it.

Circus Video of the Month - April

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.

Go, go, feast your eyes and ears:

Circus Video of the Month - March

'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.