The Three Auditions: ENC, QUEBEC, and NECCA Pt. 2

THIS IS PART 2 of the "The Three Auditions..." post. The previous post is PART 1.
This post covers the Quebec audition, and the NECCA's PROTRACK audition.

The Three Auditions: ENC, QUEBEC, and NECCA Pt. 1

Sorry for the distance between this post and my previous post. To make up for it, this post will probably become very long.
I have finally finished my set of auditions for the circus schools I've applied to for next year:

• L'Ecole Nationale de Cirque (National Circus School in Montreal, aka ENC),
• L'Ecole de Cirque du Quebec (Circus School of Quebec, aka ECQ), and
• NECCA's Pro Track (the 2nd year program of the school I'm at now).

I also got the chance to see Cirque Eloize's newest show "iD" in Burlington, as well as the "Cirque De Demain" festival show while I was in Montreal.

To read all about the ENC audition, and the shows:

Pre ENC Storm!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. It's been a lot of "do do do" which is great, but not great blog material.
Classes at night have continued to be challenging and wonderful. Acrobatics class is the most "out of my element" of all my night classes, and it has become a really great class. I've been doing front handsprings, and working up to a back handspring (still in the safety lines, but hopefully removing those soon). I was hoping to have a back handspring by ENC auditions but because of snowed out Wednesdays in 2011, we've missed a few acro class nights, so I haven't had as much time to work on them as planned. Advanced Trapeze class is a super challenge, Aimee and Jamie recognize my need to clean and polish all of my trapeze repertoire. At times, I do find it frustrating doing the same maneuver/skill over and over, but then I check myself (before I wreck myself :) ) and continue with their guidance to perfect my technique.

This past month has had some exciting excursions. On January 28th, I went to see "PSY" by the 7doigtsdelamain (7 fingers of the hand) circus company at the Emerson Majestic Theater in Boston. I had the great opportunity to see the show when it had its world premiere in Montreal LAST YEAR during the Ecole Nationale de Cirque (ENC or National Circus School of Montreal) audition week. The show has changed a little, new performers have been added, and mostly all for the better. There were only a couple spots I would have rather not seen, but oh well, other people enjoyed those parts, so I'll shut up about them.

That same weekend, a group of NECCA students were offered free tickets by Elsie and Serenity (the owners of our school) to a show they perform in by Cirque Le Masque called "Evolution". Now here's where we had some controversy over the show. Obviously, we love our teachers Elsie and Serenity and the circus they do is BEYOND quality. But this show was just a hot mess, which I guess is ok for more "traditional circus". Mostly the circus acts themselves were well done. There were background dancers whom were not impressive, or dancing as a group. The music was awkward techno with choral samples screaming "EVOLUTION" (which was the only reference we could find to the title of the show).  We were happy to see Elsie and Serenity perform (always a pleasure), but we were equally happy that we didn't have to pay to see the show in the first place, to most of us, it just wasn't our thing.

This past weekend, Serenity offered a "Trapeze Building" workshop.
I jumped at this opportunity, cause I love building, and craft work, and understanding of things I do from their most basic form to the most grand. So, this Saturday, all the workshop attendees gathered in one of the NECCA rooms, with a huge amount of steel bars, welded thimbles, free thimbles, nylon rope, markers, thin cord, cheap towels, dental floss, and upholstery needles. Serenity started the workshop with what would be the most confusing aspect of building a trapeze for the first time, which is also the part that ensures that your trapeze is safe...a daring mix :) We learned how to splice ropes (which is to combine ropes by weaving them together. This is how the rope wraps around the bar, and then comes back into itself (the thicker part of the rope right above the bar). Having done lots of knot work and rope crafts in life, I found splicing to be not too hard, and slightly therapeutic. The most tedious and frustrating part was the second splices, the ones that would be at the other end of the ropes from the trapeze bar itself. These are what you hang the trapeze to rigging with, and they need to be perfectly measured so when they are hung, the bar is absolutely level. To test this, we would splice our ropes, then hang them by one of the pulley systems in the space, and lower them to the ground, if one of the trapeze ends hit the ground first, we had to adjust the splice. That is how we all got very good at splicing. I had to adjust my splices 6  times before my bar was level. Serenity said that with experience, you get better at not needing to adjust as much. Here is my bar at the end of the workshop:

The steps I have to take to finish the bar, are more "crafty" and less "safety" oriented. Towels as padding need to be sewn wrapped around the ropes where the splice meets the trapeze. Then, fabric (to cover the towels and to look pretty) needs to be sewn over that. In the interest of naming my new trapeze to go along with all my other apparatus ("Olga" my aerial hoop, "Elena" my aerial net, "Maria/Masha" my horizontal hoop, and "Yulia" my fabric (that I don't have anymore... :( ), I have decided to name my trapeze "Dasha" (to go along with the whole russian girl name thing.

