Performances, forearms, rejections, directors week, May show theme, AND costumes & makeup!!! *phwhew!*

So yeah...as the title probably suggests, things have already started to get a bit hectic around here.  As we approach approximately one month until the end-of-year ProTrack shows here at NECCA, there is a whole lot of stuff that has been going on.  I've been meaning to write a blog post for a while, but I've been so darn distracted by everything lately that I haven't been able to find a time where I could sit down and comfortably write a blog post.  Well, anyway, here I am, figuring that I might as well write a new one before there ends up being too many topics to talk about.  Since it's been a little while (actually, it's frequently a little while, which is why my blog posts often tend to be so huge), this is really a six-in-one of normal sized blog posts blog post, conveniently structured in concordance with the title!   Yay!  Here we go:

1. Performances
On March 26 and 27, I had the wonderful opportunities to perform at both Brandeis University as a part of their Relay for Life in Waltham, MA and the Bindlestiff Cavalcade of Youth at Cony Island, NY.  I spent the week beforehand preparing a 4.5 minute single point trapeze act, which wasn't necessarily intended to be related in terms of style to my final single point trapeze piece for the end of the year at ProTrack.  I ultimately found the decision of having two separate single point trapeze acts beneficial for two reasons: 1. I'll now be able to use both of the songs I was debating over for my major (I used "You Don't Know Me" by Apparat for these performances, whereas I'm going to be using "Mission" by Beats Antique for my final performances at ProTrack).  2. It enables me to be able to sell both a static-height and dynamic-height act.  Initially, when I was considering the technical details of my major, I thought it would be best to make an act that didn't utilize the pulley system (which can raise and lower the apparatus) for sake of it'd be easier to sell and accommodate to more performance spaces.  Now that I have an a presentable act that is for static height single point trapeze, I feel much more free to work to my heart's content with the pulley system they have at NECCA, which has been great so far!

The performance at Brandeis was set up by one of my camp friends' mom, Marci Diamond, who is also a graduate of the university (as a sidenote, for those of you who don't already know, this is also the college I'm planning on going to after ProTrack starting January 2012).  I was performing with her, her daughter, Marisa, my two camp friend Llama and Doug, and another performer who has been training at NECCA some, Rocco.  We set up an aerial rig, put together an intro and finale in about five minutes, and each performed our pieces.  It was a lot of fun to perform and see my friends, and definitely nice to see how much everyone had improved.

The Bindlestiff Cavalcade of Youth performance is a simple sign-up-and-go one-time performance.  I figured it'd be a fun thing to do, not to mention a good start to beefing up the performance section of my résumé.  It was a fun performance.  There were some people from Smirkus camp that I recognized there, but nobody I really knew knew.  Regardless, below is a combo video of the two performances:





