I finally decided on my major and minor!

Yes, you read that correctly.  I actually made a decision about my major and my minor!  We ultimately have to have at least a good idea of what we're doing for our major and minor acts for the end of the year before we do our winter show this December 18-19.  The deadline has been creeping up on me, and I've found myself to be very undecided about what I wanted to do.  Anyway, here is my final* decision:

Major: Single Point Trapeze

Minor: Aerial Chains UPDATE: Handbalance/Contortion/Floor Acrobatics (see bottom)

*yes, technically, if some sort of inspiration otherwise dawns upon me in time, they most certainly could change, but this is what I'm sticking to in my head for right now.

I had been thinking about doing single point trapeze as either my major or my minor for a little while, and as well had thought long and hard about the advantages and disadvantages of choosing two aerial acts.  Ultimately, I decided that yes, two aerial acts is what I want to do.  When I talked to Elsie about the notion of two aerial acts in my last staff liaison meeting, the said that it'd be suggested that one apparatus be a bar apparatus and the other be a vertical one.  She also mentioned the idea of using a custom apparatus, such as tippy lyra, a trapeze with fabric ropes, or a loop at the bottom, or really any combination of things you could think of.  Many of the apparatuses that I thought would be interesting ended up being either bar apparatuses (which would mean that I'd likely have to drop the whole single point trapeze idea), too complicated, or better suited for a duo act.  Ultimately, I thought to myself about chains.  Originally, I didn't think they'd be the best for a major or a minor because I found them so limiting, but what I figured was that since we have four solid months to be building these acts, I'll have a lot of time to experiment and see what works transferred over from fabric/rope and what new things can be invented that take advantage of the chains' inelasticity and weight.

So yeah, that's pretty much that.  We begin working on our major and minor acts when we come back from winter break in early January.

And now, back to more current updates: in our group classes, we're still primarily working on our acts for the show.  Rope is going well for me.  I'm definitely finding it much easier to have a solid grip on those black ropes.  I remember the first day I tried them they felt so slippery.  I feel like I'm also getting a lot more control and comfort with the tricks and mini sequences that Elsie had us practice.  I'm kinda wondering, though, how we're going to be able to get this entire show together by the end of the week after next.  I mean, we realistically haven't even been working on figuring out the logistics of the act, nor putting these individual tricks and mini-sequences together.  Whatever...I guess I'll let the professionals do their job... :P

Well, that's really all that there is for now.

Trevor

UPDATE regarding my minor: Well, I ultimately decided to not do aerial chains as my minor and in lieu to do handbalance/contortion/floor acrobatics.  I chose to do this for two reasons: 1. I feel like it'd honestly be better for me to leave here with some sort of a non-aerial act.  Originally, I thought not, but now I'm reconsidering that.  Handbalance/contortion/floor acrobatics, I feel, would be a good fit for me, because it was something I was really into for a long time before, but have just lacked a bit of motivation in continuing it, so I'm hoping this will get me back into training for it more on a regular basis.  2. I reconsidered the notion of doing aerial chains as my minor, and to be honest, I don't think that there is too much that I would be getting out of doing that for the rest of the year as a minor in terms of instruction.  I most certainly do still want to pursue it for the rest of the year and see what can be done on it, but in complete honesty, the vast majority of things that I'd be putting together for an act at the end of the year would be of things that I end up figuring out myself, since it's such a rare apparatus, and there's a number of necessary considerations that come into play when trying to convert fabric/rope tricks onto chains.  For that, I feel like I don't want to use up my minor on chains.  Rather, I'm hopefully going to be pursuing that on the side as we progress through our majors and minors.

So yeah, that's pretty much my reasoning behind that little change.  My major is still the same as it always was, and am super excited to finally start training for our acts when we get back from winter break.