I am an aerialist (?)

 This month marks for me a full year without regular access to a studio to train trapeze.

 For people who are close to me, in February of 2020 it would've been hard to imagine a Bella that wasn't an aerialist, and for good reason. I started training various aerial apparatuses in 2015, the month the local aerial studio opened (much love to my DG family), so I was 14 years old when I started regularly training. I was 12 when I started taking dance trapeze classes occasionally in California at my grandparents' church, I took tumbling and acrobatics classes from early elementary school, and started pre-ballet when I was 5 years old. 

butt hang, age 14, three months into training, with a Heather observing!

I literally do not remember a time when I wasn't an acrobat/dancer of some kind, and when I started trapeze I was a young teenager-- it was crucial in developing my concept of self. By about a year of training regularly, I would imagine my grownup self introducing my profession (vocation?) as "oh, I'm a (insert money job) and an aerialist;" when I talked about what I did outside of school it was always, "I train aerials and I do theatre;" I picked my college based on how close it was to a circus studio (much love to my SHOW people), and most people I've met since college know that I was incapable of shutting up about it last year. I saw contemporary circus productions like The 7 Fingers' Reversible and CIRCA's Humans and told myself I would one day be on a stage like that. I read books like The Ordinary Acrobat and spent my free time watching circus excerpts on YouTube and Instagram. I researched circus conservatories and tried to figure out what I wanted my work to be like. I trained up to 15+ hours a week at times, I took private lessons and group classes and open gyms and workshops. I taught at DG for a while too. I looked up to my teachers/coaches (what do we call them even) and their commitment, excellence, creativity and silliness.* 

Camille teaches as I do strange things

a fond memory of Julie teaching me how to do beats for the 500th time

 

 I gained some amazing friendships with people I absolutely adore and admire.** Both my junior and senior prom were on the same night as showcase, so I went to both, both times. I poured my heart and time into circus communities.

these were taken the same night

check the eye makeup

It's cliché, but I have often found myself living and breathing circus-- especially in times that have been rocky for my health, or when I've been dissatisfied with my circumstances, there was always the studio. 

me and my friend Yahli at queer prom in 2018

Shirley, me, Robyn, and Michelle after showcase 2018

And I fit circus really well. Yes, physically-- I'm really flexible and I gain strength relatively easily, not to mention that I have the stereotypical "dancer body" that is still prized in many circus circles. Even more than that (after all, my physical advantages set me up as well or better for ballet, cross country, ice skating, cycling...), circus fits my personality and my values. Things I like about circus:

- The emphasis on the ensemble. No one person's part is usually more important than anybody else's in most shows I've seen, but it isn't like a corps de ballet or Broadway chorus because of,

- The individual nature of it. There's not that much standardized vocabulary (at least not in the places I've learned) because it's not a High Art form, so you learn the things you need to know however you learn them, with technique motivated by how it is or isn't functional and beautiful. Camille (my longest private coach-- I was 17 when I met her!) and I always joke that I'm always doing the things wrong but making new ones in the process. This nature of it all allows for, 

tangled up in ropes in October 2020

- Infinite creative possibilities. You make your own acts with varying degrees of support, but as far as I can tell and for all of my own experience, there's much less top-down direction that goes on in the creation of circus work.

- (I gave up on the lead-ins, ok?) The small yet big circus world. I'm probably very few degrees of separation from most people who are serious about circus. I just think that's really neat.

Yeah. I fit circus really well. It's the perfect thing for movers and misfits. I've had moments of beautiful community, contemplative solitude, creative inspiration, physical exhaustion, cathartic expression, and just everyday routine in studios, at shows. And I've already established that I have/had thought of myself as a student, a trapezist-in-training, and then all my other interests like music, writing, crafts, art, etc-- for years when Covid hit. Suddenly, my main source of community outside of school was all but gone, and the art form I tied much of my identity to was inaccessible to me and most people I know. Many of my friends have been able to return to training in various amounts, and I was even able to train a bit in the fall of 2020, but the thing I did of going to the studio to train 1-4x a week wasn't anymore.

oh to be back in the DG warehouse!

