Fake
We walk into the gym and scan for mat space, Kim’s aerial hoop over her shoulder, my aerial silk in my arms.
Aerialists hang from the peg wall, doing pike-ups and hoping the Cirque coaches will notice them. Big-bodied catchers wear tank tops and striped toe-socks. Short, muscled flyers with linebacker shoulders and gnarled ankles look at us, Visitors. We look up. A solo trapeze girl twists like a salmon in her lines, barely making it to the bar. She lets go on the forward swing, her coach slowly releasing the lines and flying her to the mats.
She unclips. Her coach says, “C’etait de la merde.”
The aerialist nods and shrugs one shoulder forward, the direction she should have rotated faster. The coach repeats, “Merde.”
The aerialist walks stiffly to the water fountain and back, re-clips her belt to the lines, a little cowboy ready to ride again. Nobody here wants to hear they did real good. You know you’re shit when your coach stops saying so. When they say “Fine,” the next step is ignoring you until you quit.
Kim and I occupy a corner of the tumbling floor. There are Mystic Pixies in the next quadrant, working on splits. Their front feet are lined up and elevated on a four-foot pile of mats. Their coach pushes their hips to the floor. She started with eleven pre-teen girls and cut the ones who cried. Now there are four Mystic Pixies. Now they are twelve, thirteen, thirteen and ten. They do not cry or eat in public. They square their hips and press their crotches to the floor, their oversplits still not good enough. In the third corner, slightly older contortionists eye the Pixies sidelong, praying one will grow breasts and need to be replaced.
Kim stretches her splits, front foot on a bench. My crotch hovers 6 inches from the floor, even with my back knee bent. I do some lunges instead.
Real aerialists have splits. Real aerialists stretch their splits every day, not just on a training residency, the trip to the San Francisco Circus Center too expensive to waste on sending emails all day or doing phone bookings. So I stretch. I pretend I am a real aerialist.
Kim does backbends. I realize I should do backbends. I hate my sloppy, labored pelvic lifts, elbows bent, knees pointing out. It’s even worse next to Kim, who bends her elbows on purpose and sets her upper chest on the floor, looking out from between her feet. A Mystic Pixie moves into our line of sight, bends backward from standing and clasps her own ankles. The Pixie puts her hands on the floor, shifts her weight through a backbend, lifts her hips into a backbend handstand, feet off the floor and pointing at the wall. She does a reverse push-up, lowering her chest to the mat and her butt to her head, where it squashes her ponytail. The way she doesn’t look at us tells me she’s peeing in her corners-So what if I’m ten, I own this mat and my coach’s full attention.
I wonder if Kim feels as fake as I do. We cross the mat to a rigging point, put up Kim’s hoop. She starts working back elbow circles, not even warming them up, six in a row and I realize she’s peeing right back. Fuck you, skinny bendy kid.
I do not have even one back elbow circle. I do not have a triple (for non-aerialists, “The one where you wrap up in the drapes and roll down really fast”). I don’t even have Star Fall (one forward and one lateral rotation, belly-up landing, or “That thing where you whip around and fall down”).
I am a four-trick aerialist. I am here for trick number five.
Sarah shows up. Between lessons, we’re spending an hour skill-sharing. Or rather, Kim and Sarah will share skills, and I will take good notes and sequential photos and hope there is one trick easy enough for me to learn.
Sarah has doubles and triples and sparkle legs and flair. She’s trying to build a transition between two complicated wraps, and with Sarah’s arm strength, Kim’s flexibility and my eyes, the three of us make a new move. I dutifully document it.
Sarah asks, “Where’re you guys from?”
Kim says, “I’m from Chicago and she’s from Michigan, but we flew in from a gig in Singapore.”
Sarah asks, “Where do you guys go next?”
I say, “We have a corporate in DC and then a festival in Ohio. What about you?”
“Oh I live here. But I wanna start performing.”
“I thought there was a lot of work here,” says Kim.
“Yeah, but my coach doesn’t think I’m ready.”
Kim and I exchange a look. Sarah’s coach is an ex-communist Ukranian. We have trained with that coach, with Chinese coaches and Soviets and Mongolians, always as guests training a specific skill. Sarah will never be “ready,” because her coach has seen better and will not settle for less. Circus school can become a training vortex, high level skills executed mechanically, never smiling, never being good enough.
Sarah gives me a drop and now I am a five-trick aerialist. A fake. An entertainer. But I performed last week and I’ll perform next week, the easy part in a trio routine. We could replace me with a real aerialist, but no-one books work like I do. No-one else wants to send emails, hear a hundred no’s to get to yes, smile at clients with petty demands and big checks.
Real aerialists do splits and backbends and triples and complicated wraps. I am a fake, but fake is cashing checks. Fake is performing full-time instead of waiting for permission.
_______________________________________________________________
whipchick met (well, worked on the same mat as) the Mystic Pixies in 2008, about when this video was filmed. The move described is at 1:06.
