November 2010 - December 2010: Preparation for the winter show ("The Flying Nut: A Starry Night")ProTrack got broken down into four groups, as decided by the staff. The winter show is entirely staff directed, so all we basically are doing is performing in a show that fits the artistic vision of our coaches. It's definitely a good experience for us to have, since things like that happen all the time when producing any sort of performance. I got cast for the rope group (representing the element of earth) along with three others. The other four groups were trapeze (representing the element of air), partner acrobatics/dance (representing the element of fire), and hoop diving (representing the element of water).
In November, we began our show preparation on Tuesday and Thursday mornings by training for an hour with our act for the show, and continuing as normal with the other hour in our general skill development rotations. As we progressed into December, we would spend two hours each of those mornings working on the winter show, and, if I recall correctly, we also began to use Friday mornings for purposes of show preparation as well.
Our group was directed by Elsie, who I really have been a big fan of as a teacher and performer, but am still not too sure how I feel about her directing choices for this act. The tricks that she chose for us to do were most honestly all pretty basic, and also were to be done pretty slow. Now, while for any circus artist, performing tricks slow on a vertical apparatus on rope would be regarded as something difficult to do, audience members who have not tried aerial acrobatics for themselves likely have little idea of the difficulty some of these tricks offer when they're done slow, and thus don't really come off as very impressive nor engaging. A lot of the time when we were creating the act as well as performing it, I felt worried that the audience would receive it as boring. However, we did get neat fuzzy hats, legwarmers, and wristbands to go with it, so that kinda made it up somewhat for me (I'm not kidding...those made me really happy). Elsie also had us use these incredibly detestable pair black ropes, which were honestly just brutal. While they did look nice, they also managed to be both slippery, and easily prone to creating rope burns. I didn't find them padded as well as the usual white web ropes, so being on them was never really that incredibly awesome of an experience. Blah. I'm just glad it's over in general. It was a good experience overall to go through the whole thing, but I just think it could have been dealt with a lot better. I feel like it's partially a bit of the reason as to why I've been a bit lazy with this blog. I wasn't so entirely enthusiastic about the whole thing, and somewhat lacked what I felt was worthwhile content to write about.
For those interested in viewing a video of the act, you can do so below. At the initial configuration, when two people are on the ropes, and two people are on the ground, from left to right, it's me, Vanessa, Sarah, and Emelia.
January 2010: Major/Minor work, and lots of snow!
As I mentioned and then later updated in an earlier post of mine, I decided on majoring in single point trapeze and minoring in handbalancing/contortion/floor acrobatics. We started working on our majors and minors immediately as we returned from break. We also ended up changing the schedule slightly. Instead of the usual come in 15 minutes early for class at 8:45 and then warm up with a coach from 9-9:45, we're supposed to now come in as early as we want to warm ourselves up for a half-an-hour of group work with a coach at 9:15-9:45, which usually consists of stretching, injury prevention, or tumbling.
Both my major and my minor have been going better than I had expected. I am learning a ton of advanced tricks on trapeze now and can also feel my handstands and floor acrobatic abilities improving a lot. Below is a video I posted in mid-January highlighting some of the trapeze skills I've been working on.
We've also been having an incredible amount of snow recently. I know the situation is the same for pretty much all of New England, but when NECCA starts cancelling classes, you know it's serious. Fortunately, none of the snow days have landed on ProTrack class days, so our schedule has remained pretty much unaffected. For the Intensive program, however, their schedule has been pretty much destroyed over these past four weeks because of the snow that has caused cancellations on the past three out of four Wednesdays (including today). On the first snow day of the year, though, (which was also Shannon's birthday (one of my apartmentmates)) about maybe fifteen of us went out and sledded down by the cemetery and the baseball field, and then came back to the circus house (the colloquial name for the apartment I live in) and made cheeseburgers. It was a wonderful day.