Now, I've reached the point in the blog post where I must discuss, the big three letter looming cloud of doom.
ENC...also known as the Ecole Nationale de Cirque (or National Circus School) in Montreal, Canada. This is pretty much the most prestigious circus school one can attend on this side of the world. It is a three year long degree program, where you can be specialized (majoring in ONE apparatus/discipline), or a generalist (specializing in TWO apparatus/disciplines). The program is rigorous and mentally and physically demanding...perfectly demonstrated by their audition process. The audition for ENC is a 4 day long fiasco of assessments in strength, flexibility, acting ability, dance, acrobatic ability, ability and potential in your specified areas of experience, endurance, and lastly, the ability to keep your cool! They also make cuts at the end of the first day, and the second day. If you make it to the third day, you can slightly relax, because you're automatically held for the fourth day as well. Making it through the audition doesn't however assure your acceptance at all, so in the end, it is a big frustrating ball of emotions.

I didn't get past day 1 last year, which was mostly the strength and acrobatic assessments; two areas I severely lacked in. This year, I have been extremely better trained for the audition to come. I am in a much better place physically, and technically with all the circus I do, and even in the circus styles I don't know how to do or do well, I demonstrate body awareness and control. I am going to be giving it everything I have, and hope for the best. If I make it past the day 1 cut, I will be happy because that is a huge difference between last year and this year, but if I do get cut day 1, I will still be happy, because I know how much I've changed for the better, and I know I'm not done on my path, but I can only hope they see what I can do, and they get to know the T performer who I must say, is gonna bring FIERCE to the audition this year :)

This week, I am polishing my trapeze act (you perform an act the FINAL day of the audition if you make it that far, so alas, everyone has to rehearse an act even if they don't get to actually perform it. I have been getting amazing feedback from my coaches who know what I can do, and really push me to be my best. I owe them so much for the faith they have in me, and the fire they ignite within me.

So, this coming Saturday, I will be travelling up to Montreal (with a brief stop in Burlington to see "ID" by Cirque Eloize with my friend Rachel Schiffer, who's also my driving buddy to Montreal). I will be staying with a Smirkus coach/friend of mine whom I haven't seen in a long time, Amanda Dunbar. After I settle in, starting Monday...it's ON!

Just keep swimming...

Not anything crazy interesting to report...
right now it's in a weird area, cause we don't have a performance coming up,
but Ecole Nationale de Cirque auditions as well as the Ecole de Cirque Quebec auditions are at the end of February.
Some of us are preparing for that, so that's a slow simmering anticipation, rather than an immediate boiling one.
I'm working on a new trapeze act which will in its entirety be my new happy performable trapeze act, and in its 3 minute or less version, be my audition act for ENC and Quebec. Jamie has been really great working with me on it, we have been picking little transitions and figuring out more interesting ways of doing things.

Yesterday we had our mid-program physical assessment. At the very beginning of the program, we were assessed in many many physical strength and flexibility measures: i.e. how many pullups, straddle ups, how long can you hold an L-sit...as well as how low to the ground is your split, how low is your straddle, how bendy is your back...
So, yesterday was the exact same assessment, to see how far we've come in various areas and what we might still need to work on. I improved almost all of the strengthy ones, except for the Wall sit, which I utterly failed on.. grrrr. I still was the LONGEST HOLLOW BODY holder in the class, which made me happy. It was near 3 minutes. My splits have dropped, my Left leg one is near the ground, my right leg one is better, but not near the ground. My straddle is almost entirely on the ground.

Last night, AFTER the physical assessment and my trapeze private, we had Lyra/Sling class, where Caroline started me on her 12 step program to learning some cool release moves. Sadly the first step, was a few different kinds of pullups, so after my body was abused and dead from the day, I had to do PULLUPS for pretty much the entire class. HAAHAAHAA *sob sobsob*...

Anyway, I woke up this morning, my abs feel like hell, and I'm ready to read me some Harry Potter :)

All's Quiet on the Circus Front

So, it's been an interesting past little bit of time since we've returned from the holiday break. On the first day back in class, I had a private in Trapeze with Jamie and we were focusing on release moves (power moves where you let go of the bar to perform an acrobatic movement and re-catch the bar with either your hands, ankles, or other ways of grabbing the bar).
This was going well until all of a sudden, my hands ripped off of themselves.
To sum it up, all that time working on fabric for the Flying Nut show, meant that my trapeze calluses lost some of their vigor. So the first day back, deciding to do hardcore release-y trapeze....maybe not the best choice.

Conveniently however, I was out of town for the rest of the week, so I had a slight chance to rest my hands. Now, they are almost completely healed, and yesterday I had a trapeze private with Jamie and we worked on my upcoming new trapeze act, and it was fine. I taped my hands so that the healing rips wouldn't un-heal any, and we worked on combining tricks I can do, tricks I can learn to do, and really started forward motion on my "Apologize" trapeze act. Also...a picture of something I thought looked really ugly on me, but apparently it doesn't. There goes my sense of accurate self perception. Picture below: