June Update

Well, it's so far been about a month since the last shows of ProTrack and I currently find myself safe at home in Chappaqua, NY.

The week after the last of the shows, I stayed in Brattleboro for an extra week to continue training (hey, my rent and Members Only was already paid for! :P).  I also had a private lesson with Serenity that I rescheduled because my sinuses started to act up between the two weekends of shows.  She helped to lead me in the direction how to further modify my trapeze act for the future.

The week after, I came back to Chappaqua and first and foremost spent some time with many of my friends who I, for the most part, haven't seen since the holiday break I had in December.  I trained at World Cup a few of those days as well.  It's been particularly nice to have some training time where I'm not concentrating on my single point trapeze major or floor acrobatics minor to get some long-needed time with aerial fabric.

I've also been able to manage an agreement with World Cup Gymnastics so that I can teach private lessons there during the one hour timeslot that I've otherwise been able to use to train.  So far, this has been slow, as the hardest thing at this point is getting the word out that I am teaching lessons.  However, once I get a solid clientele, I am sure that this will become something worth it in the end.  You can find out more information about the private and semiprivate lessons I teach at http:///www.trevorkafka.com/instructor.html.

For the two weeks after, I went on vacation in Grand Cayman with my parents, which was exceedingly nice.  There was a lot of SCUBA diving, snorkeling, ocean fun, and island exploring.  Not much occurred during this time that was circus related, so not much elaboration will go on with respect to this subject (except for the fact that I kept having cravings to want to do aerials over the ocean, which I'm sure will one day become a reality -- it just seems like just a wonderful thing to do as well as behold).

This past week I had two students sign up for a semiprivate lesson, but shortly thereafter had cancelled.  They were both students I had not known prior, so I was eager to hope to spread the word to others, but that's just life I guess.  Regardless, we keep on trucking.

The end of ProTrack

Yep, it's finally over.  We had the last of our shows on Saturday, May 21, then a cast and family and friends picnic at Serenity and Bill's the day after, and then almost before you could believe it was true, people started leaving back for home.  The shows, by the way, went pretty spectacular.  It seemed to be a consistent trend among the shows as well as among the cast members that the evening shows went better than the matinee shows.  My initial thoughts would be that this would be when we'd be more tired and thus be when we pay less attention to detail, but I was proved wrong.  My parents came to the last two shows, as well as many others who I knew, both circus folk and not, came to see me during those shows as well.  The evening show on Friday, May 20, two of my great friends from high school (also identical twins), Rebecca and Sarah, came to see me perform. Finally I got an opportunity to perform for some of my Greeley friends.  It was very nice to have them there.

It was pretty sad to have to see everyone go, but with the smallness of the circus world, we'll all undoubtedly see each other again, but probably never completely as a ProTrack group.  Regardless, life must go on, duties must be fulfilled, and dreams must be pursued.

There unfortunately were a couple people who had gotten injured during the time leading up to the show (likely due to people wanting to push themselves really hard before the shows start).  As a result, three people were forced to not perform their majors and Marshall actually managed to injure their wrist bad enough during the first weekend of performances that he couldn't perform either his major or minor during the second week of performances.  During the last show, however, he managed to perform anyway by doing an improv dance piece to his trapeze music on the floor.  It was most honestly one of the most beautiful and inspirational things I"v ever seen. There were themes from his trapeze act that he translated to the floor, and not to mention the three back tucks in a row he performed.  Simply inspiring. He spent time during some of the other shows' transitions prancing around with a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon, which I thought was pretty great.

Anyway, if you are interested in viewing videos of my major and minor, you can view videos in my newly revamped Performer section of my website (http://www.trevorkafka.com/performer.html).  My major is listed as "Single Point Trapeze (dynamic height)" (meaning that I use a pulley system to adjust the bar height while I'm performing) and my minor is listed as Floor Acrobatics.  So far, I only have the preview video of my major, but I did get a professional videoshoot of the performance between the two weekends of shows which I'll be able to get online sometime during this summer. My minor's video wasn't my best runthrough in that things didn't go quite as I had planned, but overall it still managed to be somewhat clean.  The video that's up is of footage that I have as of now, but I might end up swapping it out with a better runthrough once I have more footage to put up.

Appearance in the Brattleboro Reformer!

The Brattleboro Reformer came in during our first dress rehearsal of Circus Clockwork, our end-of-year ProTrack graduation shows and made a video piece of us that was featured on their home page for a couple days now (www.reformer.com).

My somewhat horridly bent leg while going from the shoulderstand into the catscratch is a little bit of a thorn in my side, but my upper leg got a teeney bit caught on the wrong side of the other rope that time, so I was a little more concerned about getting that out over straightening my leg completely. Now I'm always going to remember to always turn out the back leg! :P


Also, the shows so far have gone pretty well.  

We've done three this past weekend and we are performing another three this upcoming weekend.  I'll save my more detailed experiences for until after we've finished them all. :P

Single Point Trapeze preview video

Here's a little preview video I put together of my Single Point Trapeze act I'm performing as a part of Circus Clockwork, the ProTrack graduation show at the New England Center for Circus Arts.  Tickets can be purchased through the NECCA site.  Our first show is May 14!

The final stretch*

*No, not for flexibility.

Yes, we're already powering through May.  It's hard to grasp the fact that it's already the fourth of the month.  Since my last post, I've managed to get a lot done, but there's still a lot left to do.

Computer-generated costume
prototype.

My costume has so far been progressing wonderfully.  As you may recall, my original vision for my single point trapeze costume was something like the picture to the right.  I got my unitard a couple weeks ago, and began to create plastic stencils to help me paint on the pattern with fabric paint along with cardboard inserts which would stretch the unitard in a manner that would match my own body (this is where I was a true nerd... for the cardboard insert of my torso, I measured horizontal diameters with distances relative to my belly button (above my belly button was a positive value, and below was a negative) and halved those values to come up with the widths for various heights for the inert...pretty snazzy huh? :P).  Because this process is a little better shown than told, below are a bunch of pictures outlining the creation process.  Once the paint dried, I heat-set it in by using an iron.  I'm additionally having my friend, T, dye in some darker red so it's no longer a solid red color, as well as modifying the feet, so that there is a hole for the heel and a hole at the top of the foot, for toe hangs and heel hangs.  I also got suggestions from coaches during the costume parade that I modify the neck to be a bit lower.  I concur with that idea, and will most certainly make neck hangs a lot more comfy since the zipper hopefully won't interfere there.