Flying Fantastic: An evening of Aerial Silks.

Every now and again my blog does something a little bit magical. A few of weeks ago, it was retweeted by Amanda Palmer. Previously to that, I had been contacted by a total stranger telling me that it had inspired her to start her own Fifty@50 challenge. And, somewhere in between these two events, just after I posted my piece on trapezing, a company called Flying Fantastic dropped me a line and offered me the chance to try out an aerial silks class. This is one of the reasons I love not having a pre-defined list to adhere to. Sure, it's scary not to have a plan. Sure, there's a good chance I'll reach May 9th 2013 and realise that I have two days to complete ten challenges. But I love the fact that things can just pop unexpectedly into my life and steer me off course. 

The first time I saw aerial silks was on a BBC ident. Since then I've seen them on TV and on stage several times, most memorably and creatively in a Hindi version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was incidentally one of the most moving pieces of theatre I have ever seen in my life.

The first part of my aerial silks adventure involved hauling my backside to Battersea. Once upon a time I was a Battersea regular, and I thought nothing of a ninety minute journey from North London to deepest, darkest South West. The things we do when we're young and in love... But it's been a long time since I ventured into such alien territory without the protection of my car, and Justin gallantly agreed to come with me to snap some photos. We meet at Queenstown Road station after work and snaked our way through a series of council estates until we found the Wilditch Community Centre. There aren't that many places in London where you can learn aerial silks, because you need a seriously high, seriously strong ceiling. The Wilditch Centre ticks both boxes and the hall was decked out with eight sets of silks hanging down to the ground, each set with a large crash mat beneath it. I was nervous but excited, and ready to get climbing, yes yes yes.

No no no. Before anyone goes anywhere near a silk, there is a warm up to contend with. Sometimes, running in Hampstead Heath, Julia and I see the crazy people doing the crazy military fitness. Well, this warm up was definitely the equal of the military madness. I was seeing spots by the fifth plank, and the instructor kept throwing press ups in between the other exercises, as if they were merely an aside rather than a method of torture in their own right. The less said about my pitiful performance at the warm up the better. If trapezing and silking have taught me anything at all, it is that circus skills require extreme fitness. If I ever decide that the time has come to acquire a washboard stomach and biceps that would embarrass Madonna, I know exactly how to do it.

There were four people in the absolute beginners group, and we were looked after by Claire, one of the head trainers for Flying Fantastic. She quickly explained the theory of climbing the silks. It requires a certain level of strength, but the key is in achieving the correct grip with your feet. If you can hold the silk firmly and effectively between the outer ankle of one food and the ball of the other, you should be able to move yourself up the silk with minimal physical effort. That's the theory, anyway.

The beginners group learns how to wrap the silk and angle the feet.

The theory made a lot of sense. but in practice, when your feet don't know the drill, getting up the silk is a lot harder than the non-beginners made it look. A combination of wobbly technique and sheer determination got me up there, though not without considerable effort. Please note, many of the photos that follow contain very silly faces. These include such gems as: This is difficult; Serious concentration required; Holy crap this is significantly higher than I thought; I might be about to fall over; I am a bit smug because I am up a silk; and Ow this hurts. Feel free to collect all six. 

Crouch

Heave!

Look mum, one hand!

I really have no idea what this face is all about.

After (sort of) mastering the initial climb, we had to test out the strength of our arms. For ten seconds. Cue some more interesting faces.

Putting your tongue aids strength and concentration. Fact.

I think I can, I think I can...

Ow.

Next to learn was a foot lock. This entailed wrapping the silks around the foot in such a way that it anchored itself. If you've seen the professionals, you'll know that they do some incredible drops, unravelling with death-defying speed and then miraculously stopping, sometimes inches from the ground. This is achieved by wrapping the silks in all sorts of intricate ways, far too complicated for someone who never even managed to knot a half decent friendship bracelet in her youth... The foot look was pretty basic though, so I almost managed to do it without pulling a silly face. Almost.

Yep. There's the face.

Then it was time to throw some shapes within the frame created by the two silks. Lots and lots of fun. Plenty of smug happy faces.

Figurehead-tastic! Thanks to fellow beginner Leanne Parker for this pic.

Another pic from Leanne Parker. Yeah, this was pretty entertaining.

The class lasted an hour and a half, and (apart from the plank and the press ups, upon which we don't need to dwell) the time absolutely flew. I want to take this opportunity to thank the team at Flying Fantastic, and especially Claire. We ended with a quick and very necessary stretch, safe in the knowledge that the next day would undoubtedly dawn complete with significant muscle pain. In order to mitigate this, I decided to have a very hot bath before bed. Which is when I noticed my foot. Look away now if you're not keen on feet.*

No pain, no gain.

