A List of Goals

Currently, with twenty days left until I start my training, I have decided to sit down for a bit to put together a little list of goals for myself that are to be achieved over the course of this upcoming year. This may be the first time I've actually written a list of things I've wanted to do, but it certainly isn't the first time I've thought about it.

A couple of months ago, I had a short chat with someone who was in last year's Professional Development Program (2009). One of the things that he told me was this: "You have to know what you want. They'll help get you there, but first, you must know what you want." So I took his suggestion to heart, and began to think about what I really wanted to get out of this year of my life. At first, I started to mentally make a list. Every time I saw a new trick on YouTube or at some sort of live performance that I found interesting, I'd think to myself, "Ah. That's so something I want to learn." Mentally, I was a bit stuck in this mindset that I was going to NECCA this year to learn individual tricks and skills, however, I have come to realize that this is really not the case.



I am choosing to begin this post with a reference to the fabric act from Cirque du Soleil's Quidam. If you haven't seen it before, I recommend that you watch it on YouTube first before continuing. It's not absolutely necessary, but it'll probably make the post more meaningful. I have provided a link to a copy of the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5ek52BJK5Y

Isabelle Chassé

Recently, I rewatched Isabelle Chassé's Aerial Silk performance from Quidam. While it has been one of my favorites for a very long time, it hasn't always. (Do excuse me for interrupting, but I feel that it is best if I explicitly point out the following: The ideas portrayed in the rest of this paragraph do not at all represent my current opinion. They should solely reflect my childhood naïveté. As of the current day I have developed a much more profound appreciation for Isabelle's performance, as well as others like it.) The first time I saw it, I found it to be somewhat boring. On second though, not really was it that it was boring, but rather it was that I didn't find it incredibly impressive. It didn't resonate as well with me as I had found to be the case with some other performances. Keep in mind, however, that this was a little while before I ever actually tried doing anything like this, which is why I'd always raise an eyebrow a bit when I saw her breathing so heavily at the end. I was a bit too young to realize really how physically strenuous the aerial manipulation of one's body can be.) I think my primary reasons for my slight disappointment in the act are the following: 1. From essentially the most superficial point of view, her act was very simple. The individual tricks themselves seemed basic and easier to master than those of other disciplines. 2. Why does she have to look naked?! I thought that was just silly, and quite frankly unnecessary. (Hey, childish remarks are considered as such for a reason). Over time, I had found that these sorts of opinions ended up reformulating themselves. Let me explain a bit.

Lame, I know. :P

Regarding the first point, yes, admittedly, her tricks are relatively simple. I was able to do the majority of them within my first couple years of training or so. My opinion on the difficulty of the tricks she does is not what has changed as I've grown up, but rather it's my appreciation for how they're presented. Art behaves in an unusual way. Its power and beauty as a whole is not simply equal to the sum of its parts. Not everything can be analyzed strictly by mathematical intuition. To rate something as being more beautiful than something else is impossible since there lacks an intrinsic reference frame. That's what I believe, anyway. I used to be a little over-analytical as a kid, and just looked at what was provided by the performance just at face value. In reality, a comprehensive consideration reveals much more than may at first meet the eye. There is passion, emotion, determination, strength, flexibility, agility, and so so much more. There is pain, there is love, there is hate. The act is about a transformation. A mental and physical transformation from who someone once was into who they are destined to become. The meaning is deep and often rare to find presented at such a caliber in today's society.

As for the naked thing, that was simply the result of an incorrect choice of "mode" of interpretation. Instead of a symbolic one, I chose a literal one. To me, as a kid, for her to be wearing a skin-tight flesh-colored outfit meant that the intention was to make it seem as if she was doing what she was doing, but instead naked. And, thus, clearly, obviously, undeniably, and therefore, was something oh just so embarrassing to watch. Art, as I am finding, reveals itself to be almost anything but literal. Her physical state during her performance is symbolic. There she is, with all that she has. She expresses her emotions through herself and her relationship with the fabric. The physical setup of everything is simple. The execution (and by execution, I mean it as a whole) is what makes it a complex piece of dynamic art.

