Majors and Minors

Back in December we had to choose our majors and minors, the apparatuses/disciplines that we would focus on and use to create acts for the end of the year show. These two acts, hopefully, will be ones that we can use to market ourselves and sell our skills. Yes, it's true, one of my ultimate goals is actually to make some money as a professional circus performer!

I came to NECCA with skills primarily in individual and partner acro and hand balancing. If your interested in what I was doing before school check out the act I created and performed with my buddy Micah in Jan of 2009. One of my goals for the year has been to build some skills as an aerialist. I spent a fair amount of time on the trapeze the first half of the school year and decided that it was definitely my preferred aerial apparatus. I like that it is swing-like. I like being able to sit, stand and hang on it. I like being upside down and right side up on it. And I like that you can do tricks in the ropes or with the bar. For a while there I thought I might like to do single point, or dance trapeze, but ultimately decided I should build a solid base of knowledge and comfort on the static trapeze before incorporating the dynamic swinging and spinning involved in single point.

So I decided to major in trapeze and considered a number of different possibilities for my minor. I thought about German wheel, wire, and duo lyra (with Morgan). Ultimately I decided to minor in hand balancing and floor acro. I knew I wanted some kind of platform or apparatus to do my hand balancing on, but didn't have any particularly compelling ideas. Early on in January I went to talk to Elsie who suggested I check out the pipe that they use in the children's classes to teach kids basic balancing skills. I went down to studio two, took one look at the pipe, and immediately fell in love with it. I could hand balance on the blocks and the pipe itself, and do tricks on the pipe, kind of like a balance beam.

So I spent the month of January suffering delighted and inspired by my pipe apparatus, and alternately crying and shaking through my trapeze classes. Ultimately, I've decided to switch my major and minor. I'm not giving up on trapeze, I still want to come away from NECCA with a comfort and working knowledge of an aerial apparatus, and an act that I can sell. But I've decided to major in pipe, where I already have significant skills, and the learning curve is not so steep.

This weekend I started working with my buddy Vern on designing a pipe apparatus similar to the one at school, but four feet off the ground instead of two. My coaches and I are thinking that this change will increase the possibilities for what I can do on the pipe, and raise the wow factor for the audience a bit if I'm a little further off the ground. It also raises the yikes factor for me, but I think it will be a good challenge.