.
Aerialists hang from the peg wall, doing pike-ups and hoping the Cirque coaches will notice them. Big-bodied catchers wear tank tops and striped toe-socks. Short, muscled flyers with linebacker shoulders and gnarled ankles look at us, Visitors. We look up. A solo trapeze girl twists like a salmon in her lines, barely making it to the bar. She lets go on the forward swing, her coach slowly releasing the lines and flying her to the mats.
She unclips. Her coach says, “C’etait de la merde.”
The aerialist nods and shrugs one shoulder forward, the direction she should have rotated faster. The coach repeats, “Merde.”
The aerialist walks stiffly to the water fountain and back, re-clips her belt to the lines, a little cowboy ready to ride again. Nobody here wants to hear they did real good. You know you’re shit when your coach stops saying so. When they say “Fine,” the next step is ignoring you until you quit.
Kim and I occupy a corner of the tumbling floor. There are Mystic Pixies in the next quadrant, working on splits. Their front feet are lined up and elevated on a four-foot pile of mats. Their coach pushes their hips to the floor. She started with eleven pre-teen girls and cut the ones who cried. Now there are four Mystic Pixies. Now they are twelve, thirteen, thirteen and ten. They do not cry or eat in public. They square their hips and press their crotches to the floor, their oversplits still not good enough. In the third corner, slightly older contortionists eye the Pixies sidelong, praying one will grow breasts and need to be replaced.
Kim stretches her splits, front foot on a bench. My crotch hovers 6 inches from the floor, even with my back knee bent. I do some lunges instead.
Real aerialists have splits. Real aerialists stretch their splits every day, not just on a training residency, the trip to the San Francisco Circus Center too expensive to waste on sending emails all day or doing phone bookings. So I stretch. I pretend I am a real aerialist.
Kim does backbends. I realize I should do backbends. I hate my sloppy, labored pelvic lifts, elbows bent, knees pointing out. It’s even worse next to Kim, who bends her elbows on purpose and sets her upper chest on the floor, looking out from between her feet. A Mystic Pixie moves into our line of sight, bends backward from standing and clasps her own ankles. The Pixie puts her hands on the floor, shifts her weight through a backbend, lifts her hips into a backbend handstand, feet off the floor and pointing at the wall. She does a reverse push-up, lowering her chest to the mat and her butt to her head, where it squashes her ponytail. The way she doesn’t look at us tells me she’s peeing in her corners-So what if I’m ten, I own this mat and my coach’s full attention.
I wonder if Kim feels as fake as I do. We cross the mat to a rigging point, put up Kim’s hoop. She starts working back elbow circles, not even warming them up, six in a row and I realize she’s peeing right back. Fuck you, skinny bendy kid.
I do not have even one back elbow circle. I do not have a triple (for non-aerialists, “The one where you wrap up in the drapes and roll down really fast”). I don’t even have Star Fall (one forward and one lateral rotation, belly-up landing, or “That thing where you whip around and fall down”).
I am a four-trick aerialist. I am here for trick number five.
Sarah shows up. Between lessons, we’re spending an hour skill-sharing. Or rather, Kim and Sarah will share skills, and I will take good notes and sequential photos and hope there is one trick easy enough for me to learn.
Sarah has doubles and triples and sparkle legs and flair. She’s trying to build a transition between two complicated wraps, and with Sarah’s arm strength, Kim’s flexibility and my eyes, the three of us make a new move. I dutifully document it.
Sarah asks, “Where’re you guys from?”
Kim says, “I’m from Chicago and she’s from Michigan, but we flew in from a gig in Singapore.”
Sarah asks, “Where do you guys go next?”
I say, “We have a corporate in DC and then a festival in Ohio. What about you?”
“Oh I live here. But I wanna start performing.”
“I thought there was a lot of work here,” says Kim.
“Yeah, but my coach doesn’t think I’m ready.”
Kim and I exchange a look. Sarah’s coach is an ex-communist Ukranian. We have trained with that coach, with Chinese coaches and Soviets and Mongolians, always as guests training a specific skill. Sarah will never be “ready,” because her coach has seen better and will not settle for less. Circus school can become a training vortex, high level skills executed mechanically, never smiling, never being good enough.
Sarah gives me a drop and now I am a five-trick aerialist. A fake. An entertainer. But I performed last week and I’ll perform next week, the easy part in a trio routine. We could replace me with a real aerialist, but no-one books work like I do. No-one else wants to send emails, hear a hundred no’s to get to yes, smile at clients with petty demands and big checks.
Real aerialists do splits and backbends and triples and complicated wraps. I am a fake, but fake is cashing checks. Fake is performing full-time instead of waiting for permission.
_______________________________________________________________
whipchick met (well, worked on the same mat as) the Mystic Pixies in 2008, about when this video was filmed. The move described is at 1:06.
.