CircEsteem Spring Circus

I consider myself very lucky to be a long-standing member of the circus community. After all, it was sheerly a twist of fate that brought me to my first aerial classes, back when most people (including myself) didn't know what aerial silks were. (Or to borrow a musician joke, "I had circus on vinyl.") Unfortunately, my income suffered massively when the economy tanked, and I had to scale back my participation. No more weekly or twice-weekly classes for me. I narrowed my training to lesson exchange and independent partner training when schedules permitted. It was great and I learned a lot, but it was irregular.

Now that I've moved to a city where I don't have a lesson exchange partner or a training partner, and I haven't been able to afford classes to get out and meet people (I went from being a starving artist to a starving student), I've been feeling pretty out of the loop. So in a Facebook-ed effort to reach out to the circus community and try to find a way to become involved, someone told me that a children's circus training company might be needing an acro-pole teacher.

So on Saturday afternoon, I was invited to meet with the directors of CircEsteem, try out their poles, and watch their show.

CircEsteem is a group that teaches circus arts--spanning both physical comedy and aerial acrobatics--to children of all ages. (I was told their current age range was 7-17.) The company has a charitable bent to it--many bends, I'd say. They teach refugee kids circus arts, and help them with their homework. They send poor kids home with groceries for their families (thanks to a partnership with Whole Foods). I assume they have paying students as well, though I'm not sure exactly how it all works.

This performances was their annual student recital. No instructors performed, and the kids even wrote much of their own material. Even more impressive when you consider that there were about 90 kids performing. Yes, 90. Large groups, small groups, duets, and even some polished solos.

I arrived a few hours before the show to talk business. Walking into a room full of 90 child circus performers is an experience in itself. The room was full of juggling and unicycling. I can neither juggle nor unicycle (actually, I can't even bicycle), so seeing 9-year-olds do both with aplomb is humbling.

I got to help put up a tent! I love that about circus. The first thing that happened when I arrived was someone stuck a tent post and a handful of fasteners in my hands. I enjoy doing that kind of work, as long as I'm not the one who has to figure out the logistics.

The show opened with the whole full of kids juggling. Have you ever seen an entire stage filled with kids juggling (successfully)? It looks like this:

The whole first half of the show was groups of kids who had written their own scenes. There was a lot of clowning/physical comedy, which unfortunately I couldn't hear because I was in the back row. And a lot of unicycling and juggling, which, as I mentioned above, is embarrasingly impressive. But there were also trapeze, silks, and, yes, a pole act.

The pole act was mostly made up of 6 or 7 girls (and I think one boy) doing frog climbs as high as they could, posing in a frog hold (like a frog climb, except you do a back armpit hold with your inside arm so you can release your hands), and climbing back down. A few did foot splits ("Reiko splits") and one even did a half flag! It was especially cute because they had some sort of Charlie's Angels theme going on.

Even though the first half was really long (I told you, there were 90 kids), I didn't want to leave at intermission. I really wanted to see everything!

The second half was more individual work than the first--solos, duets, trios. It was great to see each student showcase their talent. You could tell many of them had been at this for years. I mean, can you imagine to be in high school and be able to do a complete lyra solo? Doing pole solos kills me, and I've been poling since before some of the kids in this company were born!

The highlight for me was that they actually had a German wheel performance! German wheel is one of my favorite acrobatic arts to watch. I've never tried it, but one of the directors, Carlo, told me that Chicago is something of a hub (get it?) for German wheel, so maybe someday soon! There aren't a lot of places to learn in NY, probably because it requires so much floor space--one of the rarest commodities in New York City.

Now for the info my friends will really want to know: the poles.

I'd say they are about 20 feet high, and they are sturdy but somehow removable (I didn't spend a much time looking at the rig, as that stuff tends to be over my head, no pun intended). They're just under 50mm, and are currently only spray painted, though they may become either powder- or rubber-coated in the near future. The grip is good, as I was able to climb to the top with no feet without using any product (and it hadn't been rosined up or anything), but could still execute spins. All in all, VERY fun to play on.

Anyway, they might be able to use me, depending on how registration goes. So if they get a lot of kids signed up, I should at least be making some guest appearances. Too bad it is so far--I know lots of poling moms out here in the West suburbs who would love to get their kids started on acro-pole!!

