Allright y’all, I’ve done it. I’ve developed a severe addiction — to AERIAL BALLET.
My roommate, Sarah, and I went to our first-ever aerial ballet class last night. It was amazing. Usually, I’m pretty good at everything I try, especially in the creative realms — dance, art, etc. But aerial is soooooooo hard. It uses muscles that you never knew existed.
The area from my ribs up, including every muscle in my arms and HANDS, is dead…. DEAD, I tell you.
I thought I had pretty good core strength — FALSE.
I knew I had zero upper body strength — ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
Looks like my new venture is going to whip me into shape real fast.
So here’s what we tried last night:
- The basic climb — I never did quite get it, but its a maneuver where you pull yourself up off the ground about 7 or 8 inches, whip your right leg around the silks to catch them on top of your flexed right foot and stand on top of the silks with your left foot. You do this repeatedly until you reach the top of the silk — or you fall, like I did.
- The figure 8 lock — from the climb, you use the “knife edge” of your left foot (you’ve taken it off the silk on your right foot) to push out the silks (and form a triangle with your back as one side, your legs as the base and the silks as the other side. You then maneuver your right foot to form another loop around it, which creates the lock. It’s painful, but it alleviates the need to hold on for dear life.
- The pike mount – (trapeze, yeah…) You hold the bar with both hands, shoulders locked into the sockets, and pull your knees toward your face, then you lean back and extend your legs behind your head. You then are in an upside down pike position… This was a bit rough for me — something about having a bum elbow makes me nervous to hang upside down relying only on the strength of my arms. I will need to get over this.
- The basic hang — from the pike position, you bend your knees to hook over the bar. Then, squeezing feet toward your bum for dear life, let go. This, I loved! Because the trapezes were so low to the ground, I was able to put my hands down on the ground and do a bit of a handstand — a skill I have never perfected.
- The J.LO – I am in LOVE with this maneuver. I had to do it backpack style (kind of a halway step to the real thing) but there is something so lovely about hanging upside down in the fetal position with a silk woven around your legs and bum to hold you up. It figures I would be good at something that uses your butt to your advantage…
Anyways, y’all, I’m hooked. Totally and completely, irreversably HOOKED. Never have I ever wanted to continue so badly with something I really am not good at. But I want to be good. I’ve got the drive, now onto a quadzillion and two push-ups and sit-ups to get me in the air. Stay tuned for updates and pictures!
Thanks for reading… (Sorry it’s been so long)
S
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