Circus School: Week 9

Yesssssss! I’m back to full time training after a week of rest! It started well, and I did full days Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We had some interesting transitions in static trapeze, including Amazon pirouette which is totally new to me, and around the world which I’ve done a version of in hoop but had to translate to the ropes of the static trapeze. We also looked at some front balance transitions, half turning to different shapes or balances. I’d say that these transitions increased in elegance throughout the class but that might be a stretch. It’s probably that they look less heffalump-y and awkward than they did, but that’s still a long way from elegance or anything approaching it.

We had been told to bring in trainers for Tuesday morning, which eventually turned out to be because we were having our warm up in the park! It was gloriously sunny and we took over a large grassy area for cartwheels, yoga and aerobic warm up before moving to the play area for core. Pull ups are a lot more fun in the sun!

We had an extra rope class on Tuesday to make up for the one we would have had on Friday if it hadn’t been Good Friday. It was really nice to have rope earlier in the week – normally it’s on a Friday right before lunch when energy levels are at their whole-week low. We got through such a lot in comparison to our Friday classes! We looked at loops, which can look quite pretty but require a fair amount of grip strength to hold two sections of rope in one hand. Silks also introduced some new things, with a new lock and a new drop to work on.

In hoop, I started to work on forward belly rolls. I didn’t quite work up to the roll itself but several preparatory steps. We also went up to sit on the top bar, getting used to the feel of the weight of the hoop when it’s below you instead of all around you. Interesting. Unfortunately Thursday saw the return of the dead arm AGAIN so whilst I did take part in the Chinese Pole class it was at a significantly reduced level. We didn’t cover much new stuff though, so I have dodged another practice-time bullet and don’t have too much to catch up. Rope introduced another drop, and covered some of the things we had started in silks. It’s nice to see how the same tricks feel so different on rope and silks. Some techniques that work on one to get things in the right place just don’t work on the other! It was quite a hard class given the dead arms, but still managed to be productive which was nice.

The focus of the course has now very much shifted to the show, with extra act creation classes, more practice time and new production classes. In our first production class, we allocated jobs to each of us. I’m looking after props and set design, which is relatively straightforward for our group as people don’t have very difficult requirements. It’s mostly finding a box for props to live in and hassling people to bring them in.