Aerial Amelie

Shows  = 5
ER visits = 3*
Audience members = ~450
Money raised = TBD
Lives changed forever = 40

We did it. We actually pulled it off. Many of us students from Aircraft Circus performed in a real-life circus show for the first time ever this past weekend in London. A full-fledged production with lights, fog machine, winches, trusses, confetti bombs and FIRE.

Our director, Alex Frith, started a performance class in February for us to begin building a show around Chrysalis’ freak show act. We worked on a shoestring budget in order to raise money to insulate our space, which is wicked cold in the winter time. Many of the aerial students were also pivotal in making the show a reality. Elizabeth Schuch, hoop artist extraordinaire, designed an incredible set using salvaged props, old sets and scaffolding. Here’s an early look at her design, and you can read more here.

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Poppy Flint was a genius in creating the costumes.  My favorite were the can-can dancers corsets and skirts.  So much frill and lace.

And from all of this, Madame Pain’s Boudoir Circus was born. The show featured swinging trapeze, silks, hoop, static trapeze, doubles & triples trapeze, dance trapeze, vertical rope, pole dancing, acrobalancing, fire swallowing and so much more.

Here are videos from our two routines – Nadia and I were conjoined twins who were so desperate to be free from Madame Pain’s exploitation that we separated ourselves.

The first routine is my favorite because, as a base, I get to do a lot more than sit and go to catchers, which is what I mainly do in the second routine.  The first routine was really challenging to choreograph and it took us ages to figure out how to get from point A to point B (especially in corsets), but I love what we ended up with.  We spent most of our time working on that routine because the second one was just the rest of our doubles trick repertoire, and while the audience seemed to like it a lot, it was very traditional doubles moves and not particularly creative.

Overall, I’m ecstatic about what we accomplished. We pushed ourselves to the absolute maximum on these routines and only had one major error during our first show (which was 100% my fault) and we recovered brilliantly. The only thing I abhor is that damn red jumpsuit.  It’s diabolical, but there was no time to think of an alternative.

And here are a couple fabulous posed photos before our last show that Ryan took:

I’m still lacking the words to describe this experience with these brave, creative and stoopid-talented individuals. I love and thank you people. And am honored to have been a part of this life-changing experience.

*Thankfully, none of the injuries were serious. Whip lash, a torn pectoral and bruised fingers were the extent of them.

After a 3-day performance workshop with Aircraft Circus at the Hangar Arts Trust, Nadia and I performed our first doubles trapeze piece to Bjork’s Earth Intruders.

We’ve been working on some of these sequences for weeks, but it only finally gelled yesterday afternoon, 2 hours before the informal show. You should have seen our original routine. I don’t know how we thought we’d fit everything into one piece, let alone have the stamina.

We also had a difficult time figuring out our characters, but Chris, one of our workshop instructors, was outstanding in helping us with ideas for movement. And Nadia came up with a brilliant idea the night before about our relationship in the routine. She was also the mastermind behind our best sequences. She’s the perfect partner and I think we complement each other in a lot of ways. She’s strong in the areas I’m not. And vice versa.

So the idea behind our characters is that we are bizarre creatures from outer space, exploring this crazy new world. I’m the dominant one who’s cautious and aware of the surroundings and Nadia is my pet who gets easily distracted but makes beautiful shapes.

We picked out the music and costumes a few weeks ago and I experimented with make up ideas after watching a bazillion tutorials. We ended up looking very Blade Runnerish with a bit (er ALOT) of sparkle. Here’s the routine:

Several family and friends came to watch us and the other 5 performers do their pieces. It was a great variety of static trapeze, silks and a veeeery sexy hoop act.

These workshops (this is my second in a year) are among the best experiences I’ve had because they push me to my limit – there are so many highs and lows. But once it’s done, I can walk away with the most tremendous sense of accomplishment. Along with some nasty bumps and bruises.

Here’s the very first bit of our doubles act. I think it’s looking good – so long as I can nail the up and over. We start our performance workshop next week and will have a routine at the end of the three day course. I can’t wait to show you our costumes!!

The background music is great, but it’s not our routine music. I’m keeping that a surprise.