Workshop Weekend and the past week.

So I'm sorry for the lacking of posting from this past week, but it wasn't a week where I felt compelled to jot something down. I do have a video to share however, it's small, but it might be slightly entertaining :)

Last weekend, was WORKSHOP WEEKEND, which is a weekend at NECCA where teachers from NECCA and guest teachers from various places come and teach a weekend filled of all types of workshops.
Francois Gravel and Michael Lanphear were going to be guest teaching a few workshops.
I signed up for Francois Gravel's "Single Point Trapeze" workshop (he does some really innovative stuff), and Michael Lanphear's "Stretching for Backs and Shoulders" workshop.
By the end of the weekend, I had also taken "Stretching for Feet, Legs, and Hips" with Michael and "Aerial Transitions" with Serenity.

All the workshops were really great, the Single Point was a little less physically stimulating than we had thought it would be, but it was still very great, as he led us through some exercises he uses when he is creating an act. My theatery brain totally loves that kind of work, so it was very good. The feet legs and hips workshop was INCREDIBLE, for 2 hours, we stretched in new and unusual ways. Most of the people in that workshop had trouble walking due to soreness for the next day or two. On Saturday night after the Feet Legs and Hips workshop, a bunch of NECCA staff and friends from out of town and I went to Flat Street Brewpub for Dinner. It was really nice to just remind me of how familial the circus community is, and if you don't know someone directly, you DEFINITELY know a friend of theirs.

On Sunday, I had Stretching for Backs and Shoulders (and then snuck my way into Aerial Transitions directly after). Backs and shoulders was interesting. I have been having trouble finding out what is going on with my shoulder's and upper back flexibility. Bill (the coach at NECCA who is known for stretching people like woah) has yet to find a good stretch for my shoulders, because apparently they have a really big range of motion and I don't feel a stretch. I thought my upper back was INflexible, but Michael found my oddness intriguing or something and was stretching my upper back himself, pushing it into a bent position, and...I felt nothing. Honestly, I felt that his fist was in my back, but I couldn't even feel that my upper back was bent so far. So again, I'm an anomaly to the teachers I have, but Jamie thinks I should look into Somatics, which involves the re-connection of nerves from parts of your body to your brain. What IS good, is that apparently, since my shoulders have such a range of motion, that they will keep me safe better.

So workshop weekend was very thrilling and inspiring, but that started off my week being very sore. On Monday, we did more work on the act Intensives is going to be performing in the NECCA Winter "Nutcracker"-esque circus show. It would have been more fun if I wasn't still very sore. I decided to take Member's only off that day so my body could rest before Lyra and Sling class. HAAHAA, funny joke, when I got to Lyra and Sling class, I found out that we were going to be doing various drops on Lyra (drops on lyra usually involve bruises, and more soreness). The student teacher wasn't extremely knowledge about the certain drops on lyra (her focus is more sling) so Caroline had me demonstrate them, because I've done them before.

The rest of the week involved general soreness, and a desire for my body to have a small vacation (this seemed to be the theme amongst everyone this week, REST THE BODY). Luckily, this week is Thanksgiving vacation! YAY!

Currently I'm working on my first FOR HIRE costume since I've been here. It's for a friend and teacher at NECCA Amanda, I will post pictures of that costume process for fun later.

Week 10: Woah

Nothing too crazy to write home about this week.
I had a good Monday, a rough Tuesday, and good Wednesday so far.
Today, I started with our group class being contortion specializing in shoulders and backs with Caroline teaching us. She's SOOOOO knowledgeable about flexibility, it's wonderful. The only thing was, because i'm relatively flexible, I was doing the "if you can do that easy, add ______ to deepen the stretch" versions of everything, but my ability to hold them for long periods of time isn't great. I will hopefully improve that endurance with time, but I definately learned some new awesome back stretches.
I also had my weekly private with Jamie today on trapeze (slowly becoming my specialty apparatus here at necca I believe). We focused on velocity skills (skills that are dynamic motions around the bar, things that are done more than once in a circular manner around the bar) and release moves (skills where you have to let go of the trapeze before finishing the trick).
During velocity skills we worked on my ever-failing mill circles (I need to break the habit I've now developed of bending my front knee before I give myself a chance to get up). Then we worked on BACKWARDS front hip circles (so now, I can start doing forward flipping front hip circles, and then pause in the middle of one, and reverse the direction of the flip.) It's really awesome, but it gave me some really awkward invisible bruises on my upper forearms near where my elbow rests on ANYTHING.
Then, during the release moves section of the private, we worked on the uber cool "beat twist to ankles".
This is where you hold on to the bar with your hands, swing your body back and forth, and on the forth, you bring your body so high up that you let go of the bar, twist around in the air, and catch the ropes by your ankles. I love it and I can do it now, I just need to clean it up and finesse it a bit.

Anyway, this weekend is WORKSHOP WEEKEND (a whole bunch of amazing teachers from NECCA and elsewhere come to teach a weekend full of workshops). I'm signed up for Single Point Trapeze with Francois Gravel, and Stretching for Backs and Shoulders with Francois Gravel and Michael Lanphear. I'm excited for both. It shall be wonderful. I will definately try and get video/pics to go with my experiences this weekend.

Last part of mega-update (part 4?)

Video from the weird playing time that Melissa and I had on the double sling with hoop on bottom.

More update (part 3?)

Last night after Lyra and Sling class, the assistant teacher Melissa (who's a badass aerialist, hulahooper, and drag king) played around on a rejected solo creation of hers, two aerial slings, one having a small hoop attached to the bottom). Here are the pictures from our little playing session, we want to meet up and try and create something really great on this. Video to be posted hopefully later today.

Less Quickie Update (part 2)

So, here it is, the first video documentation of the creation of a partnership between Eileen Little and myself (nicknamed: "Bent Ariel" and "Legz Montana" respectively) in a aerial duo named "CrotchShot"

Quick Update

I'm going to be posting an awesome post tomorrow featuring new pictures, video and some commentary of what happened at the end of last week and the beginning of this week.
But, to keep your minds intrigued until then: here is a picture from today.
Jamie is having us experiment with multiple people on fabrics, sharing fabrics, and using them in new and unusual ways as preperation for our act for the "Flying Nut" the circus school's version of the holiday Nutcracker performance. Intensives (my program) is going to be the constellations in the night sky (there's 12 of us, zodiac). Oh, quick preface, the show is a riff on the nutcracker, but it takes place out in the woods and has a totally different storyline. Ok, it has NOTHING to do with the nutcracker.
But here's this incredible creation Cooper, Christi, Eileen and I came up with all morning, and got this picture.

Quick description of what is going on, both me and Cooper have wrapped one of our own strands of fabric and one of eachothers' fabric (loosely so that provides the two slings in the middle to sit on) strands around our legs in what is called "Catcher's Lock" (relatively stable, though we still feel pressure when weight it put onto it). Then Eileen climbed up to the top sling via the bottom sling, and Christi got up into the bottom sling.