Lesson Number Eight, The Ocho – February 22, 2009

It’s hard to believe that this was my last class in February. I’d already been working on my aerial moves for two months. In fact, it was my last class as an Aerial Beginner A student, since the session was only 8 weeks long. I felt like I had come such a far way, but I was still concerned about moving up to Beginner Aerials B. So I asked my instructor Jackie about what she thought about me moving up. She told me that as long as I felt comfortable climbing up and down the silks/corde lisse , could get on and off the trapeze easily and had a basic understanding of the basic moves and felt comfortable performing them, then I should definitely move up. She did caution me that I would encounter stronger and more flexible aerialists at the Beginner B level. But putting my anxiety aside, I told her that I thought I was ready for it, and that I was doing it for the sake of my project, so that I might actually be able to do some cool stuff by the time senior project officially started.

Today began and ended like every other class, with the warm up and stretching and push ups and climbing, and strengthening and toughening exercises. Since it was our last class, Jackie and Mary Kelly told us that we could choose an apparatus and do pretty much whatever we wanted to review. We combined our class with the teen aerials class and then some of us went with Jackie on the corde lisse, some went with Mary Kelly on the Trapeze, and I and some others went to the silks with Niff, the instructor for the teen aerials class. (I’m pretty sure my instructor on the aerial silks was Niff). There we did a review of the “between the silks” moves: “birds nest”, “1-leg between” (from birds nest), “inverted hang”, “inverted splits”; the “foot block” and its moves: the “arch thru”, “stag thru”, “split down”, and the “aerial dance foot lock” move “splits”. The only new move was the “squat”, a “foot block” move. It is exactly the same as the “squat” on the corde lisse.

Not wanting us to miss out on anything on our last class, Jackie and Mary Kelly lead a short tutorial on the lyra or spinning hoop. We learned different ways to mount and how to speed up or slow down a spin. We learned the “trapezius angel” (picture in the March 8th post), “½ moon” and “man on the moon”, which are both done by sitting inside the lyra and putting your legs above your head. The difference between the “½ moon” and “man on the moon” lies in how high your legs and how low your butt sits on the lyra. (“man on the moon” being the more extreme, with your weight mainly resting on your shoulders). Instead of doing our situps on the trapeze, we did them on the lyra. It hurt worse than it did on the trapeze because instead of a wooden or plastic bar wrapped in tape, this was a straight up metal hoop.

With the conclusion of my first Aerial Acrobatic class, I realized that when I talked about it, I would have to be careful about what I said. It was funny trying to explain the class to my friends, because if I said that I took a circus class, they would all look at me and laugh and make jokes that I was juggling and tightrope walking and unicycling. I of course corrected them that I was doing aerial acrobatics, but I realized that no one took what I was doing seriously unless I explained it as cirque du soleil type stuff, and refered to my class not as my circus class but as my aerial acrobatics class. Everyone acts a whole lot more impressed when you explain it that way. Before I began this class, the last time I had gotten any exercise (apart from an occasional bimonthly two or three day stint at the gym), was by walking up and down the hills at camp. I began out of shape, and I am slowly pulling myself out of that rut. My jeans didn’t fit so well anymore. But when I started the class, I realized that I didn’t have to spend hours working on cardio and fitness at a gym, I could get back in shape the fun way. Instead of doing jumpies and pull-ups and weights at a gym, I was supporting my own body weight and throwing it around quite a bit in mid air. This was so much better than some smelly gym. I left class excited to start my new Beginner Aerials B class the very next week.