For the past year, I've been missing it so so much. I've done things to try and fix it-- in fall 2020, for example, I traveled back and forth between Chicago and Champaign a few times a month to take private lessons and create choreography for an audition for circus school in Australia (they decided not to take internationals). I spent a lot of time in the summer working on handstands, acro, and flexibility, and even took a few drop-in adult gymnastics classes. I kept in touch with people on Instagram, but eventually I just lost any desire to engage with circus without my communities. I was hopeful to be able to train at SHOW this spring, but that has not turned out to be particularly feasible for me in the end. 

hey look, I almost had a needle, neat

I've tried to fill that hole with online dance classes (didn't like it), arts and crafts (this kinda worked, I made a lot of cool stuff this year), writing (actually, I've been liking this one, but it's such a solitary and non-physical activity, it doesn't quite hit the same spot), but none of those pursuits have become a part of my identity. I write all the time, I'm always working on a knitting or sewing project, I make books, and every once in a while I do a ballet barre or two. I don't think of myself as A Writer, A Crafter, A Dancer.

There's also the issue of losing progress. That can all come back, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous to return to regular training. How long will the ~5 years of technique and vocabulary take for me to build back up? Will I even like it anymore? When I graduate college, will I still be able to pursue a professional circus path? Will I even want to? Am I still an aerialist, 12 months detached from a regular practice? Was I ever one? What do you do when you can't do what you do for a whole year? 

I'm going to be spending this summer in Chicago, training more or less full time at Aloft (I think, you can't be sure of these things). With more and more people getting vaccinated, we are moving towards normal (not the same normal, but a normal). I am confident that I will still love it, I hope I'll still be good at it, no matter what it should be a great experience, just letting circus be the thing I do for a couple months. I think it will be good for me.

Even a whole year separated, I think (I think?) of myself as a trapezist-in-training, as a baby circus artist, an aspiring aerialist. I wonder if I should separate my identity from my activities, maybe you aren't what you fill your time with. Maybe you continue to be what you care about, even when forces outside of yourself cause you to take an extended leave of absence. I miss it, so much.

*shoutout to Camille, Catherine, Chloe, Julie, Henry, Naomi, and others I'm sure I've missed...

**shoutout to everyone at Smith Circus, DG & Aloft & SHOW!!

hello again blog, and happy birthday to me

 hello blog. 

This semester really took it out of me. I came dangerously close to failing more than one of my classes, I felt lonely and bored and etc etc etc. I stopped posting on here because, like many people right now, I didn't have enough room in my wee little head to store yet another hobby. I'm also back working in a restaurant but only two shifts a week so it's not much time occupied (for C-U friends, it's Siam Terrace on Saturdays and Sundays if you want to come pick up some pad thai and say hi). Speaking of hobbies, I've gotten back into collecting dolls and stuffed animals, and currently am trying to pare down my collection a bit before I go back to college. Solomia got me a stuffed anteater for my birthday (which was yesterday-- happy 20th to me!!!) that is also a puppet and I am so in love with him (and so in love with all my friends!). Yesterday, aka my 20th birthday, me and Xanthe and Solomia went for like a 3 mile walk between 4pm and 7:30pm in fancy outfits and took a ton of pictures, most on disposable cameras that I need to get developed still. And if you're reading this and wished me a happy birthday, thank you!! I'm so happy to be getting older and learning every single day. Plus my mother made the best cake I've ever had and my dad made chorizo tacos and I felt just so happy. We watched Arrested Development as well, I think my family is currently on our like 8th or 9th rewatch since I was a little kid, and I love noticing new things about it every single time. Anyways there's a quick life update for you. It's 2:00pm and I'm currently still in bed (snuggling the cats, both of them are in here as per ush) so I'm going to get up and eat some ramen and cake and have a good lazy day. I hope to post on here a little more often, just for the consistency, maybe I'll ramp it up to quite often, hopefully for a long while. Wouldn't it be cool to have a semi-public account of my life to look back on? Anyways write to you soon!

