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.

An overdue update

It's honestly been two months since I've provided a worthwhile blog update, and to be quite frank, it most simply comes down to me being a bit lazy.  So, let me give you guys a rundown on the key things that have happened since I wrote in early November about how we were entering a new phase of ProTrack (i.e. - once we started show preparation).  I'm also including two videos in this post, so be sure to click the see more link if you're interested in watching them.

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.

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.