Should aerialists run?

The fitness world is divided into two camps: those who run, and those who don't. Most people are firmly on one side of the fence or another. Although health benefits and drawbacks are often given as reasons, I find it tends to just come down to personal preference. Still, if you are an aerialist considering taking up jogging, you should weigh the pros and cons pretty seriously.

As a pole instructor and four-time marathoner, I find myself in a good position to advise students on their running habits and aspirations. I ran distances for years, and several of those years alongside aerial training, so I've been through it all. Here's what I've learned, first-hand and from observing my classmates and students.

Pro: Running will make you lose weight. As a person who's been through all kinds of diets and exercise throughout my lifetime, my thinnest, leanest body has always coincided with distance jogging. Whenever I take up a running regimen, I lose weight. I can do pole, circus, walking, circuit training, power lifting, and dance classes, but none of these shed the pounds for me like running does. I can diet obsessively and train hard, but I will still be at a much higher body fat percentage than when I am marathon training. In theory, there are many ways to lose weight. In my experience however, on all occasions, running works the best. 

Con: Running will destroy your flexibility. Back when I was a NYCA/Firefly student and running marathons, there were two other marathoners in my class. Whenever we all bent over for hip flexor stretches, the three of us would look at each other and laugh. We were literally the only three people in the class who couldn't get to the floor. This was no coincidence. Running is horrible for your flexibility. If your poling is going to suffer because you can't get a center split, chose another sport.

Pro: Running is amazing for your mental health. Most exercises are full of ups and downs. Aerial acrobatics especially are rife with frustrations. We have good days and bad days. We feel elated when we conquer a new trick, peeved and irritable when we can't. Running, on the other hand, is almost always a mood lifter. You can have fought with your boyfriend, boss, and mom all on the same day, then go for a jog in the park and feel like a million bucks. Really, what's more important than happiness?

Con: Distance running takes up a lot of time. If you are running marathons or half-marathons, you will have days when you are out on the trail two, three, even four hours at a time. If you have a day job and are poling or circusing as a hobby, you are probably already really, really busy. The time and energy spent in the park will likely cut directly into your poling time. This is OK if you are poling as a casual fun thing to do, but if you have set goals for yourself, time spent running might be a considerable setback.

Pro: Endurance. If you're moving your poling from doing a few tricks and sequences to performing an entire routine, you need some serious aerobic and anaerobic endurance. Running is a simple way to achieve that. You might need to do more HIIT than straightforward jogging, to get your heart rate up where it needs to be. But it's good to be able to train yourself to relax and breathe while you're doing strenuous things on the ground, rather than wait 'til your in the air.

Con: The weather. While running is the perfect way to enjoy a beautiful day, a beautiful day is not always what you get. Running in the cold or rain could weaken your immune system, and running under a heat wave isn't good for you either. You don't want to catch cold or have a stroke. On the other hand, restricting your jogging to nice days only is not really a good training plan. Of course there's always the treadmill, but if you are running for any sort of distances, that can be tedious. Hope there's a good Simpsons rerun on the gym TV.

Pro: Running works different muscles than aerial. Because pole and other apparatuses depend mostly on upper body and core strength, running can be an excellent complement. You will be using your quads and glutes a lot, which are relatively neglected when we are swinging around in the air. By running, you can tire out muscles that won't interfere with your poling, and create balance in your body.

Con: Injuries. You won't get as many injuries running as you will in the circus, but it can still happen. Knee complaints are common, and hip, IT band, and foot pain happen to the best of us. While sore glutes shouldn't mess up your aerial work too much, a pulled muscle needs to be rested, period. So it's still possible that running injuries can keep you off of the pole for awhile.

So, my dear aerialist, is running right for you? It depends on your priorities.

Are you overweight? Is your performance inhibited by extra pounds? After all, in aerial acrobatics, we are working with our body weight. Dropping some extra weight is one of the most efficient ways to improve performance, and overall health. And running is, for me and many people I've worked with, the most effective way to lose weight.

Are you training to become a professional performer or elite competitor in the near future? You will have to find some other way to keep thin. You need your flexibility in this profession.

If you decide that jogging is the right choice for you, here are some pointers:

• It doesn't have to be all distances all the time. HIIT is an effective way to lose weight. Although I have to say that it is much more manageable on a treadmill, where you can control your speed. It can be too hard while running in the great outdoors to lose your concentration.
• Stretch like crazy. You can't just stretch like a runner, soothing your calves before and after your workout. You need to stretch like a dancer. It will be time-consuming, but if your flexibility matters to you, you need to do this.
• Get foam rollers and massage balls. I have these "barbells" from Trigger Point Therapy, which work WONDERS on overworked calves.
• See a professional for help with your body. I had an IT band problem cured after one Feldenkreis session. I also visited a studio in NY that works with a lot of aerialists and dancers. Doing things like this is a cash and time investment, but it's important that you keep yourself aligned.
• Go ahead and run a marathon. If you are an aerialist, you are probably already an overachiever. Running a marathon is a good life goal. But you can stop after one. Marathons have excellent marketing, and it's easy to get sucked into trying to beat your "PR" and seeing the world's greatest cities via mass running. That's fine if that's what you want, but you don't have to fall for the hype. Again: if you are an aerialist, you probably have the self-discipline to stick to a training regimen without such an extreme goal.

I describe myself as a former runner. I like to say that I ran four marathons, but I "retired." I decided that it was interfering with my flexibility too much. I am not a flexible person and never will be, but I care about the aerial arts enough to prioritize them. Plus, it's fun to look out the window on a freezing, snowy day and say, "Guess what? I don't have to go running!" But I don't regret a minute I spent in Central Park or along the Seine or the Charles River. I was happy, I was skinny, and I got to eat a lot of spaghetti.

Image from tipshealth.net

Michigan Pole, Aerial, and Vaudeville Expo

I'm at home, recovering from an intense weekend! This Saturday, I attended the Michigan Pole, Aerial, and Vaudeville Expo in metro Detroit, in order to cover the event for Vertical Art and Fitness Magazine.

I've had a few failed launches with VAF. They were going to publish one of my blog posts, but ran out of room in the issue and asked if I could cover an event instead. We agreed on an event, but that fell through (I think it was cancelled). And then they asked if I could cover this event in Michigan. I hadn't been planning on going, because I'm dead broke, and also because I work on Sunday mornings, so a weekend away doesn't really work for me. However, I didn't want to say no after so many failed attempts. And it turned out that the bulk of the event was on Saturday, so I could make it back in time for my gig without missing too much.

I left Friday noonish, after borrowing money from my parents to pay for gas. I have friends about 45 minutes from the Ukranian Cultural Center who were letting me stay in their sweet house. But I had to be there by 6:30 for a business meeting. (They are music contacts of mine.) And I hit really awful rain. So I was all worried about being late, speeding and trying not to hydroplane. I figured that my GPS wouldn't account for the time zone switch, so when it said my ETA was 5:17, I assumed that meant 6:17 Michigan time, and couldn't afford to lose a moment. Imagine how surprised I was when I turned a corner at 5:16 and "Gypsy" (my GPS) said, "Now arriving at destination." She had accounted for the time zone change after all, and I had made incredible time, thunderstorms and all!

So I arrived at the house that is so amazing it makes me want to cry, and waited for my other friend to arrive for our opera meeting. We tossed ideas around, and then they took me out for a sushi dinner (my friend running the opera group is Japanese). Who knew there was such good sushi in Detroit? I'd never had a tofu tempura roll before. Recommend!

Somehow the drive had taken a lot out of me, and I was too exhausted to stay up and watch movies in the movie theater in the basement, but not too tired to take a hot soak in the guest room tub that lights up like 9 different colors. Whaaaat.

The next morning I got enough of a start to find an Einsteins Bros. for breakfast, and learned that a bagel is not good highway driving food. Can some creative inventor find a way to make cream cheese less messy? I was a relatively early arrival at the expo, and was given a VIP wristband, which made me feel really special, even though they were the same color as the regular wristbands (but said VIP VIP VIP VIP) so no one knew but me.

