Going Dutch
Apr. 15th, 2013 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonI spent this weekend mostly in a workshop with a visiting Dutch acrobat. Organizing it was a pain, but in the end it sold out and everyone paid me, and I paid him, and all is well. And you know what a good experience means to a teacher... we're firmly on his map. :-)
We spent a long time on one little sequence (high bird on one base, to high foot-to-hand on a second base). I was kind of bored, until at the end the teacher used me as an example of the next progression: from high bird to EXTENDED overhead foot-to-hand. It's a blind tipping backward into a pair of hands you can't see, and then rising up like a soap bubble, high, high up. The second time, which was more graceful with a tempo, felt especially that way -- some tricks do that -- it's as if the room is filled with water and I'm rising up with a wave. I was pitching from the Ant to Scooper, then tipping from Scooper to the Ant for the rise up, and yeah... it was one of those moments of feeling near-perfect trust and having it perfectly validated. The room was quiet, so I raised my arms and smiled at the top: it's okay, I feel safe and happy here! Isn't my base wonderful? It's a dangerous trick, and it might've been sketchy to demo it without a safety belt or detailed talk of spotting. But it also looks scary as hell, so I doubt anyone else was tempted to copy us.
Let's see, what else was great? I was popped from foot-to-hand on one base to contra on a second base, and at least one of those (to Scooper, I think) went perfectly. I based a trick involving two other people: one in a throne position and one standing on the shoulders of that one. (That was heavy.) I learned a lovely new corkscrewing entrance to butterfly and a fun way to roll down a base's back from arabesque. And I did my first ever (half) hand-to-hand piston, along with several other madcap hand-to-hand variations down low. ("The Fence" is purely wacko.)
Oh, and the Ant had another one of those moments today where he challenged me the perfect amount. We tried something that's never, ever worked for us; failed; I said "that's never going to work for me", not meaning it in a defeatist way but more in a "let's do the entrance that actually works for us" way. He paused and said "Are you done with that thought now?" I said yes, we tried again and that time we made it work.
We spent a long time on one little sequence (high bird on one base, to high foot-to-hand on a second base). I was kind of bored, until at the end the teacher used me as an example of the next progression: from high bird to EXTENDED overhead foot-to-hand. It's a blind tipping backward into a pair of hands you can't see, and then rising up like a soap bubble, high, high up. The second time, which was more graceful with a tempo, felt especially that way -- some tricks do that -- it's as if the room is filled with water and I'm rising up with a wave. I was pitching from the Ant to Scooper, then tipping from Scooper to the Ant for the rise up, and yeah... it was one of those moments of feeling near-perfect trust and having it perfectly validated. The room was quiet, so I raised my arms and smiled at the top: it's okay, I feel safe and happy here! Isn't my base wonderful? It's a dangerous trick, and it might've been sketchy to demo it without a safety belt or detailed talk of spotting. But it also looks scary as hell, so I doubt anyone else was tempted to copy us.
Let's see, what else was great? I was popped from foot-to-hand on one base to contra on a second base, and at least one of those (to Scooper, I think) went perfectly. I based a trick involving two other people: one in a throne position and one standing on the shoulders of that one. (That was heavy.) I learned a lovely new corkscrewing entrance to butterfly and a fun way to roll down a base's back from arabesque. And I did my first ever (half) hand-to-hand piston, along with several other madcap hand-to-hand variations down low. ("The Fence" is purely wacko.)
Oh, and the Ant had another one of those moments today where he challenged me the perfect amount. We tried something that's never, ever worked for us; failed; I said "that's never going to work for me", not meaning it in a defeatist way but more in a "let's do the entrance that actually works for us" way. He paused and said "Are you done with that thought now?" I said yes, we tried again and that time we made it work.
