Mechanics vs. Artistry (aerials; saturday morning)

[frobzwiththingz]

While myself and the rest of our little circus-arts enclave have been taking classes on a few different apparatuses (silk, sling, trapeze), silk is the one that really has our attention. I built a trapeze, and it gets brought to our Monday practices at Spontaneous, and gets used, but not anywhere near as much as the silks. Even the two people who started out as trapeze-weenies are slowly getting converted to being silk-weenies. I think the medium just has much more capacity for varying styles of movement and artistic expression, and imho, it Just Looks More Impressive.

I've now been feeding my aerial silk addiction since last September, when i started learning via finding the fireflydance folk at Burning Man. Since then, via hanging stuff in a tree in the backyard, off the lighting truss at the Redtail loft, the ceiling in my living room (man, thats desperate), bootleg practice at MIT, and finally our official above-board practice night at Spontaneous, it's actually been an at-least weekly hobby for myself and others for 8 months now. It's now something that i've started to say that i *do*, rather than something i say that i am *just learning*. Thats not to say that i do it *well*, far from it, but it is now the case that i have the mechanics down on enough techniques and move sequences that (a) i am no longer a rank beginner, and (b) i have enough material under my belt that putting together an actual act is no longer a sometime-in-the-distant-future fantasy. Several of us are now in this boat, klingonlandlady, dilletante, doze_e_fish, sensesurfer...



As we've been advancing, cypher and the fireflydance crew have been changing their workshops around, adding more advanced silk classes to the mix. two months ago his classes for us started to get us thinking about transitions and how moves fit/flow into one another, last month was our first "choreography" class, in which we all got dealt out a semi-random set of ordered moves and had to attempt to make them flow into one another, in the order given. Doing this was exhausting, as it required being able to stay up on the silks for far longer than we had ever been before. But by and large, we *were* able to do it. sensesurfer had had this crazy idea that we would be able to do a performance at this years Burning Man, and i had thought that to be really unlikely. After that class last month, though, it actually seemed *doable*. At least, from a raw physical perspective; i've got enough techniques and (probably) the physical strength/endurance to perform a 5 minute routine.



But that's just the Mechanics. Finding the "Artistry" is yet another ball of wax. This saturday mornings class was also on Choreography/Act Creation/etc. We did two exercises, both designed to get us to assemble sequences on the fly that contained certain elements, but otherwise the content was left up to us. The first one's required elements were "some type of thigh drop" and "anything using a foot wrap", Eat about 60-90 seconds of time. Everyone else was them to comment on the "performance", using a bunch of different rating categories such as "Success" (were the moves performed succesfully), "Achievement" (did the perfomance achieve its goals), "Effortlessness", etc. On a scale of 1 to 10. This turned out to be way too aggressive a commenting structure for the level we are at, and was quickly abandoned for more general commentary. During our first runthroughs of this exercise i definitely had thoughts of "Am I in over my head here?..." Some of the people who were there for the class decided that they *were* in over their heads, and they and Kelleigh (cyphers other instructor this time) went over to another silk to practice more specific things.

The second exercise was to generate a 90 second or so routine with a defined start and endpoint. (start crouching on the mat holding the silk in front of you, end the same way) This one gave me an excuse to use the hip-key-drop-back-unroll-to-crucifix sequence that i've been practicing recently, since it ends up with me hanging in a crucifix with my knees bent (theres not enough height to complete it fully extended in CasaNia) I used a same-side climb to ascend, threw in a silk-behind-the-back-neck balance halfway up, continued upward in same-side climb mode, and hit the hip-key close (but not high enough) to the top of the silk. This left me possibly too low to complete the rolldown, and indeed, when that time came, my right knee smacked the mat loudly. Now *i* was the one fielding the "are you OK?" questions. (actually, it sounded a lot worse than it actually was). My second time through i made sure i was high enough, and it worked out OK.



2 things i am finding hard about this sort of class: (a) giving artistic commentary, and (b) "being/feeling artistic" w.r.t being on the silk. They are both really 2 sides of the same coin. I've never really operated in an "artistic" mode; i really see myself as a technician. Many of the folk coming to these classes are coming in from a ballet/dance/gymnastics background; i dont have any of that. It's only within the last couple of years that you could occasionally find me on a dance floor. It was fairly late in my life that i started developing any shred of eye/hand coordination, and i sort of feel like i can do many things at this point, but they have a somewhat robotic quality to them. This aerial silk discipline seems like a perfect thing to work at being more "fluid".


The Burning Question:
How, exactly, does one "work" at "being fluid"? Does that idea even make sense?

Comments

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

How, exactly, does one "work" at "being fluid"? Does that idea even make sense?

A line I use regarding juggling seems appropriate here ... "The hard part is making it look easy.".

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

More practice dancing might help- shall we go to Manray more often? :)
Seriously, i think i need remedial "feeling the music" practice too. I have a lot of this problem as well- I've always been the behind the scenes technician, or doing some intensely functional sport like weight lifting; but NOT a "performer". I kind of get all "What the hell are YOU looking at? move along- there's nothing to see here" when someone is watching me on silks. (this comes from a) being stage crew b)working out at the Harvard gym and trying not to get cruised by the football team... i know, squandering good opportunities... ;)

But, like with trying not to be shy- i think you just have to act as if you CAN do it like a performer, until that becomes true- move in an intentionally graceful way, connect with the audience, etc...

yeep.

Though i think i HAVE seen you do small amounts of showmanship connected with juggling?

Feeling the Music

[doze-e-fish.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. The last time I was "feeling the music" I turned a simple back-crossed crucifix into a bouncy knee hang. AAAaack!!!

But seriously. I saw [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] have true star quality when he was running through his "random" routine at Spontaneous last week Monday!

My youth theatre director always reminded us to make good use of the fourth wall. Develop connection with the audience without developing true eye contact, which can be very distracting to the performer. I think it's a lot harder performing in front of your friends and peers on the silk because they know you're putting on an act!

[tb]

Working at being fluid reminds me of a quote I heard attributed to a figure skater being interviewed (sorry, don't remember who). She said the hardest thing she had to learn to do was how to smile spontaneously.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to achieve it, but the difference is there's technique, and then there's technique combined with the conveyance of emotion. Grace is the latter. And it doesn't have to be that you're trying to convey a specific emotion with your actions, it's more of feeling good in your knowledge of competence, possibly.

(It's a concept I nibbled at briefly a few years ago, but I never really had a chance to have a conversation about the concept, and haven't really been able to flesh out what I exactly mean.)