Still Loving Silks
I've had two formal Aerial Silks classes so far, and I'm still as utterly besotted with the art as I was after my first sampler.
It helps that our class is small - 4 of us total, plus one teacher. 3 of us have never done any aerials at all before; one girl has been through the Level 1 class a few times but is still working on building strength and comfort with the form. So there's a lot of direct communication with the teacher, and we each have "our" silks, and we tend to play and move at our own pace.
The first class was mostly about getting comfortable with foot locks (wrapping the fabric around your foot in such a way that it'll stay put without any further attention, freeing up your other leg), and various ways to balance and pose once you're there. Yesterday's class went from there into inversions (hanging upside down in the silks) and hip keys (essentially, lying on your side in mid-air, parallel to the ground, with the silks wrapped around your inner thigh and hip, both hands and feet free). And I can't get enough of it.
The more I do, the more natural it feels - like somehow I'm just *supposed* to be upside down in mid-air wrapped in fabric. I know it sounds absurd, but I hate putting my feet back on the ground.
And I'm a bit worried at how easy it all is. I've done enough motion arts to know that easy can often be 'not getting your fundamentals right' - and there's something that seems off when three girls are falling and getting tangled and grunting and straining and I'm... rolling up into a pose and wondering what the trouble is. Unfortunately, since I'm not falling, the instructor is spending most of the time with the other students.
He's not ignoring me; I'm getting the occasional nod, or the reminder to point my foot out instead of keeping it parallel, or to curve my back instead of arching it. But I'm afraid that either I'm doing something basic wrong, or that I'm going to get overconfident and have an incredibly rude awakening very soon.
(The instructor did, at least, manage to find a conditioning exercise that kicked my butt after I finished the first two "too easily" - I have been introduced to the core torture that is hanging leg lifts, and damnit, I will master them if it kills me....)
Ultimately, this is heaven. It's in the air and upside down and dancing and using all of my body and my strength and I want to do it every day and I never want to stop....
It helps that our class is small - 4 of us total, plus one teacher. 3 of us have never done any aerials at all before; one girl has been through the Level 1 class a few times but is still working on building strength and comfort with the form. So there's a lot of direct communication with the teacher, and we each have "our" silks, and we tend to play and move at our own pace.
The first class was mostly about getting comfortable with foot locks (wrapping the fabric around your foot in such a way that it'll stay put without any further attention, freeing up your other leg), and various ways to balance and pose once you're there. Yesterday's class went from there into inversions (hanging upside down in the silks) and hip keys (essentially, lying on your side in mid-air, parallel to the ground, with the silks wrapped around your inner thigh and hip, both hands and feet free). And I can't get enough of it.
The more I do, the more natural it feels - like somehow I'm just *supposed* to be upside down in mid-air wrapped in fabric. I know it sounds absurd, but I hate putting my feet back on the ground.
And I'm a bit worried at how easy it all is. I've done enough motion arts to know that easy can often be 'not getting your fundamentals right' - and there's something that seems off when three girls are falling and getting tangled and grunting and straining and I'm... rolling up into a pose and wondering what the trouble is. Unfortunately, since I'm not falling, the instructor is spending most of the time with the other students.
He's not ignoring me; I'm getting the occasional nod, or the reminder to point my foot out instead of keeping it parallel, or to curve my back instead of arching it. But I'm afraid that either I'm doing something basic wrong, or that I'm going to get overconfident and have an incredibly rude awakening very soon.
(The instructor did, at least, manage to find a conditioning exercise that kicked my butt after I finished the first two "too easily" - I have been introduced to the core torture that is hanging leg lifts, and damnit, I will master them if it kills me....)
Ultimately, this is heaven. It's in the air and upside down and dancing and using all of my body and my strength and I want to do it every day and I never want to stop....