*As a completely random aside, I once knew a girl who had a serious foot phobia. Now, I'm mildly OCD and have some damn odd habits, so I don't judge, but she had to slap her cheek several times, hard and fast, whenever she saw a foot. Or a picture of a foot. Or a foot on screen. She slapped her cheek for a good fifteen seconds in the cinema once. There's nowt so queer as folk. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

So, that was my aerial silks experience. Looking over the photographs now has reminded me of how much fun it was. Why do so many fun things have to hurt? (And while we're on the subject, why hasn't someone designed a calorie-free brownie and ice cream sundae?) I was, unsurprisingly, pretty stiff the next day, and it ached every time I coughed, which I took as an excellent sign that my abs had shown up to the aerial party.

Between the trapeze and the silks, I'm fairly sure that my future lies in escape to the circus. I shall have to toughen up some, and clearly have to work on my face control, but otherwise I'm all set. Roll up roll up.

Thirteen down, seventeen to go...

Hup Hup and Away!

Occasional weekend cycle rides take me to the outer circle of Regent's Park, where along with enjoying a peek at the giraffes, I have often craned my neck at the crazy people learning flying trapeze above a whopping great net. You can probably guess what's coming next...

Heights are not exactly my thing. Sweaty palms, mild dizziness, a dry mouth and a racing heart are par for the course on bridges, aeroplanes, cliffs and roller-coasters, the last of which I avoid at all costs. I regularly have to have stern words with myself to keep this anxiety under control, so putting myself somewhere high seemed like a fair challenge for my 30@Thirty.

Gorilla Circus runs outdoor classes throughout the summer, and for the royal sum of £23.50 pretty much anyone from the ages of eight to 78 can have a go at flinging themselves off a very narrow platform some 40 feet off the ground.

Not sure I wanted to go alone, and having been informed in no uncertain terms that my beloved was not interested, I called on my trusty friend Julia. Seeing as how she conned* me into doing a triathlon, and has now somehow hoodwinked me into signing up for a FREAKING HALF MARATHON (what is wrong with me, will I never learn?) I figured she wouldn't have the nerve to turn me down. It was, however, something of a Phyrric victory, as she predictably took advantage of the fact that we were meeting to squeeze in a training session for the run beforehand. Needless to say that when we arrived at Regent's Park at 11am my face was still the same attractive scarlet colour as my trousers.

*OK, she didn't actually con me, but she did promise me there would be lots of old people on ancient push bikes, which there weren't.

There were ten people in the class - eight girls and two guys - all of us beginners. There were three instructors, the main one of whom, Debs, was wearing something very sparkly and circus-like under a vest top and exercise trousers. Score.

We commenced with one of those consent forms that inspires terror and makes a particular point of asking for an emergency contact number. I love those things. Then, before the warm-up, there was a safety briefing consisting of three essential points:

1) Don't walk under the net.
2) All will be well if you do as you're told.
3) If you walk into one of the ropes, or the metal stakes buried in the ground, you've been warned, and we will laugh.

The warm-up comprised a lot of arm-swinging and shoulder-rolling. I am happy to report that both Julia and I passed that test where you have to swing one arm forward and one arm back. Things were off to a promising start. Next came a quick demo on the low bar, where we were shown the correct grip; Thumbs go under the bar, unlike in gymnastics, where thumbs go above the bar. We were then shown the move of the day, the 'Knee Hang' which does exactly what it says on the tin. It involves bringing your legs up through your arms, hooking your knees over the bar, pointing your toes, and releasing your hands. Simples. Of course, if you're not a super-fit athlete with abs of steel (which I am not, by the way, just in case you had the wrong impression) it ain't so easy to do this from standing. So we were given an elegant heft by Debs, and assured that once swinging it would be a lot easier.

Next came the safety belts, and a quick explanation of what happens up on that platform. Up until this point, I had managed to pretend that the whole platform bit wasn't going to happen, but evidently it was. Julia had somehow managed to volunteer to go first (over-achiever that she is) and therefore provided us all with an elegant demonstration of the position to assume up there. This is it:

So, left hand clinging for dear life to a pole on the platform, right hand reaching out for the bar, which is being held by the person whose other hand is holding on to your belt and stopping you from plunging to a certain and painful death. I mean, dropping gently into the net. I tried not to think about this too much.