2. ForearmsSo basically, about three weeks ago, my forearms really started bothering me.  It first happened one day during Members Only when I honestly did nothing more than climb a fabric.  Even just with the first pull, I felt a pain in my forearms I hadn't felt in them prior, and decided to just keep going not thinking it was anything major given that I wasn't doing anything that relatively strenuous nor did it seem to have been from any sort of strain prior.  The only thing was that the reoccurring pain in my forearms never ceased to relapse in the days to come.  Practically any time I'd perform some sort of a pulling inward motion with my arms and then release those muscles, my forearms would hurt a lot.  I looked some stuff on the internet and deduced that what I had most likely contracted were "forearm splints," which are essentially the arm analogs of "shin splints," and supposedly feel pretty identical.  Now, I honestly haven't ever had shin splints in the past, so I couldn't really figure out for sure whether these were forearm splints or not, but a couple places online seemed to stress the concept of the pain occurring when the muscle gets released, which was exactly what was happening with me.  Anthony and Alissa, two other ProTrackers, also had been developing similar forearm problems, so it didn't really seem to be anything out of the ordinary, but still definitely not something ideal.  My trapeze coach, Aimée, suggested that I ice bath my forearms daily, which I have been doing consistently for the past couple of days, and honestly I think it's helping wonderfully.  It feels pretty much completely gone in my left arm now and only slightly in my right arm.  It's regardless a major improvement!  I'm very excited to be able to do hip circles again after this forced three-week hiatus.
3. RejectionsWell, the title of this section really speaks a lot for itself.  Earlier this year, I had applied to and auditioned for L'École de Cirque de Québec's professional training program.  Unfortunately, I got their email saying that I didn't get in.  I plan on calling them soon to find out more of their reasoning behind the decision.  Even though at this point in time my opinions changed to ultimately not really wanting to attend the school next year, I was hoping at least an acceptance in their preparatory program or their waitlist would be a bit of a morale booster, but oh well.  It is what it is.  It was still a great experience to visit there and audition regardless.
Another thing I applied for this year was to be a Smirkus camp coach.  Unfortunately, even with the backup of Jaime, a Smirkus and NECCA coach, as well as Elsie, Serenity, and Aimée as my references, trapeze teacher training, and fabric teacher training, I still managed to get a no in response.  It was a real bummer.  They did, however, offer me a counseling spot for this summer, but to be honest, over coaching, it's not really what I want to do.  However, if worse comes to worse with other summer camps, I'll end up going with that.  Their main reason for not being able to hire me as a coach this summer was that I didn't yet have enough prior coaching or performance experience.  *blah*  It just felt like somewhat of a dumb answer.  
Speaking of other summer camps, the whole process of application has been incredibly annoying.  It started off with a list of seven summer camps that were looking for circus coaches: Smirkus camp, Circus Arts camp, Long Lake camp, French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, Camp Lohikan, Independent Lake camp, and Island Lake.  Both French Woods and Island Lake required extensive reference forms, so for the sake of my references and since I was more familiar with French Woods as a facility, I decided to drop Island Lake.  Smirkus, as mentioned above was a no go.  For Circus Arts camp, I emailed them my résumé, and they haven't responded at all.  French Woods, Long Lake camp, Camp Lohikan, and Independent Lake camp all had requirements that staff members have their freshman year of college completed before working at camp, so I emailed them about whether or not ProTrack would count in lieu of a freshman year in college.  Three out of the four (all but Independent Lake) emailed me back saying yes.  I completed the French Woods and Camp Lohikan applications online, and sent Long Lake my résumé as they requested.  So far, only Camp Lohikan has responded further.  As it is now, I have a phone interview scheduled with them for next Wednesday.  Gah...it just feels like SO much for honestly so little.  Like just look at the size of the paragraph that I just wrote simply explaining the logistics of the correspondence... and honestly, I'd prefer it a lot more if people would say "no" over not responding at all... but I assume such behavior isn't specific to just these places.  OH REAL LIFE, how you perpetually delight me so!  So yeah, phone interview with Lohikan next week, and if that's a bust, then likely counseling at Smirkus it will be.  *places head in paper bag*

Exist like you've never dared to exist before.

