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Up In The Air
Jul. 16th, 2015 08:39 amI haven't talked much about silks here lately (okay, I haven't talked about much of anything here lately), but I'm still taking classes, and I'm still madly in love with it.
I'm still with the same instructor for the most part, but she and I have finally figured out how to communicate, and the occasional class with another teacher means that if there's something I'm having a hard time understanding, I can usually get it explained to me in a different way or taught with different techniques until I can understand it.
It's boggling to me sometimes to realize just how much I've learned, and how much stronger I've gotten. I can do pull-ups now. I can support myself by my grip alone in midair. When I started class I couldn't invert (flip upside down) from the ground; I remember struggling to invert in the air even once and feeling like I'd never be strong enough. At last night's class, we spent nearly an hour and a half being told 'climb up, invert, and then do X,' and it wasn't until the drive home that I realized I hadn't missed a single move. Things that had been impossible six months ago don't faze me now.
That doesn't mean it's easy - there are always new things to learn, new struggles to push through - right now I'm having trouble figuring out how to stall out in the middle of a move, which is apparently essential for learning to do multiple drops in a row. And I'm working on learning how to make things look good - while it's one thing to know how to, say, climb up or do a split or hang by your ankles, there's an art to actually making it look like dance and performance instead of just flopping through it.
Most of all, I think working on aerials has taught me how to not be good at something. I'm terrible about wanting to do everything right the first time, and I get painfully frustrated, depressed, miserable, and self-critical when I can't master a new skill on the first try. And that's just not possible here. No matter how strong or talented or dextrous you are, these are things that human bodies just don't figure out without practice and experience. You're using muscles you can't use elsewhere in ways they don't get used normally, and trying to do it upside down and backwards.
And still, at first I got frustrated. But I saw teachers try things and fall and fail and laugh, and I had instructors who told me to literally hand them my frustration, and then wadded it up and threw it away. I've had other students point out to me that this is a matter of stacking skills slowly over time. And I've seen how much progress I've made. Being able to go to practice time and do the same thing over and over and over until it goes from 'gah, where the hell does the fabric go?' to 'flip, twist, push, there!' feels like accomplishing something. And realizing that I'm doing things now that, six months ago, I was watching other people do with envy and a bitter certainty that I'd never master.... it's a reminder whenever I get tangled up or lose my balance or whap myself in the face with my fabrics that in a month or two I'll get this too.
Next semester I move up to Level 3, and then I can start taking performance prep classes. This is crazy.....
I'm still with the same instructor for the most part, but she and I have finally figured out how to communicate, and the occasional class with another teacher means that if there's something I'm having a hard time understanding, I can usually get it explained to me in a different way or taught with different techniques until I can understand it.
It's boggling to me sometimes to realize just how much I've learned, and how much stronger I've gotten. I can do pull-ups now. I can support myself by my grip alone in midair. When I started class I couldn't invert (flip upside down) from the ground; I remember struggling to invert in the air even once and feeling like I'd never be strong enough. At last night's class, we spent nearly an hour and a half being told 'climb up, invert, and then do X,' and it wasn't until the drive home that I realized I hadn't missed a single move. Things that had been impossible six months ago don't faze me now.
That doesn't mean it's easy - there are always new things to learn, new struggles to push through - right now I'm having trouble figuring out how to stall out in the middle of a move, which is apparently essential for learning to do multiple drops in a row. And I'm working on learning how to make things look good - while it's one thing to know how to, say, climb up or do a split or hang by your ankles, there's an art to actually making it look like dance and performance instead of just flopping through it.
Most of all, I think working on aerials has taught me how to not be good at something. I'm terrible about wanting to do everything right the first time, and I get painfully frustrated, depressed, miserable, and self-critical when I can't master a new skill on the first try. And that's just not possible here. No matter how strong or talented or dextrous you are, these are things that human bodies just don't figure out without practice and experience. You're using muscles you can't use elsewhere in ways they don't get used normally, and trying to do it upside down and backwards.
And still, at first I got frustrated. But I saw teachers try things and fall and fail and laugh, and I had instructors who told me to literally hand them my frustration, and then wadded it up and threw it away. I've had other students point out to me that this is a matter of stacking skills slowly over time. And I've seen how much progress I've made. Being able to go to practice time and do the same thing over and over and over until it goes from 'gah, where the hell does the fabric go?' to 'flip, twist, push, there!' feels like accomplishing something. And realizing that I'm doing things now that, six months ago, I was watching other people do with envy and a bitter certainty that I'd never master.... it's a reminder whenever I get tangled up or lose my balance or whap myself in the face with my fabrics that in a month or two I'll get this too.
Next semester I move up to Level 3, and then I can start taking performance prep classes. This is crazy.....
