Trapeze
Up yer bum
I’m doing an aerial arts course at Circus Space. After 4 hellish weeks on rope I have moved onto the static trapeze and it’s WAY better. I can actually do it. I can get on it. I can do a bird’s nest (upside down thingy) and a lamp post and balances and all sorts. It doesn’t look fancy yet – there is much wobbling of rope and unintentional swinging – but it is happening.
With some brilliant instruction it feels like it’s impossible not to get the hang of it eventually. On the rope, whilst the instruction was absolutely first rate, I just couldn’t get it. I might as well have been trying to levitate. You may as well have said “Just get approximately ten inches taller.” I simply flapped and grumbled and never got more than about half an inch off the mat. I am still convinced it is somehow PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to do a straddle on a rope and I shall hear no more about it.
My trapezing success is thanks, in part, to the aforementioned behind, for there are many moves that require a rope wedgie. A hungry bum. Prehensile buttocks. Now THAT I can do. Basically you use your bum to anchor you in place a lot. Mine is used to doing that on an office chair (I hardly ever fall off) so this was an absolute gift.
And because I can do it, I’m having fun. REAL LIFE FUN in an aerial arts class. Even though I turned up with a stomach churning, eyelid drooping, grade 10 hangover, I still loved it. In fact I was cured entirely. I left full of bounce and vigour, wearing my back-of-knee bruises and my calloused palms proudly.
I shall make a passable circus performer yet. Even if I must be the one who waves chairs at lions.
I’d be bloody brilliant at this by the sounds of it! x