All of this had just made me feel so wishy washy last week (not to mention both rejections being within one day of each other), and combined with my forearms, I felt it'd be best for me to take a day off from ProTrack, half for physical reasons, and half for mental clarity reasons.  I had just felt somewhat caught up with the whole two years auditioning for Smirkus tour and not getting in, auditioning for Québec and not getting in, and applying to be a Smirkus coach and not getting in after taking teacher training work seriously and getting excited over the notion of aerial instruction.  ProTrack has been one of the few big endeavors in past years that has recognized my talent and potential, but when you feel so limited otherwise by other executive decisions that you don't have any control over, it can feel somewhat demotivational at times when you're really considering becoming at least a part-time freelance circus performer and instructor.  I'm still powering through it at the moment, but damn, there's just so much to this career path that is just very difficult. Anyway, the day off definitely ended being one of my more valuable decisions in a while.  I needed that mental clarity.
4. Director's Week
Yep, that's right boys and girls, it's finally week 31, where a guest instructor/director, Jesse Dryden, comes in and gives us feedback on the current status of our acts.  Every ProTracker gets two one-hour private lessons with Jesse (one for our major, and one for our minor).  Unfortunately, auditions for ÉCQ and the two weekend performances from late March ended up somewhat screwing me over.  First off, for both of those, the majority of my outside preparation was with single point trapeze, and since I decided that my Brandeis/Bindlestiff performances were going to be in a different direction than I wanted my ProTrack performance to go in, I kinda had to restart with somewhat of a blank slate in terms of artistic intent.  Additionally, the audition and pair of performances really took stress away from my minor, which I wasn't really all that super into in the first place anyway, so that one ended up being even more of a blank slate.  Anyway, my first private session with Jesse was on Monday for trapeze.  My chosen song, "Mission" by Beats Antique, has a nature of being both very dramatic and highly erratic.  The song inspired for me emotions of internal struggle and turmoil, which I felt like I could draw well upon for the construction of a character for this act.  In the couple days leading up to it that I had to practice my ideas, I ended up coming up with some pretty nice base sequences and character work.  We improved them a ton during the session with Jesse, so I'm very satisfied so far with how directors week is going.  It felt very intimidating at first, but most all of his suggestions are rarely negative (more of what should be done and less of what shouldn't be done... the former of which is much better at inspiring the creative process).  I also got to start some work with doing some tricks with a circular swing.  It was a lot scarier than I was anticipating, but at the same time a wonderful thrill. I even got a toe hang while swinging in a circle (I was in a belt attached to the bar, but it still felt rather solid).

Handstands today felt incredibly
solid, and with little wobblyness.
I really couldn't have asked for more.

Okay, so I fudged this a teeney.
It was a pressup out of a
backbend (no jumping), but I hope
 to eventually be able to hold
this position solid.

I started working on my minor presentation today (my private with Jesse is on Thursday... it's honestly better late than never, and my work today went spectacular, so I think I'll be alright).  I yet again held some of the best handstands of my life today and am actually somewhat excited about my minor (for one of the few times all year).  It's just so incredibly important for me to be able to have an act that I can sell that isn't dependent on any sort of rigging.  It's just also somewhat out of my comfort zone to be doing an act that doesn't have any apparatus.  It's nothing on stage but a single person.  All the more reason why it's incredibly important.

Additionally, somewhat irrelevant to the "directors" part of "directors week" but more relevant to the "week" part, I'm having two combined private lessons with two wonderful rope instructors (Adam Woolley and Kendra Greaves) with Ellen from ProTrack.  They're each an hour, and we're going to be completely dead at the end of them, but in the best possible way.  I'm incredibly excited.

5. May show theme
So, as I mentioned earlier in this blog post, our end-of-year May shows are coming up in a little bit over a month from now.  Typically, the shows here at NECCA have some sort of theme to them, but last years' didn't exactly please the coaches as well as was hoped (or at least that was the impression that came across). It ended up being somewhat more like a cabaret with an intro (and perhaps a closing too?) that were in concordance with the theme.  They're definitely pushing us to make something more of our show than that.

Anyway, we've so far had a few meetings concerning the show theme.  There were many ideas that were thrown around, but ultimately we decided on the theme to be time, with the title being "A Clockwork Circus"... or "Circus Clockwork," or something like that (I think we voted on the former, but it might have been changed to the latter as to not make an unintentional allusion to "A Clockwork Orange," which I really don't know much about, but is likely not relevant to what we're going to end up doing in our show).

I'm at least glad that that's decided.  We're thinking of making a bunch of transitions and rigging changes that take advantage of the theme and involving the entire cast as much as possible throughout the show (or at least that seems to be the general consensus).  We seem to be moving towards making a contemporary circus (think 7 Doigts de la Main and Cirque Éloize) style show, which I am quite a fan of myself.

There has also been some conversation of using "Enter My World" by Timo Mass as our intro song (a song I highly suggest you check out the first minute of if you want to get an idea of the mood and level of seriousness we might end up setting for that part of the show), where we would use ourselves to make one giant clockwork machine.  I'm in love with the idea, and I'm really excited to see where we end up taking this.

Yay.

6. Costumes & Makeup

Trapeze costume prototype 2.

Trapeze costume prototype 1.

