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.

Entering a New Phase of ProTrack

Ah.  Wow.  It really is surprising how much time has passed so far.  I mean, I still fell like it certainly has been two months that has passed, but it's just surprising to look back and just realize that I, myself, have been doing circus almost every day since we've started.  What is probably even more surprising (as well as beneficial) is that I'm doing some sort of intense physical exercise for at least a few hours a day pretty consistently now.  I have begun now to feel it having profound effects on me.

My cardio at this point, and by my judgement, is absolutely wonderful.  It has progressed much farther than I could have imagined it could have in just two months.  If I knew that you could build up cardio this time efficiently, maybe I would have tried harder at it in the past.  It's definitely something that's going to stick in the back of my mind as I continue my pursuit of physical fitness beyond ProTrack.  My strength is definitely increasing as well.  I've particularly noticed improvement in my abs, which now are such powerhouses.  It's such a great and reassuring feeling to be able to have incredible control over your body when you're in the air.  I unfortunately can't really say the same thing about my flexibility.  That's been a real toughie for me.   It's been a bit of a struggle for me in this respect, because, particularly for the disciplines which interest me most, flexibility can greatly increase one's aerial vocabulary by adding a whole new dimension to shapes possible by the human body.  I've been trying hard and consistently to stretch but improvement is very slow.  At least I can say that I'm not losing flexibility since I started in September.  I do know, however, that a lot of this is due to muscle tightening (and not as in the tightness of the material that they're made of, but rather active muscle tightening that's not necessarily in my conscious control).  When I do PNF stretching (if you recall from one of my earlier posts, is when you resist against the stretch for about 20 seconds during the stretch to fatigue the muscles) I do end up sinking a lot deeper into the stretch, so every morning it's just a matter of forcing the muscles to loosen themselves again.  It's frustrating, but I have confidence in its eventual improvement.

A video! (finally)

So yesterday during open studio, I brought my video camera and my tripod and filmed myself doing a bunch of tricks I've been working on lately, and then put it all together into one video and uploaded it to Youtube!  Enjoy!



Just as a sidenote: things have been going a lot better this week already.

Comme ci, comme ça

For this week, I think that's probably the best descriptor of what's been going on.  I mean, it hasn't been a terrible week, but it also hasn't been incredibly spectacular either.  My body has been getting a couple weird semi-injury pains at various places around my body this week, and it makes me a bit resistant to push myself so far.  Back on Thursday of last week (week 6, October 15), I somehow moved my right leg  in a funny way during ballet and some tendoney thing started feeling a little wonky.  I don't remember really how it happened.  I wasn't doing something particularly weird.  It could have been from just walking or something.  I'm not really too sure.  It went away the day after, so I didn't think much of it, but on Tuesday of this week, we were doing some full speed double stardrops (i.e. - roll sideways down the fabric two full rotations) and the landing jerked my right leg outwards in an awkward way and that same part of my leg started to hurt a bit again.  Again, it didn't feel too serious, but it was just an odd pain I hadn't really felt before so I decided not to mess with it too much.  The really odd thing about it though was that when I would do a right leg sidestretch, I wouldn't feel anything from it, but when I'd stretch my left leg to the side, it'd start hurting a bit.  Muscles are weird.  That's all I've really got to say about that.  :P  On Wednesday, I went to the Outer Limits only instead of going to Open Studio or both just so I wouldn't strain that part of my leg.  By now my leg is definitely not giving me any more pain, but if it comes up again, I'll talk to a coach about it.

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

YES!  All of the rumors are true!  I am still alive!  I know it's been a very long time since I've last written a blog post (way longer than I had first expected), but last week I found myself inspired to keep all of you up to date on what has been going on, but then, all of a sudden, when I clicked "post," blogger completely digested my blog post and left nothing but the title (which is weird since I made the title for it at the very end...at first I thought maybe it wasn't saving properly, but that it deleted what I put in first makes me suspicious that blogger somehow has an evil plot against me...*shrugs*).  Anyway, here I am now, and happily typing this up beforehand in notepad before letting blogger touch it. ^_^

Anyway, the original reason why I hadn't been posting so much is because overall things have begun to settle down and I have found myself going through a relatively consistent routine.  It's at this point that the week numbers are beginning to surprise me (yesterday started week seven...I KNOW?!).  Anyway, we've been continuing steadily with our Tuesday and Thursday rotations.  As you might remember from a previous blog post of mine, we have a total of four rotations per week, and do an hour for each of them, making two rotations for Tuesday morning, and two rotations for Thursday morning.  Before that, we stretch and warm up for 45 minutes, and afterwards we condition for 15 minutes.  Below is the breakdown of the stations that my group has been having (the groups are fine tuned every week):