STRIKE, BEND, LIFT, & FLY

I think of Aerials as the special frosting on my exercise layer cake.  It is the newest addition to my repertoire, and in many ways the most challenging, but also the coolest.  I started out with silks, have done a little trapeze, and most recently acquired a lyra or hoop.  My skills are far from impressive, but it is kind of thing where I am just happy to be able to do any of it.

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I came to aerials through a happy accident, somewhat like the way I came to Kung Fu through my husband Pete.  Pete had seen something on the web about aerial yoga and asked if I had ever heard of it.  I hadn’t, so I looked it up on YouTube.  I watched a few aerial yoga videos, but wasn’t real impressed since I tend to like my yoga old-school.  But at the end of one of the videos, YouTube showed a collection pictures for other videos to view.  In the corner was a video of someone doing aerial silks.  I watched and was amazed and intrigued.  I showed my husband the aerial silks video and said to him “I wonder if there is somewhere you could learn to do that?”  I little googling and I did find the most well-publicized aerial school in my area and thought “Well, maybe someday I will try it.”

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Then, a week later, my husband came home from a Kung Fu lesson at the dance studio where our instructor was teaching.  He told me that at the end of his lesson he noticed a woman hanging silks in the front dance studio.  He told her that I was interested in trying aerials and got her card.  The woman turned out to be Sharon Witting, who had just started Elevate Arts at the studio.  It felt like kismet.  I emailed Sharon right away and set up a lesson.  I have had extremely good fortune in terms of finding exceptionally talented instructors, and Sharon continued that lucky streak.  By the time I met her, she had been a professional aerialist for a long time and had instructed for many years.  Doing aerials and teaching aerials are not quite the same, but she is very skilled in both.  She is also my same age, which somehow made me feel less silly about trying to do something as challenging as aerials for the first time at 45 years of age. 

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Recently, Sharon has cut back on her teaching, but fortunately Kate Winston has begun teaching along with Sharon at Dance Exchange, under the name Ciel Aerial.  Kate was a student of Sharon’s and so shares her basic approach, and especially her emphasis on sound fundamentals.  She also shares Sharon’s good humor, which is important since I find that the challenges in aerials are best approached (and hopefully, eventually conquered) in a light-hearted fashion.  In other words, you must accept that you are going to look like a total goofball at first.

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I had started Crossfit not long before discovering aerials and had some vague sense that aerials might serve as an outlet for the upper body strength that I was developing.  That was wrong and right.  Aerials really requires more core strength than upper body strength, at least in order to begin.  That said, I find that having both core and upper body strength allows me to do more.  The only down-side is that I sometimes rely on arm/shoulder strength to accomplish movements, instead of relying more on technique.  This is probably most evident in climbs on the silks, which I tend to make look like rope climbs from CrossFit.  Also, I tend to be more athletic than artistic in the way I move, so trying to look pleasing aesthetically is a constant challenge.  In other words, strong does not equal graceful.

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The other significant thing that I quickly learned about aerials is that much of it hurts, and some of it a lot.  Although aerials has become a bit trendy as of late, I think that the pain factor will ultimately prove to be a barrier to mass appeal.  That said, moves which are very painful at first, generally become less so with repetition (i.e. uncomfortable repetition).  In sum, you get a lot of bruises in aerials, a.k.a. “circus kisses.”  I was used to getting bruised up doing Kung Fu, so it is not a deal-breaker for me, but still a real obstacle to overcome in mastering some movements.

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I don’t know where my study of aerials is going overall.  As I said above, it is the kind of thing where I am just happy to be able to do any of it.  I would like to work on developing a couple of routines set to music, which is really new territory for me, but finding the time has proved difficult.  So for now I just try to keep doing as much as I can, but hope to develop a more focused plan.  Best of all, aerials inspires me to keep up my conditioning so that I am able to attempt more.