At this point, you are likely questioning the relationship between what I have just told you and the primary intention of this post. The answer to your inquiries lies in the fact that rewatching this act caused me to reevaluate my definition of this art form to which have chosen to devote a year of my life. Such a definition, however, isn't entirely explicable in words. It simply unreasonable to formulate a concrete definition of something that is to represent the eccentricities and erraticisms of human emotion. In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of art like this is its ability to communicate in an entirely nonlinguistic way. Nothing is written; there is nothing that needs to be read. When words are spoken, there is no logical sense to them. The lyrics have not been composed in any language because there is no reason to. There is nothing more to portray here than simply pure human emotion.

It's no longer simply the individual tricks that matter, it's the performance. That is my main goal:

1. TO BECOME A PERFORMER

This is not to exclude learning new tricks completely, it is just rather to shift my focus away from breadth within a discipline, and rather into depth. There are only so many things you can show in your act. Whether you know ten poses or a hundred poses, the audience will only know what you show. That is something I will definitely keep in mind.

The goals that are to follow all trickle down from that one and very important goal. All that I intend to include in the rest of this list are large generalities: things that are impossible to judge as complete or incomplete. They are not individual things in themselves, but rather categories of things, that I am determined to explore even deeper as time goes on. And with that, we will progress to my second goal:

2. TO BECOME MORE BALANCED

To be a circus artist can mean many things, as a circus is a collection of an incredibly wide variety of disciplines. While one, of course, could choose one of these disciplines and continue working it, constantly approaching its full potential, I honestly don't feel that such a way of doing things would work for me. I have complete respect for people who do so. Passions are passions and there is no arguing about such. However, I have found myself to be a person of many interests as well as of many curiosities. While primarily I have fabric that I pursue the most strongly, I would also like to get some of my other skills to a similar caliber. What comes to mind first are hand-balancing, contortion, acrobatics, and of course, other aerial skills. While there is nothing in that little list that I haven't tried before, they simply aren't things that I have pursued as much as I have fabric. That is something that I wish to change.

The next three come together as one (all essentially of equal importance):

3. TO BECOME MORE FLUID

4. TO BECOME MORE MOBILE

5. TO BECOME MORE ENDURING

The terms I have used with these may at first seem somewhat ambiguous, I realize, but I will best attempt to explain what I mean by the words "fluid," "mobile," and "enduring." Fluidity, for me, is something that has great intersection with the concept of flexibility. It is essentially about the ways in which a body can move and be moved. The reason why I simply don't say "to become more flexible" for my third goal is because it is not simply the end product that is the important thing here. It is everything that is important. To be fluid is to be able to move in and out of everything smoothly. It is both the ability to be extreme and delicate all at the same time. It requires both. To be fluid is to be able to move anywhere and everywhere, in any way, gracefully.

My fourth goal references mobility. While it may at first seem similar to fluidity, what I intend by it is actually quite different. For me, mobility is something that more or less goes along the lines of strength and balance. To be able to place a body in a certain way is one thing, but to support it in that position is another. Strength and balance work together hand in hand for many circus disciplines, and together they form basis for this goal. To be mobile is to be able to hold oneself up, and keep oneself where they need to be.

The final goal, regarding endurance, is one that really connects in a deeper level to the other four. To have endurance is to be able to train, perform, present, and to be determined for long periods of time. One needs endurance to not only get through a very strenuous act, but also to train oneself to the proper skill level. The path to achieve such goals is not always easy, but it is almost more important than anything to keep them out of your way.

So yeah, basically there is my list. These are the goals that I will intend to stick to for the next nine months. I hope what I have written has gotten you to think as well as understand better what I intend to do, and how I view the circus world. I hope to develop this blog into a way for me to tell you about my journey and how I am pursuing my goals. Whatever happens is what has been destined to happen, and the only way to find out what is destined to happen is to tag along on the journey.

Trevor

(p.s. - I have added a box to the sidebar on the left listing these five goals. They will serve me as a constant reminder as I progress through the year. Wish me luck!)