- Bella

coffee

Coffee is probably my favorite drink outside of water. Fresh lemonade with only a little bit of sugar, sweet & creamy black tea, and sparkling mineral water* are very close runners up, but coffee wins if only on the ritual of it all. I found all coffee and coffee flavored things absolutely disgusting (in fact, I warmed up to dark chocolate and red wine, the other notorious acquired tastes, significantly before coffee) up until the summer of 2017, while working at my first job as a host at a local restaurant. Shifts there were long-- little 16 year old me would often be at work until 1:30 or 2:00am on weekends. My go to work drink was, and continues to be, a glass of Pepsi-- I've only ever worked in Pepsi product restaurants-- for the caffeine and also the calories. Sometimes, though, it just wasn't enough to keep me going on the days when I worked late, then worked lunch the next day. So I started drinking coffee, even though I thought it was gross.

 This is odd, because caffeine doesn't really wake me up so much as it just makes me feel less like there are countless bells ringing in my head at once while going over the plot of the last movie I watched, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing, and forgetting to eat all day. So I can drink a cup of coffee and go right to sleep if I want to. It's more that I've realized that without some caffeine I simply do not focus on anything for more than a couple minutes at a time, even if it's something I really want to do-- unless I can kick my brain into intense focus, and that's just not very predictable. So while I don't function nearly as well without coffee (and I know, because I've quit drinking caffeine several times in the past few years just to make sure that it wasn't making my anxiety worse; the results being every time that in fact it was helping my anxiety) I don't need it to wake up or compensate for lack of sleep. That, I'm more likely to get from exercise or sugar. 

Here are other things I love with coffee:

- The coffee my mom makes every morning and I drink reheated as soon as I get out of bed. 

- The iced coffee that your coworker brings over to the restaurant for you at 10:30 am as your shifts begin. I'm grateful that whoever brought the coffee was kind enough to think of all of us. I don't like iced coffee very much, but I also don't like the coffee from this cafe very much, so I'm grateful that, being iced, it is quickly consumed. I feel very bubbly now. At work I am either happy bubbly silly fun to be around or Literally Weeping and there is very little in between. Mostly I'm a pretty fun person to be around, I think and hope.

- The espresso I make myself at 2pm before Ancient Cities and Sanctuaries

- The coffee I made in my little Moka pot most days at school in my junior and senior years. I took classes at the university that only met every other afternoon so I would have a few hours free in the middle of the day (don't tell Ms. Rodems or Mr. Leff how often I skipped their study halls. Honestly, they already know. Hi, if you're reading this. Both of you are the coolest and I feel bad for the thing I already mentioned and also Constantly being late to your first period classes, often carrying a coffee in with me). I would have a few hours free in the middle of the day to do my readings, which at the time I could absolutely devour like I can devour sour patch kids, I would read my art history readings very closely with my highlighter and pens in hand, I would ask for extra ones. I made coffee in my Moka pot and sat down at 1:00 to read. 

- The coffee in little decorative cups served for brunch when my friends are with me at my house.

- I love a well-brewed cup of pour over coffee, Chemex (at home) or Melita (in my dorm room, made on the top of my lovely bookshelf underneath the posters of butterflies and herbs that every single Smith college student has on their  walls. My room always smells like orange peels, mop fluid, pine needles, and coffee grounds, sometimes like acrylic paint. I don't know how I never got in trouble for getting acrylic paint on my floor, except maybe that housing services is used to Smith students getting paint all over their rooms and just don't bother anymore. So my room always smells like coffee grounds, and it's also always very cold because Massachusetts is Cold and I have a corner room (which is nice, to be clear, the two windows and the sunlight I get at any time of day). I also drink a lot of green and black tea, though sometimes the tannins make me feel kind of sick. As I write this I just drank an actual bowl of black tea so we will see how that works out. I like the small amount of caffeine sometimes because I like to be less focused sometimes too. I like to have a friend or three in my little room, drinking very hot tea with lots of honey, and eating little dark chocolate peanut butter cups. That's how I end up with acrylic on my floor. I love the feeling of a hot mug in my cold hands as I sit in the dining hall eating something that probably doesn't taste very good, then getting more coffee and more water, sitting in a 9:20 am class feeling thoughtful and ready. This is a very different feeling than waking up, washing face (maybe) and trying to seem alive for an 8:20 zoom class en français.