We've had two one-minute performances of our major and minor, respectively so far since we've got back. The instructions were to perform a minute of our act, without any assistance from coaches. We all gave each other handwritten critiques on each other's pieces, which I have found to be wonderfully helpful. They definitely helped me realize what I've been doing right, whether the direction I'm going in is a good one, as well as what I should change/work on. It's often hard to judge all of that for yourself on your own act.For my single-point trapeze presentation, I used the song Nara by E.S. Posthumus (the same song I used in the trapeze video above). I'm probably going to end up switching out that song for another because I feel it's a little overused. I'm looking for my major act to be very technically driven, showcasing a wide variety of high-level skills. I think a very full and powerful song like Nara fits the bill for that one. I want it to be powerful, amazing, and really give off the wow-factor.
For my minor, I used a remix of the theme for The Motorcycle Diaries that a friend of mine from high school, Raj, made. Click here to listen to it. I'm looking for this act to contrast my major. I want this to be a lot more about technique and the expression of a theme a lot moreso than my major. I'm not looking to jam-pack it full of tricks, but rather, for the tricks that I do do, I want them executed as perfect as possible, along as being done in a way that supports the overall theme. I plan to mix dance into the act, serving as transitions inspired from the movement of the song itself. I feel like I can derive a lot from this song. Even just listening to it, lots of movements are always going on in my head, and I hope to make this act as genuine of a representation of the art that I've been visualizing for myself. I want this act to be both emotional, touching, and precise.
January 29-30 2010: Circus weekend!
On the 29th, I went with about 30 others of the circus community (yes, a lot, I know, but that's what made it INCREDIBLE!) into Boston, MA to see the Les 7 Doigts de la Main show Psy. It was utterly mindblowing. They played out such a whackado concept out so well and so consistently (the theme was mental illnesses). It was very true to the contemporary circus style, and overall just had wonderful acts. There was just so much happening all the time. So much movement of bodies, so many costume changes, and just so many characters, all played by the same cast of ten (one was injured the night we saw the show). Utterly mindblowing, if you ask me. I was lucky enough to reserve myself front row center seats, which made the whole thing a SPECTACULAR experience. Every facial expression, every movement, every drop of sweat, everything was all visible and right up in front of you. It was like practically being onstage and watching the show.
On the 30th, I went with some of my NECCA friends to go see Cirque le Masque in Hardwick, MA. Cirque le Masque is a touring circus company that develops one show but rotates out the acts as they become available. Two of my coaches, Elsie and Serenity were performing in that show that weekend. They offered free tickets to the NECCA students, so a bunch of us took advantage of the opportunity and chose to take a trip to see the show. My most honest reaction to the show was was being glad that the tickets were free. Serenity and Elsie's acts were wonderful, I have no grievance against those, but honestly, the show in general was a mess. The "clown", "Weebo", made me incredibly uncomfortable, and the show had absolutely no story and no coherence to it at all. The title of the show was "Evolution," a theme which was not supported at all by anything presented in the show. The dancers were very out of sync. The German wheel act was pretty much a copy of all of the tricks used in Cirque du Soleil's Quidam, the statue/hand-to-hand act was poorly executed, and really got me over the top when they started playing the music from Cirque du Soleil's Mystère's hand to hand act. The whole thing was just very jankity and not very well put together. The consensus was pretty consistent among the others who I went to the show with. Oh well...
Etc.:
In addition, I've just had a lot of stuff on my mind in general regarding my own future and how circus arts is going play into that future. If you're friends with me on Facebook, then you likely already saw that I posted a note regarding my thoughts about the next 13 months. Below is a copy of that note I wrote. As one of our recent homework assignments, we had to rewrite our "goals and dreams" essay that we did at the beginning of the year. Mine ended up changing a lot, mentioning lots of similar things as I have mentioned in that Facebook note. (I put the rewrite of that essay in the homework tab as HW8, if you're interested in taking a look at that as well)
The following is a summary of my current future life aspirations (or at least what has been on my mind regarding the rest of my life, particularly what is to happen once I'm finish ProTrack).
As many of you reading this probably already know, during my senior year of high school, I decided on attending Brandeis University. They accepted me as a midyear student (meaning that I enroll in January -- apparently they do that to stagger the entries so that they can accept more people each year), and that status still applies even after you take a gap year. Since I took a year off to participate in ProTrack this year, my enrollment has been delayed until January 2012.
- Now - May 2011: Finishing up ProTrack at the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA), ultimately developing a five minute (major) single point trapeze act and a three minute (minor) handbalancing/contortion/floor acrobatics act. (note that the next two bullets outline things that are also going to be happening during this time.)
- February 2011: I'm planning on 1. attending NECCA's trapeze building workshop to build a personal trapeze (specifically: 25" bar, no ends, with 8.5 synthetic ropes), and 2. attend the Trapeze Teacher Training workshop, both of which happen in Februrary.
- March 2011: (In response to comments I've received so far on this note,) I'm planning on audtitioning for L'École de Cirque de Québec for sake of having an experience of auditioning for a circus school and finding out what to expect. During this month, I'm likely going to try and take advantage of a little performance opportunity at Brandeis University with a couple of my circus friends. This is good for two reasons: 1. I desprately need general performance experience. What I have so far is pretty much limited to end-of-camp shows at Smirkus, the two live auditions I did for the Circus Smirkus Big Top Tour, and the Flying Nut winter show here at NECCA. I am not really at all an experienced performer, but I hope to end up chanigng that. I think this is a good place to start. 2. It'll help in the long run too for if I perform there at Brandeis, it'll likely help me in the fuure when the time comes for me to get them to let me rig a fabric and trapeze at some location on campus.
- Summer 2011: I will be applying for and hopefully ending up being hired as an aerial coach at Circus Smirkus summer camp. That probably would just make my life. My summer availability ranges from Session II (starting in late June) to Session IV (ending in mid-August).
- Fall 2011: During this time, I'm probably going to end up wanting to do of the three following things: 1. Continue training circus (this at the very least, with preparation for February circus school auditions in mind) 2. Teach aerial acrobatics somewhere. 3. Perform somewhere. I will most likely end up taking advantage of the latter two as opportunities come up. I have no specific plans on those two at the moment.
- January 2012: Enroll at Brandeis University. I also plan on investigating local places where I would be able to continue training circus arts as well as possible teaching opportunities. Starting an aerial acrobatics club at Brandeis and/or being able to take advantage of gym space they have to rig my fabric and to-be-built trapeze.
- February 2012 Presidents' Week: L'École Natoinale de Cirque (ÉNC) auditions in Montréal (and perhaps also the Québec school). Very prestegious and selective Canadian circus school (around 16 people per graduating glass). Training in the program I'd audition for is three years, and having a very sucessful circus career afterwards is almost a given. Regardless of my aspirations at that point in time, I regardless want to participate in order to at least have the experience of auditioning.
On the offchance that I actually do get in, at this current point in my thinking right now, I feel completely willing in myself to want to drop the whole college deal for now and choose to continue my higher education in the circus arts. I've been putting a lot of thought and discussion with my local circus peers into that recently, and what it ultimately came down to for me was that further education in the academics can wait, further education in the circus arts can't. If I am given an opportunity such as the ability to enroll in ÉNC, at least right now I feel like that is something I simply can't pass up.
If such doesn't happen, I'm going to continue attending Brandeis as according to plan. I'd love to otherwise try my best to both continue my circus training (inclusive of just having space where I can practice on my own) and/or find a nearby location where I can take advantage of some sort of a teaching opportunity and/or be able to take part in occasional, local performances.
Basically, as I see it now (which, of course, could ultimately change), college is the backup plan, even if that means that it'll chronologically come first. Having an academic degree is good in the long run. It can serve as a fallback if, for whatever reason, circus arts doesn't end up working out for me in terms of a career. That's the reason why I've been all set up to go ahead and get a higher level academic education in the first place. But at the same time, seeing by how things have been going in terms of my training and my further discovery of my own self, there's always still those "what if" thoughts. What if I could be lucky enough to get this opportunity next year. What if I can improve enough over the next 13 months in order to have a sufficiently solid audition?
At the same time, what am I really most interested in majoring in at Brandeis? Physics. What is the major reason behind why I have found Physics so intruiging in recent years? Because it's so easily applyable to all disciplines of circus arts. Yeah, I was pretty hella good at it in High School, but where does myreal passion lie? I feel like ProTrack is helping me answer that question.
Also, what was my real motivation for taking French for the latter two years of my High School career? Becuase of things like Montréal, ÉNC, and Cirque du Soleil, of course. Along with English, the two langauges form the backbone of the Canadian circus community.
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