There were basically three aspects of the event: the showcase performances, the vendors' tables, and the workshops. Most people who come to these things from out of town come for the workshops with celebrity pole instructors. I didn't have money to invest in workshops, and they would have comped me for whatever still had room, except they were ALL sold out, every last one of them! So I used that extra time to hang out in the main room, talking to whoever else was sitting around while their friends were in workshops. I got to sit down with the event's organizer, Charley, and have an extensive conversation about her vision for the expo. I hadn't been planning on recording anything, since my article is so short I'm not going to have a lot of room for quotes, but she was so interesting and so engaging I had to turn my iPhone video recorder on halfway through the conversation. She was dropping gems left and right! A writer's dream interviewee!

I talked to pretty much everyone--co-organizer Jessica of Pole Addiction and Aerial Dragonfly, star poler Shadow, the manager of the Ukranian Cultural Center, Mattcrobat and Swift Ali, my friends at Skindustry, and anyone who was hanging around. Saw almost all my current students from Chicago, too!

Most of the rest of the day was spent watching the showcase. There were 50 performers of all levels. Mostly pole, but also silks and lyra. I hesitate to give highlights here, because there were so many I'd forget something.

I'm waiting on some info from Charley before I write my article. You won't see it here--it will be exclusive to Vertical Art and Fitness Magazine. So you'd better subscribe today!!

Pole, where is thy audience?

I sang a Brahms Requiem this past weekend, and the best part (the fast, firey part) shouts at its center, "Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?" "Death, where is thy sting?"

Maybe it's just these words floating around in my head that make me ask: "Pole, where is thy audience?"

Pole is a tiny, tiny, tiny community. I've been a part of many discourse groups over my lifetime, and some of them are pretty compact. Circus is pretty intimate, and pole is, in the grand scheme of things, microscopic.

And yet our industry, on the surface, appears to be thriving. Pole studios are springing up worldwide, organizations are forming and formalizing, publications are found on newsstands, and enough people are now aware of pole fitness as an activity separate from exotic dance that most of us can say what we do and raise interest, not eyebrows. We have been here long enough, and have experienced enough growth both as an industry and as an art form, that we have proven ourselves to be Not A Fad.

Underneath the surface? Things continue to improve, but there are still some fundamental difficulties that we have yet to overcome. World-class polers that leave us starstruck are almost entirely unknown beyond our ranks. (My non-aerial Facebook friends will occasionally post a YouTube video of Jenyne Butterfly or Felix Cane, but without any recognition for the person behind the "wow pole dancing is hard" act.) Respected competitions are often held in dingy hotel conference halls, rather than in theaters and arenas. And most instructors are lucky if they break even on their pole investments. Even the best of the best earn most of their income traveling around teaching workshops, even if their teaching is not up to par with their breathtaking performances.

Clearly this lack of profitability just goes to show how truly we love our art. But does it have to be this way?

I am a classical singer. I sing in operas and concerts and churches. Most of my non-poling friends are also opera singers. We like to go to the opera sometimes. We might participate in or watch the occasional masterclass. We buy CD's and videos, especially featuring roles we hope to learn and idols we hope to emulate.

But we are not the audience.

The audience is opera buffs, theater lovers, patrons of the arts, cultured members of society, music fans. We opera singers and other professional musicians, we might be in the audience. But we are not its backbone.

Opera is widely known as the most expensive art form to produce. You have a full-fledged live theater production, a full-sized professional orchestra, a full-sized adult (and maybe also children's) chorus, possibly a troupe of professional dancers, and very, very, very specialized soloists, and all their understudies, because the tiniest cold or allergy attack can knock a singer out of the production. All these elements come together to rehearse for (hopefully) months, to produce a spectacle that will only be performed a handful of times.

Can you imagine if the only audience was only other opera singers? Where would the money come from? We are starving artists! Who would fill the thousand-seat opera houses? We are busy, we have rehearsals for our own productions!

Think of the worldwide popularity of soccer (or football, if you want to pretend you don't know what "soccer" means). Arenas are filled. Fans are screaming. People are killing each other over team rivalries, for christ's sake! I mean, I'm not saying that's good, but what I am saying is: what if the only people who watched soccer were other soccer players? Gone are the fans. Gone are the arenas. Gone is the swelling of national pride.

Gone is the money. Gone is the organization. Gone is the funding for athletics-centered research.  Gone are the careers of everyone in the industry, and the perfection that comes with being able to focus on what you love full-time, instead of as a hobby.

Who goes to pole conferences, competitions, and performances? Other polers. Maybe friends and spouses of the performers, but mostly, it's us. The teachers, and more enthusiastic students (and self-teachers), of pole fitness.

Why is that?

Well, one reason is that we are a good client base. Pole is a relatively expensive hobby, and people who go into it tend to have enough expendable income to attend workshops and buy products. We are an extremely supportive and enthusiastic audience, and a practitioner of an art can always appreciate minutiae of a performance that escapes the layperson. Polers like watching polers, and polers like polers to be in the audience.

But if we remain this insular, we have little room to grow. We are like an isolationist nation which has nowhere to turn when drought or famine strikes.

A more deeply-rooted cause of our seclusion is our increasingly distant but ever-undeniable relationship to the adult entertainment industry. That relationship might be something like second cousin twice removed, but we come from the same blood. This isn't a problem for us: most polers respect and admire strippers, and the strippers I know respect and admire fitness polers. But we, the pole community, tend to use our lack of public performance as a way to draw the line between poling and exotic dancing. (After all, not all exotic dancing involves nudity, so you can't just use the "I have clothes on" argument.) Oh, we're not "exotic dancing," we're just taking classes. Oh, she's not a stripper, she does pole competitions. In fact, some amateur polers defend their hobby with the explanation, "I don't perform in public or anything."

The biggest hurdle is behind us. We've gotten the public to understand that pole fitness is not stripping. It took years, but the message finally got (mostly) through. If we can do that, we can make them understand that pole performance doesn't have to mean exotic dancing, either. It's another genre, in another venue. A singer singing in a classical style in a heavy costume in an opera house is an opera singer. A singer singing in a dark nightclub in front of a rhythm section with upright bass, using a modern, belty and improvisational singing style in a slinky gown, is a jazz singer. They're both singing in public, but you're not going to confuse the two.

Finally, maybe the reason we have no audience is because we haven't invited them. While we appreciate stumbling across pole stories in the media, we aren't out there creating our own headlines. Without outreach like televised pole competitions, running shows in theaters to advertise, and our stars being interviewed on The Daily Show, we have no public presence. Pole is strikingly visual, hauntingly beautiful. It seems odd that those visuals would be so unknown to the world.

Have you heard of the concept of an "echo chamber" in media? It's sort of like what the news networks do. They report on a story, and then report that everyone's reporting on it, and then they have to keep reporting on it because how can they ignore such a big story that everyone's talking about? This concept applies even more aptly to smaller discourse communities like our own. We bounce names, stories, products, incidents, moves off each other via forums, blogs, Facebook, and our newfound publications. These things then seem famous, because we're all talking about them. But it's just us talking to each other. Our voices don't permeate beyond the walls of our echo chamber.

In contrast, I learned more traditional aerial acrobatics alongside my pole education. Circus comes from the opposite perspective. People have been crowding circus tents for generations. When the circus came to our grandparents' towns, it was like Christmas. Today, Cirque du Soleil generates over 800 million dollars every year. How much must they make in merchandise alone? They are just one of many cirque nouveau companies producing shows to rave reviews. And they took what could have been considered a dying, outdated art form--circus--and brought joy to millions. Joy and jobs.

We have so much to offer. Our art is ripe for public picking. We have jaw-dropping, death-defying, scandalously sexy, achingly beautiful, human art. A light that we hide under a bushel. I guess I'm ending this post the same way I began it, with a Bible verse. (Ironically, I am not Christian.) I always liked the way this verse was paraphrased in Godspell: "But if that light's under a bushel, it's lost somethin' kinda crucial!"

So let your light so shine before men.

What do you think? Do you prefer the intimacy of our community, or would you prefer a wider audience for what we do?

Image taken from http://dashes.com/anil/2010/02/the-power-of-the-audience.html

Training when you don't have enough time

One of the primary complaints from polers is that they don't have time for all the training that pole encompasses. Learning moves, strength training, conditioning, flexibility, endurance, choreographing and practicing routines-- and all this on top of teaching, day jobs, schools, family, and just having a life. Basically, none of us have enough time for this, even those of us who do it for a living.

If you want to improve your poling but feel yourself extremely limited in the amount of time you have to commit to it, here are some ideas to help you maximize what little time you do have.