lovely room in the morning

my dear darlings in my room, with coffee grinder visible in the background

 

 

- The coffees I drank in between trapeze privates and group classes at the Wormhole in Wicker Park for the whole summer of 2019 and January of 2020, when I had to be Somewhere.

- The coffee at Caffe Paradiso truly is not very good. I love it anyway. When I went every day and sat for hours in a booth, by myself sometimes but much much more often with my pals, the baristas all knew that I probably wanted an espresso and some sparkling water. The one I had a crush on and the ones I saw at shows, the one who likes to talk to my dad about film. Sitting at a booth for hours, we do get our work done, but we also read books like they're water. We also talk endlessly. We also read each other's writing. We cry. We stay until they close, late and hot in May already. I turn 19 in a booth across from Solomia, smiling into her camera drinking a London Fog. We run around the block and leave our stuff at the table. We are full of kid energy and thoughts we feel are very grown up.

 *It is debatable whether this counts as a separate category from normal water. Also considered include: diet Dr. Pepper, good red wine, and the specific Sun Drop left over from a summer party in 2018 that I drank for breakfast on the way to my internship.

 Listening to: 

- Rachele Gilmore's performance of Olympia at the Met 

- The Last Five Years 

- Six the Musical 

- Sweater Weather, The Neighborhood 

- Golden, Becca Mancari 

- The Mother We Share, CVRCHES 

- Presumably Dead Arm, Sidney Gish

- The Hush Sound 

til soon, x

the only cinematic masterpiece i may ever create

 is a video of Andrea playing with a bitty baby american girl doll on Thanksgiving in 2016. The baby who we had gotten the doll out for was long in bed, and everyone else sat around the coffee table, playing games, eating cheese, drinking wine, generally being festive. Andrea picked up the bitty baby (the first purchase I remember making, when I was about 10 years old with birthday money, I think? I got the one with tan skin and brown hair like mine and though I was maybe a little bit past the age of playing with baby dolls, I totally loved it) and began to play with it, leading it through motions reminiscent of yoga or tai chi, making it dance around... I was the only person in the room who seemed to notice what she was doing and how absolutely Wild it was, and I was quiet and small enough to sneakily film her for about three minutes. I then set the video to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence," and created the best short film I believe I ever will. 

I wrote this post in September of this year, and am posting it publicly because my brother got me a mug with a still from this video for my birthday. Best gift ever.

twenty things you can do during zoom class; or the lifechanging magic of turning off your video

 1. The reading you didn't do earlier

2. snack! 

3. search through your box of old dance shoes to see if you still have character shoes or tap shoes, or your old black ballet shoes 

4. research how to purchase an at home tightwire setup

5. research how to teach yourself how to do tightwire

6. research how to make your own tightwire shoes

7. watch videos of people doing tightwire on youtube

8. pay attention

9. unmute yourself to say "pardon, j'ai un question sur la géographie dans le text" or "I want to second the centrality of otherness to the author's argument," or something like that

10. snack 2 electric boogaloo

11. streeeaaaaattttchhhhh

12. harass your cats

13. text your friends from your class jokes you would have passed to them on notes 

14. "while you were learning to read and write, Tristan studied the blade."

15.  pay attention again, because now we're talking about pubic hair 

16. figure out whether you can still take a leave of absence

17. figure out whether you can still add a new class

18. make dinner plans with your friends

19. snack the third: coffee edition

20. say "thank you so much" as you leave the zoom room quickly so as to not be the last person on the stream.