Creation Realizations: Repetition & the Illusion of Speed (Patreon)

Hello, my dear strange & wonderful patrons!

In my last writing to you, I briefly outlined a few of the creation realizations that have begun filtering through after my first month in the studio researching and building bits and pieces of the aerial straps act that forms one of the major parts of my Barbette grant.

In the midst of writing out my last thoughts to you, however, I realized there was one that I didn't include in my original, short, bullet-point list (flexibility; environment; technique).

And that is time.

The timeline of creation.

The speed of research.

The pace of discovery.

Today's writing has a couple stories for you (one present, one from the past), and some rambling realizations on this subject as it relates to researching artistic and technical movement on aerial apparatus.

* * * * * * *

On Friday I had my final lesson with my aerial straps coach (William) for what might be a few weeks. I'm still waiting on the filming schedule for that impending indie project I mentioned in my last post –it's anyone's guess as to when my first day on camera will be– but I know it'll be at least 2 weeks before I can train in Montréal again (if I'm lucky).

It wasn't a bad lesson: we were only working together for 60 minutes instead of the 90 we've been typically doing. 

I warmed up all of my one-arm conditioning (with 1-lb ankle weights, dammit! 😤💪🏻) before we started so that we could move right into the drills we run to work on various types of switches, one-arm spins, and one-arm and two-arm swinging/tempo sequences. 

I didn't accomplish anything particularly spectacular or break through any roadblocks, but I felt strong, clear-headed, and focused. 

Each repetition of those drills is one more piece of information that helps me understand how to execute it successfully, eventually. 

A data point. 

Informative, valuable, but not the bigger picture by any means.

I was William's last student of the day. We finished the final conditioning drill of ten front-levers that rounds out the end of each one of our lessons and sat down on the peeling black Marley flooring to stretch out a little and catch our breath.

"Have you started working with Michael yet?" William asked me. He was referring to Michael Watts, the conseil artistique I had met with earlier in June.

I shook my head: "No. Michael had initially suggested we have our first sessions late July, but now the movie timeline is gonna push that into August ... He said there wasn't much point in working together until I had some sequences put together that would give us a framework to build off of."

"Ah, ok," William nodded.

"I've built some artistic sequences on the ground that I like," I continued. "But I feel like I'm a bit stuck with how to move forward from here. I've never made a straps act before, and I've never made an act that has ups-and-downs with a puller, because Toronto just doesn't usually have the ceiling height. So now I have ideas in my head of some technical sequences I might want to try to incorporate but it's ... hard to do by myself."

"Ah, yes, you need a puller."

"Yeah, exactly."

"I'm not sure if Michael will pull for you."

"No, I'm pretty sure he won't."

"Ah, this is why I was saying that you, he, and me should all go in studio together."

"Yes– But– I mean, I guess I feel like I'm supposed to have those technical sequences at least tried out a few times before I ask Michael to join me in studio. I was wondering if maybe we could revisit our training plan to work something in like that."

"Ah, like some technical research days?"

"Yeah! I don't want to stop our lessons– I think we're making good progress but we have lots of work to do still. But I also can't just avoid trying to build the harder sequences indefinitely, and I don't know anyone here in Montréal who I can trust to pull for me. So maybe instead of 3 lessons a week, we keep 2 lessons a week and make 1 of our training sessions like ..."

"A pulling session."

"Yes!"

"Absolutement, c'est une bonne idée."

"Oh good!" I said, relieved. A path forwards. "I know there's so much more work to do on the technique stuff we're practicing, but I think a goal of presenting a rough draft of the act at the end of August for some friends here is a good idea. Otherwise ..."

"Otherwise never make anything," William laughed.

"Exactly."

"Oui, it's a good time to reevaluate our ... uh ..." he paused, searching for the English word. "Schedule," he landed on. "We've been pushing hard for 2 months now for technical and you've made great progress. But it's hard, what you're doing–– at the [National Circus] school, you know, we work 3 years on this, to make the act. What you're trying for in 3 months."

I nodded, brow creasing. "I know– It's– It's not enough time. But–"

"–But I think you can still make something good, yes!" William interrupted excitedly. "We have the flare, we have the one-arms– we mix with your artistique– Yes, it doesn't have to be–" here, he paused to make a particularly French "bouahhhh" sound, arms stretching out wide to either side to illustrate some imagined level of never-before-discovered technical prowess–– "you know?"

