I'm joining the circus!

[Bounce]

So I started dating this woman (all good stories start out that way, right?), and she is an aerial circus performer, among other things (also a professional dancer, ski instructor, and USFS trail crew leader - I don't know what she's doing with me). I started going to circus practice with her in Seattle last year and I cannot get enough of it! Mostly I am learning silk dancing, in which the performer climbs two strands of silk, wrapping them around the body in such a way that when you let go at the top, you slide/fall/unwrap in a controlled manner called a drop. I am usually the only male at practice, which is kinda weird, but not without its perks (its nice to get oohs and ahs when you pull yourself up to the ceiling without using legs). To make things even more awkward for me, I am also the only person over 25 in the room (just turned 40). But in spite of all that, I've been having a great time. To make up for the lack of a lifetime of dance instruction that all the other performers have, I even started taking ballet lessons. I never thought I would have so much fun in tights! i'll never get to perform, but I am having more fun than you can shake a stick at. Is anybody else here involved with the circus?

 

[Bounce]

 

[Altissimus]

Yes , I have thought of it. Someone opened a Circus Arts training gym in the next town a couple years back , almost went over when I heard they were opening to see if they needed help setting up the rigging. Very cool scene Sean.

 

[Bounce]

Yeah, it sure is. I love all the weird people most of all. Every single person is extraordinary, not just ablemto do amazing things with their bodies but with gregarious and wildly extroverted personalities. Most of them are show boats, but then again so am I. Going out for drinks after a show is like the Fourth of July, everybody's birthday, and resurrection day all rolled into one.

 

[Altissimus]

Back on Dead Tour there were two dudes that juggled in the parking lots ...Send pins back and forth at thirty or fourty feet ... Occasionally they'd do stuff with fire. Hypnotized the crowd.

 

[FireFighterZero]

Geeze, thats really cool.

 

[FireFighterZero]

I thought about trying out for the Bearded Lady job, but I cant grow much of a beard.

 

[Limbrat]

My son and daughter do the same stuff, pretty interesting and builds great strength and coordination. We went to some shows in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee last week that had aerial performers and they told me that they did a lot of similar routines. I'm not so sure about the tights though......

 

[MasterBlaster]

What are the living arrangements like?

 

[Bounce]

I thought about trying out for the Bearded Lady job, but I cant grow much of a beard.

 

[Bounce]

The living arrangements with these people are as strange and as varied as the people themselves. Some live in their vans, some rent a house all together, and some are migratory, never staying in one place longer than a single show. My girlfriend was living in a dank and humid basement along with the circus stage props and puppets (some of them are 3 stories tall!). Would have been drier to sleep outside in seattle.

 

[Bounce]

My favorite is the 9 year old girl. She is probably the best climber I've ever seen. She can do 25 pull-ups without appearing to get tired, is afraid of nothing, and can learn a new knot on the first try every time.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Sounds like a good excuse to get a small RV!

 

[squisher]

Very cool. My kid is bigtime into dancing, multiple disciplines and competes a bunch. She cross trains with silks setup as a yoga swing at home and they have some set up as swings at her dance studio as well.

 

[Burnham]

Wow, Sean. Neat scene to get into.

 

[biggun]

I did quite a lot of stuff with a flying circus when I was over in the US in '97.

I worked on a resort that had a family flying circus as an activity. Most days if we could, we would fly. My friends wife did Silks and Spanish Web. She even got into Cirque du Soleil but unfortunately she became pregnant.

When I was travelling around I made it to Bloomington, IN a couple of times to catch up with them. They were in full on performing mode with quite a few shows. We helped with the rigging of the traps, p-boards and netting. They also had a yard for practicing and perfecting routines with a full time trapeze rig and trampolines with safety lines, amongst other things. I used to love messing on the trampoline and trying to see how many layouts I could do back to back.

I only tried the Spanish web once. I was so pissed up I almost blew chunks with the spinning effect.

Happy memories.

 

[Mick!]

Looks like a good way to meet fit, broad minded, interesting, supple women.

Sorry if that seems shallow, but it's what I was thinking.

 

[Raj]

I can't get 5 minutes in my sit saddle squeezing a fart out of me. Can't imagine the blasts I would do with those wraps around my body.

Sounds like a great time!

 

[woodworkingboy]

I recently red an article about the lives of the Ringling Brother's performers, many wondering what they are going to do now. They talked about their lives in the circus, the things you mentioned, Sean, like living conditions. Maybe it was only in more modern times, but that circus seemed like a very interesting place to grow up, the needs of family members being attended to amidst all the travel and whatnot. Things seemed pretty well covered.

 

[gf beranek]

Small circus ambitions will always live on. Theater and the arts. It's a basal trait of man kind. A good one.

 

[Bodean]

The Circus is Magic...

Thanks for Sharing Sean!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

 

[Buddy]

Impressive, just thinking about it makes my tendons stretch and my bones start to crack.

 

[Bounce]

it truly is magic. This particular circus doesn't do much traveling. Most of their shows are in Seattle. But what is really cool about them is that they don't just perform. They enact mythology from dead cultures. Each performance is more like a play, telling a story about people and places that don't exist anymore, bringing them back to life, keeping the old legends from being lost. Everybody has to be an actor or actress, and not just a performer.

 

[Bounce]

I did quite a lot of stuff with a flying circus when I was over in the US in '97.

I worked on a resort that had a family flying circus as an activity. Most days if we could, we would fly. My friends wife did Silks and Spanish Web. She even got into Cirque du Soleil but unfortunately she became pregnant.

When I was travelling around I made it to Bloomington, IN a couple of times to catch up with them. They were in full on performing mode with quite a few shows. We helped with the rigging of the traps, p-boards and netting. They also had a yard for practicing and perfecting routines with a full time trapeze rig and trampolines with safety lines, amongst other things. I used to love messing on the trampoline and trying to see how many layouts I could do back to back.

I only tried the Spanish web once. I was so pissed up I almost blew chunks with the spinning effect.

Happy memories.

Wow, that's awesome Rich! I would absolutely love to hear some more stories about that.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Heck yea!