Progress - slowly but surely

Well, let's just say it's been a pretty crazy past couple of weeks.  Even just last week I recall myself having pretty much yet another mental breakdown about the whole circus doo da.  It's been happening to a lot of us at ProTrack at varying intensities.  These past two weeks, we've had presentations for both our major and our minor (one each Friday), and the development process for both was just incredibly stressful (particularly so emotionally).  For both, I just struggled with being satisfied with what I created.  I've really been trying to keep my expectations set high, because as a result of this training program I want to leave with an incredibly broadened, advanced skill set, yet at the same time it just makes it difficult when a lot of your role-models are ÉNC graduates and world-renowned professional circus performers.  Sometimes things that originally seemed inspiring can ultimately turn into something incredibly demoting.  During preparation for both of these presentations, I sent myself into a somewhat of a mental oblivion, for every time I would videotape myself doing a skill or sequence of skills, it would never be up to the standards that I had set up for myself.  My standards for myself are somewhat inordinately high, and I also feel like similarly for all of us, our standards increase as our skill level increases, always being one step ahead of our current abilities.  Once you finally master a trick, it no longer seems quite as impressive to you, and it's sometimes easy to forget the power a trick can have to just the typical bystander.  I was pretty aware of this anyways, but at the same time, it was still difficult to work through.  Regardless, both of my presentations came out satisfactory.  I still don't think they were spectacular, but for the purpose that they served I thought they were satisfactory.  I additionally got some nice feedback on both as a part of our peer-critiqueing process.

For my major act, I put together a bunch of tricks I had been working on, switched the song up, and experimented a bit with adding in a bit of floor movement.  A video is below.

For my minor, I played mostly with the style of the act.  I stuck with the same song (a remix by a friend of mine of a song from The Motorcycle Diaries).  I didn't bother with adding in such high level tricks.  I realized that most of that was what was getting me so stressed out about the whole process.  And besides, I felt like I would be getting more helpful advice regarding the performance aspect of my piece as opposed to the slight technicalities of my skills.  The latter is advice more tailored for a coach, while the former pretty much anyone can tackle.

Anyway, I'm just pretty glad about not having to worry about either for this week (presidents week break).

The past few weeks have also been met with a bunch of miscellaneous injuries as well as a bunch of miscellaneous accomplishments.  I guess it's all just signs of hard training. :P  I've been recently working through many surface abrasions on my hands from trapeze, a tweaked hip (reawoken injury from the fall), tweaked shoulder, banged up backs of knees from trapeze, bruised biceps also from trapeze, fingers that like to bleed for a variety of reasons (nails digging into skin from holding onto ropes, surface abrasions from mill circles, getting cut on a soup can, and also one bleeding for completely unknown reasons), as well as a bunch of other miscellaneous things.  In short, I've been finding trapeze to be pretty brutal!...which is one reason why I've now decided to work on an untaped bar for my major (more details below at the trapeze building workshop section).  Aimée, my coach for my major, recommended to me the use of arnica, which is a natural medicinal substance which helps you heal, which I have been finding somewhat useful during these past few weeks, particularly for bruises and surface abrasions.

My accomplishments have included a backwards mill circle, preliminary working of elbow circles drop to knees, kneeling on the trapeze bar drop to hanging, out-of-lines penny drops, and a skin-the-cat shoulder dislock on my friend Emelia's aerial rectangle (those of you who know me well in a circus context know that I don't have very open shoulders, but because the bars on the aerial rectangle (and thus, also, the space between my hands when I hug off of it) are so wide, I was able to pike under the bar, skin-the-cat, and dislocate the shoulders completely to pike up again without letting go of the bar...it's a lot easier than when the hands are at standard trapeze distance apart or from when you're hanging from the strands of a fabric, but it sill made some people go eew so the trick still managed to do its job :P).  For my minor, my walkovers have been getting more and more solid.  I've always "had" front and back walkovers (I included them in my audition video), but they were never really as consistent as I've been able to get them to be now.  Also, my backhandspring is becoming closer and closer to being a reality.  Also, I got some wonderful advice from Caroline on how to properly work a Mexican forearmstand, which I can see will be tons of help as I work to get a Mexican handstand.  If you don't really know what any of this means, just trust me, they're mostly all pretty neat skills.

Additionally, maybe about two weeks ago, I made for myself a Facebook fan page as well as a website to advertise myself as a performer.  You can Like my Facebook page via the widget I've added in the sidebar to the left.  My website is still a work in progress, and probably won't become much of anything functional until after ProTrack ends, but at least for now you can look at what's there.  (Once it gets more functional, I'll consider getting myself my own domain name, but for now, this is just a preliminary phase).

http://circustrev.weebly.com/

Last weekend at NECCA, they offered a trapeze building workshop, which I found to be absolutely wonderful.  I ended up making a 25" bar with no ends and 8.5' long ropes.  I also added some really neat fabric onto the area where the ropes attach to the bar, and I think it looks pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself.  I put a lot of information and photos about the trapeze building workshop and the trapeze building process on my Facebook, which I am simply reproducing below for those of you who have not yet seen it.  Learning to splice ropes was a wonderful experience, and really opens up a lot in terms of rigging in general (not necessarily applications I'd do in real life, but just fun I'm having in my head...like, for instance, I could buy the equipment for and make my own aerial rope by simply splicing one end to attach it to the ceiling)...and most certainly it brought me back to the days when I used to take a real interest in knots.  (And so here we commence my little blog within a blog:)

Feb. 13 My self-built trapeze: a current work in progress.  Started today during NECCA's Trapeze Building Workshop lead by Serenity Smith Forchion.


Bar is 1" thick, 25" long solid stainless steel with two metal thimbles welded at the ends.  Ropes are of a 1" thick synthetic material measured to create a trapeze of an 8.5' length.  


The process started by splicing each rope to itself around the welded metal thimbles (as visible on the right side of the bar), and then repeating the process with a pair of free metal thimbles at measured locations up each of the ropes.  The bar splices were secured down with a lashing twine for added security (since the synthetic ropes are somewhat slippery by nature).


Next, cut strips of cheap Walmart towels were wrapped around the bar splices to pad the immediate area, and sewn down to the ropes with dental floss. (Yes, these were actually the directions we were given.)


As of currently, I have only padded the left-side bar splice, but will be working on making the right side identical in the upcoming days.  The padding of both splices will then be covered with a not-yet-chosen fabric.  I have in mind, at the simplest, for it to be just a solid white, but if in the meantime something more interesting comes up, I may end up putting on a different color/pattern.  Depending on my patience, I may end up sewing up fabric along the entire lengths of the ropes, which makes them a lot easier to grip.  For those unfamiliar, fabric-covered padding usually looks something like this: http://images.broadwayworld.com/upload/39502/tn-500_trapeze1.jpg.


The most annoying part of the whole process was definitely getting both of the ropes to be the same length, since even the slightest bar unevenness is noticeable.  The right-side rope was constantly slightly longer than the left-side rope, which is why there are many more splices on the right side top thimble than the left side's (adding more splices can effectively shorten the rope ever so slightly).  Even so, the rope still ended up being slightly, slightly too long, so for now I decided to keep it as it is, but I'll likely redo the splices on the right-side rope to hopefully get them more evened out.


I'm likely going to end up keeping the bar as it is (i.e. - without wrapping the bar with athletic tape, unlike in the picture I linked to above).  Doing so does makes it slipperier, which can be advantageous for velocity tricks (hip circles, elbow circles, mill circles, back circles, etc.) as well as reduces skin abrasions from the bar (which is an advantage I'm a pretty big fan of).  If it ends up being too hard to work with, I'll tape the bar, but I'm definitely going to give it a fair shot.

Feb. 14 Current state of my trapeze.  Both bar splices are now padded.  I also respliced one of the ropes at the top so the bar now hangs sufficiently even.  I then secured the two top splice with lashing twine and cut off of the extra rope pieces (just as was done with the splices at the bar) and wrapped some athletic tape around them to keep them from fraying.  Additionally, I added a bit of athletic tape around each of the top eyelets so that the ropes don't get nicked by the carabiners when clipping/unclipping them (I accidently did so a teeney bit today, and it's just there to prevent repetitive damage over time).  Essentially all that's left to do is sew on the fabric to cover the padding (and possibly a little bit the top splices as well just to cover the bit of craziness going on there, even though it's realistically not all that visible).  I ordered the fabric today (see http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog/productdetail.jsp?CATID=cat2143&PRODID=prd40587).  It's a yard by a yard and a half, which will be plenty.  If I end up deciding later on that I want to sew on fabric all the way up the ropes, I'll likely do so in a solid white, because using that fabric pattern all the way up the ropes seems to me like a little too much.  I want it to have a bit of flair, but not THAT much flair. :P  I am definitely keeping the bar untaped.


Feb. 18 I'm not quite exactly sure how it happened, but I managed to sew on one side of the fabric of my trapeze today.  The process was a little more difficult than I had anticipated, and I'm quite frankly not sure how good of a job I did in terms of how well it will hold up, but visually I think it's pretty adequate.   The surface stitches are on the inner side (not visible in this photo), and become virtually invisible when seen from a bit of a distance.  The odd shape and squishiness of the surface to sew onto, the symmetric pattern I wanted to become somewhat centered on the sides, and the fact that I've never really sewn anything before all made this a bit of a challenge, but I'm hoping it ends up holding up for a little while.  I'm hoping I'll be able to replicate this at least somewhat well for the other side.



Feb. 19 And it's finished!!! :D  Yay!  Still thinking up a name for it, though.  I can't wait to give it a go!

In other news, dance and tumbling classes (both typically held weekly on Thursdays and Fridays) have both stopped for the remainder of the year.  In lieu, we will be having regular Friday professional development workshops where we discuss things such as resumé writing, costumes, makeup, etc.  I'm definitely excited, for there will definitely be a ton of useful information flying around.  I am a teeney bit sad to see tumbling go, though, because I almost feel like this is the point where we all were really starting to make some progress.  Oh well.  I'll likely be signing up for a lot of acrobatics privates in our remaining months.

Those of you who have been following my updates on Facebook probably already know that I'm currently taking a five-day trapeze teacher training workshop here at NECCA (which was also offered at half-price for ProTrack and Intensive students (the other academic-year-long professional development program offered at NECCA)).  During this presidents week break, they offered both a five-day trapeze teacher training workshop as well as a two-and-a-half day fabric teacher training workshop (which I had taken already at NECCA during last Spring).  So far, it has been wonderful.  A lot (seven hours per day), but wonderful.  Both Serenity and Elsie really know their stuff and have been doing a great job leading us through the skill progressions as well as introducing proper spotting techniques.  We've also so far discussed further topics of teaching such as injury prevention and learning styles. For those more interested on the breakdown of the workshop, I've provided some general details on my training schedule accessible through the associated tab at the top of this site for the week of February 20.  We're also getting the opportunity to teach a sample class tomorrow, which I'm super excited about.

Anyway, that's pretty much all the updates I have for y'all for now!

Trevor