Sweet Sixteen – May 11, 2009

There was a week in between the end of classes and the beginning of the new session devoted to performances. Many of my fellow aerial students and Shmulie Shmaters performed. Most people said their best performance was the 9:00 PM show, and that they made more mistakes during the 7:00 PM show.

Looking back on my progress from my Beginner Aerials B class, I learned 10 new moves on the corde lisse, 5 new moves on the fabric, and 28 new moves on the static trapeze. These additions brought my total to 20 moves on the corde lisse, 16 moves on the fabric and 41 moves learned on the trapeze; for a grand total of 77 moves on the aerial apparatuses. That’s a pretty big accomplishment seeing as I knew 0 moves as of 17 weeks ago.

For this session, I decided to take three classes, the Beginner Aerials B on Monday nights at 7:00PM, Aerial Conditioning on Wednesday nights at 6:30PM, and Intermediate/Advanced Aerials on Thursday nights at 7:30 PM. I wanted to get my hours up for senior project, and I also wanted to learn some cool new moves. However, I didn’t feel totally confident to take an Intermediate/Advanced class without the backup support of taking another round of Beginner Aerial B for move review and extra practice and Aerial Conditioning for strengthening. I think it is a good combination, but sometimes, I get tired or sore during the Intermediate/Advanced class because of my Aerial Conditioning class from the night before.

Since it was the first class, my new instructor, Kate, wanted to see where everyone was as far as knowing and mastering moves. On the corde lisse, we climbed with both feet and then set to work reviewing. We did the “foot block” moves: “elbow lean away”, “1-hand hang”, “squat”, “back arch”, “thigh side lean” and the “back of knee hang”. We also did the “waist block” “upside-down descent”, and the “½ roll” out of the “upside-down descent”.

We did a similar review of the basic moves on the trapeze. Starting with the “rock and roll”, in order, we did the “stag”, “tuck up on ropes” and “birds nest”. We then moved onto the “mermaid sequence”: “mermaid”, “½ angel”, “back angel”, “one-hand one-foot”, “one-knee one-elbow”, “candlestick” and “fireman’s hang” (different from candlestick only in foot placement). After that, we did the sitting moves “trapezius angel”, “coffin” and “tree creature”. We finished with an “up and over” to a “front balance”. We did in about an hour, what took me two sessions of classes to learn and develop. Talk about going fast on your first day.

The only new move we learned was the “star”. It looks like “splits between the ropes”, but instead of a classic split, you do a straddle split. Pretty simple.

The class ended with the same “toughening” and “strengthening” exercises as the previous two sessions. Just like Jackie, Kate wanted us to try to do the “strengthening” moves on our own. I managed one pull-up by myself and three tuck ups. Not too bad for a fairly recent beginner, but I knew that I wanted to be able to do more.