Along with the performances, of course, comes the makeup an costumes.  They're the real icing on the cake of professional performances.  The images I'm providing alongside this paragraph are my first two prototypes of costume designs for my major, where I'll be spiffing up a preexisting unitard with some black fabric paint in a pattern matching that of my trapeze fabric.  I put the first one up on Facebook not too long ago and got some great suggestions about how to improve it both for visual appeal and for concordance with the act's theme/mood.  The second one got a ton of positive feedback, and will be my final costume design.  Fortunately, I was able to find a place that sells the unitard I'm looking for that can give it to me this weekend, and hopefully I can get some good time making stencils and applying the fabric paint.

For my minor, I'm honestly not quite as decided on my costume.  I don't think I'm going to go quite as full out with it, and I'm honestly more inclined to have something that is composed of more standard everyday clothing to give more of a contemporary circus feel, as opposed to the cirque feel of my major's costume.  Since I'm not doing aerials, I also have a lot more flexibility as to what I can wear (for with aerials you frequently have to consider what is going to not damage the apparatus nor snag you on the apparatus... it's a bit more difficult to do that with floor).  My thoughts for my minor are still in progress.

We need to have both of our costumes done by the 29th of April, which is why I'm so incredibly glad I'm able to pick up this unitard this weekend and get started on its construction as soon as possible.

Makeup...well...I only mentioned it because we're supposed to be thinking about it...but that's also a work in progress.  We had a little makeup workshop just before my Brandeis/Bindlestiff performances, so I am familiar with some of the basics, but I'm definitely going to be needing a lot of practice and probably going through a lot of prototypes before I get a final, clean, makeup design.  I certainly found out that at least at the moment, makeup isn't really my forté.  I'll likely be posting my makeup prototypes on Facebook as well sometime in the near future.

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Additionally, I've been working a lot with further developing my official website, http://circustrev.weebly.com/ (particularly with the Performer and Résumé pages).  I highly suggest you go check it out! :-)  If you have any constructive feedback, no matter how minor, please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments below, or message me through some sort of electro-internetey medium.  I'll eventually get my own domain name, once I find I can get a reasonably consistent income from this line of work.

Also, I just found out that tickets for our May show "Circus Clockwork" is available for presale through the NECCA site.  Click here to purchase tickets.

And finally, here's a copy of a Facebook note I recently wrote regarding my "plans" for the next 12 months.

Updated list of current life aspirations:

Note: L' École de Cirque de Québec (ÉCQ) ended up being a no-go, so that's out of the question for next year, even though, as time went on, my desire to continue higher education in circus arts at this point in time diminished somewhat.

• Now - May 2011: Finish up ProTrack

• Summer 2011: I've applied to a number of circus camps regarding coaching or coaching/counseling jobs for over the summer.  So far, I'm yet to get an explicit yes.  I wasn't able to secure a coaching spot at Smirkus camp for this summer, but if all doesn't go so well with the other coaching-related jobs, I will use that as a backup.

• Fall 2011: The idea is so far that I am going to stay around in Brattleboro during this time and, at the very least, be taking advantage of Members Only training times at NECCA and at the least creating a solid, full-length, aerial fabric or aerial rope act.  My interest in performing and/or teaching circus still applies, and may take priority of further training this fall given that I am struck with the right opportunity.

• January 2012: Enroll in Brandeis University as a midyear student and investigate Boston-area performance, teaching, and training opportunities.  Circus arts is something that I definitely intend to keep up through my college years to the best of my ability.  Current thoughts concerning continutation of circus while at college: 1. Getting permission to hang up aerial equipment in the Brandeis gym.  2. Applying to become a part of the Boston Circus Guild.  3. Applying to become an aerial coach at Moody St Circus (also in Waltham, MA) and/or perhaps helping out with Marci Diamond in setting up a circus school (I remember this being talked about at some point, but not sure about what the status on this is).

• Februrary 2012:  L'École de Cirque de Québec (ÉNC) and/or L'École de Cirque de Québec during presidents week?  Dependent on my aviliability and interest at the time.

So yeah, that's it.  It's a lot simpler and honed-down than the one from late January, but there's still a lot of things to be figured out.

I believe that should be all for now!

Trevor