A demonstration preceded our first attempts, and was useful not just as regards seeing the moves in action, but also in order to see how instructions are called from the ground. One of those achingly cool young dudes* who looked like he was probably born attached to a surfboard was in charge of keeping the trapeze moving should you not be a natural swinger, and also slowing your descent.

*The fact that I just wrote the words "young dudes" makes me hang my head in shame. When did I get so old??

He called the instructions too, and they go something like this:

Ready (this means, bend your knees).
Hup! (this means, jump gently from the platform, keeping your arms straight).
Legs over, hook the knees.
Hands off, nice big reach.
Hands back up.
Legs off.
And swing forward, swing back, tuck and release. (This means, do a backflip off the trapeze. I kid you not).

This what these instructions mean when you don't follow rule number two, above (all will be well if you do as you're told).


Ready (this means, stand immobile for several seconds, until the person holding on to your belt reminds you to bend your knees).
Hup! (this means, bend your knees a few more times, as if you're going to jump, but don't. Finally, find your bottle, jump).
Legs over, hook the knees (this means, try several times to get your knees over the bar. Maybe fail).
Hands off, nice big reach (this means, if you managed the above, take your hands off. Take your bloody hands off you chicken!)
Hands back up (self explanatory, and a very happy moment. Pretty much everyone managed this bit).
Legs off (reverse the legs up bit, probably with about as much elegance).
And swing forward, swing back, tuck and release (this means all sorts of weird and wonderful things, including tucking your knees up but forgetting to let go of the bar, letting go too soon and landing on your face, or swinging bank and forth several times and then just hanging there like a lemon).

Lemon + Trapeze = bit of a tangle

Anyway, perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself here. What happened after the demo was this. Julia climbed the ladder, and my palms started sweating.

Julia climbs

Julia then followed the instructions like an absolute pro, jumping from the platform almost without hesitation and hooking her knees over with serious style, first attempt, her ponytail streaming behind her in the wind. All she needed was the sparkly leotard... Why-oh-why did I have to bring the high-achiever along? When it came to the backflip dismount however, she proved herself human after all, managing an interesting if not entirely orthodox move I like to call the 'what exactly am I supposed to be doing now? Or right, here's the net.'

Then someone else went, and as they started, I had to climb the ladder for the first time. 

Is that a spot of rain, or my aura of terror?

This is where it all went a bit hazy, as my initial gung-ho attitude started to suffer from a serious case of vertigo. The ladder seemed to go on forever, and when I finally got to the top, things were significantly worse. Standing on a platform about two feet wide, I had to have one of those stern talks with myself. What was going to happen to me, for goodness sakes? At the very worst I was going to look a bit stupid before I fell into the very bouncy net. And yet, and yet... 

Clinging on for dear life.

You have to put your toes right to the edge and then push your hips forward over the abyss. You have to have absolute trust that the instructor has you by the belt, and that you're not going anywhere until you choose to obey that Hup! and launch yourself into the unknown. You have to control your breathing, and tell yourself to be brave. You have to - and this is really difficult - LET GO of the pole and put both hands on the trapeze.

That's the worst moment, hanging there, fighting every instinct that tells you to lean the hell back and climb down the ladder. Waiting for an instruction that you're just not sure you can obey.

And then, with a dash of courage, you're FLYING. You're actually flying through the air, almost as if you knew what you were doing. The rush, for me, was instantaneous, even though I was concentrating with all my might on following the instructions. Even though it took me two attempts, I got my knees hooked, I took my hands off, I reached, I put my hands back, I unhooked, and, miracle of miracles, I swung forward, swung back, tucked and released. Yes, backflip-tastic. What a feeling!

Alas, the fact that it took me two attempts to get my knees hooked meant that I wasn't allowed to try for the move where you are caught by someone else on a second trapeze. Guess who was? Please note the devastating lack of a star next to my name:

Julia performed the catch with her usual aplomb, to great cheers from the assembled crowd (me), a superstar to the last. I was disappointed in myself, but on my final attempt managed to get my knees over first time, thus ending on a high, and with that niggling feeling that I might just have to go back and have another go. And, frankly, my backflips only went from strength to strength.

Awesome instructors. Note sparkly circus attire.

I highly recommend fighting the fear and having a go at flying trapeze. I may have been afraid, but I always knew that I was in safe hands, and that the instructors weren't going to ask me to do anything genuinely dangerous. And, as always, obeying the Hup! - which comes in many forms over the course of one's life, it seems - reminds me that I'm alive. Just remember:

Seven down, twenty-three to go...