1. Get a good teacher.

A lot of polers are self-taught, and enjoy the challenge of figuring out moves for themselves. Or maybe they just don't have money for lessons, or don't know where to find a teacher near them. There are benefits to self-training, but there is the huge drawback that it is the least time-efficient way to learn.

A good teacher can look at a move that you could be frustrating yourself with for months, figure out on the spot what you're doing wrong, and tell you how to correct it. Sometimes it will be an instantaneous result, like if your positioning or weight distribution is off. Sometimes it will be a slow process towards correction, the path on which the teacher will set you, such as if you need to build strength or pain tolerance in a certain area. Either way, the idea is that the teacher can diagnose the problem quickly, and prescribe a remedy in a way that you can understand and execute.

Private, shared, or small group lessons are ideal for this. A class environment can work if it is a situation where you can get individual attention from the instructor, if only for a few minutes at a time. An overcrowded class where the teacher is just yelling out orders and demonstrating a routine will not be of much benefit as far as getting constructive feedback on your moves.

The idea is to find a teacher who is about two or more levels above you (this distinction being completely subjective, as there are no universally distinguishable "levels"), good at explaining moves and spotting mistakes, who can pay full attention to you. Training with friends and polers who are just learning to be instructors is fun and cheap, but not the fastest way to learn.

2. Get stronger

There are moves that are easier when you are more flexible, such as an iron X (the wider your straddle, the "lighter" you will be). There are moves that are easier when you are lighter, such as inverts (the less you weigh, the less you have to lift). But EVERY move is easier when you are stronger.

Aerialists who are physically stronger will usually advance much faster than their physically weaker counterparts. A strong person learning a new move can hold the position longer, fiddling with it until they find the positioning that works best for them. A weaker person might not be able to hold the move, thus has less time to think about it, and has to keep making fresh attempts. The catch: the stronger person is able to execute many attempts, while the weaker person will get worn out sooner.

I think teachers whose only advice to students is "get stronger" are not good teachers. At the same time, there's no denying that strength is one of the most useful skills in the aerial arts.

The good thing about strength training and conditioning is that it can be done without requiring much time, equipment, and space. There are plenty of bodyweight exercises that can be done anywhere you're not too embarrassed to get on the floor, and many coaches will tell you it's harder to keep an athlete from overtraining than undertraining. If you're not sure what exercises would benefit you most, talk to your pole teacher or a personal trainer about your needs and time constraints. Make sure they understand what muscle groups you need to prioritize for what reasons, so they give you a program tailored to your needs, and not just something generic out of a magazine.

(See also my post, Building Strength for Pole: From Global to Specific.)

3. Let yourself train for shorter intervals

There's no written rule that says you have to train for an hour. It's rather an arbitrary amount of time. If you don't have time for an hour of training, you might have time for a half hour. What's wrong with half an hour? You can practice a three minute routine ten times in half an hour!

You need to make sure you leave yourself enough time to warm up. Beyond that, you make the call. Besides, once you get going, you might not want to stop. (But be careful not to overtrain!)

4. Cycle your priorities

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you can't do everything at once. You can't lose weight, build muscle, get stronger, get more flexible, perfect a routine, and master a smattering of new moves all in the same day. You probably can't even do them all in the same month.

This concept has two parts: 1. prioritize. 2. plan to change your priorities.

You can take 12 weeks to work on your dream moves, and then 12 weeks to work on your performance routine. That doesn't mean that's all you will do, it just means that gets top priority in your training schedule. You might dedicate 2 practice sessions to your routine for every 1 to new moves you want to learn. Or, you might dedicate 40 minutes out of an hour to your routine, then the last 20 minutes to new moves. Or vice versa.

Cycling is complicated in that there are a lot of variables. The important questions to ask yourself are, "What do I need to work on most right now?" (a new routine, losing weight), and "How long do I need to focus on that?" (until the competition, until the photo shoot).

Trying to master everything at once will overwhelm anyone, let alone those who already don't have the time. A little forethought in this will help you from burning yourself out.

Those are just a few ideas, but there are room for many more. I hope to do some more posts soon on how to organize your practice time, but this is a start. Hope it helps!

Image from The Vernacular Vicar