Weeks 2+3

Hey guys. I know it's been a few days since I've posted last but the reason that I have not been able to post so much is because my computer has been in for repair. The backlight bulb for the monitor has been getting dark on the left side now for a little while and finally went completely out a few times. It has been doing nothing but getting worse. The repair ended up requiring more money than was expected, so I'm not really sure when it's going to be fixed. Anyway, this weekend, I've taken a trip up to my family's house upstate, where I have access to an actual keyboard (my iPod touch's keyboard gets rather cumbersome to use after a while, but if I don't end up getting my computer back for a while, I'll resort do using that for future blog posts), which is why I'm able to write this blog post and tell you guys about all the wonderful happenings.

Anyway, I heard some pretty shocking news this weekend about stuff back at home. My cat, Mystery, who we've had in the family for about the past 8 years started developing a tumor in his right leg. It only became noticeable about two weeks ago and has grown very rapidly to about a golf ball size now. They said it was a malignant tumor, which means it's of cancerous level and is likely to spread to other parts of his body. The one resolution they offered was amputation of the leg, but that seems to be a bit of out of the question given the time and circumstances (such as cost, his age, and quality of life post-operation). The ironic thing about it all is that it is a known side effect of the annually required rabies shot, which is also applied on the back right leg (a condition known as a Feline Vaccination-Associated Sarcoma). He's been having progressive trouble using his right leg when walking/running/going down stairs, so even without the spreading factor, it's still causing issues for him. We're likely going to be putting him to sleep within this next week.

Anyway, on a more positive note, NECCA has been going excellent so far. This past week was our third of training, during which we happily started our general skill development. Fortunately, the classes actually had a relationship to the words "general," "skill," and "development." On Tuesday and Thursday, where we have our three-hour group sessions in the morning, we divided up into four groups and rotated around four stations (Fabric, Handstands, Partner Acrobatics, and Trapeze) for an hour each. Two stations were attended on Tuesday and the remaining two were attended on Thursday. It made me a bit nostalgic of Smirkus camp, where we would go through our morning rotations through Aerials, Juggling, Acro, and Performance. They were all as fun as they were helpful and exhausting. Handstands, for me, was by far the hardest of the four. Aimée simply kicked my butt. :P

On Tuesday, I also had a half-hour private lesson with Aimée where we worked on some lyra (also known as aerial hoop). It's been a while since I've been on one (a little over two years), so I had to get myself a bit readjusted, but while we still did end up working on some basic tricks and sequences, it did end up being very helpful. I've noticed there's definitely a bit of a transition I still need to go through between working with vertical apparatuses (such as fabric or rope) and bar apparatuses (such as trapeze and lyra). If you're already an aerialist, you know exactly what I mean.

Friday was a little different in terms of structure than Tuesday and Thursday were. Aimée led our warmup and proceeded on with doing some physical theater. We worked on moving our bodies at different speeds and rhythms, both on the floor, and with some sort of apparatus. We tried moving our bodies as slow as possible (done to more meditative music), in freeze frames (only moving during the beats of a song), and through repetitive moves (done to trance beats). It was very interesting for me to incorporate these sorts of movements on a fabric, as well as see how everyone else managed to work with their chosen apparatus. People chose among fabric, trapezes, lyras, handbalancing canes, the floor itself, or anything else available in the room. It was definitely a great challenge. We ended all three days with some conditioning at the end.

After lunch on Friday, we broke up into our tumbling classes for the second time (the first time being last Friday). The dividing line between who was to be in the beginner/intermediate tumbling class and the advanced tumbling class was whether you already have an "amazing round-off backhandspring." I have only worked on backhandsprings with a spot before, and I'm sure if I tried it for the first time without a spot right then and there, it wouldn't be anywhere near amazing. Thus, I was placed into the beginner/intermediate class. I found it a little disappointing last week since we only worked on things like forward rolls and cartwheels, but this week it seemed to pick up the pace a bit more as we started to work on fronthandsprings and headsprings (both skills which I have never learnt before).

So yeah, that's basically it for all the major things that have happened here at pro-track for weeks 2 and 3. I covered a teeny bit some of the stuff that happened earlier in week 2 in an earlier post, when I had my computer, so in combination with that I feel like it's rather comprehensive.

Anyway, the last thing that I want to mention are my responses for a recent homework assignment we had. I assume we're probably going to get more of these in the future, so I'm going to start making a page with the assignments that I want to share, which you can get access to by clicking the "Homework" tab at the top. This one is titled "HW 1," where I talk about inspiration from two circus acts. Hopefully, they'll be of interest to you. ^_^

I believe that should be it for now!

Trevor