"Yes, absolutely!" I said, smiling to tamp down a giggle. I love that William is so excited about our work together. It's infectious. 

I continued: "And, just because we're going to add in the technical/pulling sessions doesn't mean I think we should stop like ... lessons where we're just working on those skills, too. I'd like to try to balance them."

"Oui, yes," William said, brow furrowed in serious agreement. "End of August. This is a good goal."

"It doesn't have to be perfect or anything by then. Just – like – a place to share with some other people and then evaluate what to change and how to move forward, you know?"
"Bien sûr."

"And then as time goes on, and we maybe get higher level skills, we can keep evolving some of those sequences."

William confirmed it with a fist bump, and we went our separate ways for the weekend.

* * * * * * *

I have a vivid memory of one of my earliest artistic mentors, Brandy Leary, casually discussing the kind of volume of hours that she typically built into her grant applications to the Canada Council for the Arts for research projects. I would've been about 26 years old at the time of this conversation:

"For example," Brandy began. She speaks slowly, measured phrases, long vowels. "Say I want to spend some time in studio with Andreanne to see if an idea I have is viable; to flesh out what it could be. I'd request, say, 80 hours to start."

"80 HOURS?!" little art-baby me said, spitting a bit of coffee out along with the words.

Brandy just nodded sagely: "Oh, sure. 80 hours is nothing."

I remember blinking rapidly. 

I remember trying to crunch those numbers in my head. 

Say you do 2 hour rehearsals . . . No, 3 hour rehearsals . . . Okay . . .
If you did an intense schedule, say, 5 days a week?
That's 15 hours / week.
Okay, so that works out to . . . 2.5 weeks, ish.

But if you're dancing or doing circus maybe that's unrealistic–
So, say it's 3 hour rehearsals, and only 3 days a week.
Say you've got to be able to hold down other jobs at the same time you're doing this research.
That's . . . nearly nine weeks of researching in studio ...!

While I was laboriously crunching these numbers in my head (math is not my strong suit, okay?), Brandy added: "200 hours is more realistic for actually making any headway on something."

I sat there, mind thoroughly boggled, and just tried to digest the information.

 I was living in a world where my main goal was to get hired for corporate work in and around the city of Toronto. I had a cute little dance trapeze number I'd made where I had some nice fast spins and showed off some bendy positions up in the lines. It wasn't easy to make.

(Few things are, and when they are, you know those beautiful moments of feeling like an artistic conduit for inspiration from the muses, or a higher power [if you ascribe to one] are rare, beautiful, and precious).

But I didn't need 200 hours in a studio to figure it out. I didn't even need 80. I probably spent a month of professional trainings at the now-buried-under-a-new-condo-development Flying Arts Collective up at Dupont St & Ossington Ave in Toronto piecing together the tricks and transitions that I wanted to make the act to. I picked a song, and went at it. Crunching the numbers retroactively, I maybe spent . . . 36 hours making that act (and more polishing and rehearsing it, sure).

At the time, I couldn't even begin to imagine what I would do if I was given 200 hours to research some new work. 

Now –5 years later into my artistic career– I feel like I'm starting to understand the shape of the thing that Brandy was trying to share with me.

* * * * * * *

Everything takes so much longer than I think it does, even now.

It takes longer, artistically, than I think it will.
It takes longer, technically, than I think it will.

I recently realized that I was labouring under the delusion that all the professional artists that I really look up to here in Montréal are able to whip together eyeball-explodingly-awesome technical and artistic sequences for breakfast. 

On a whim. 

At the drop of a hat.

And that if you, too, are a professional, you should also be able to translate the eyeball-explodingly-awesome technical and artistic sequences you've dreamed up in your head into physical reality with relative ease.

This is (surprise!) not necessarily the case*.
(*not in every case, anyways).  

I just wasn't able to see how this work unfolds when it's filtered through the ways we select for (or against) what we share with the world on our digital platforms. 

Being on an aerial point next to some of these other professionals, in person, week after week, reveals something different. Something . . . really interesting.

In reality, most of the artists I've spent years looking up to on Instagram, and that I've now met and trained alongside in different spaces in Montreal now all summer, have been working on their particular niche movement interest for years. And when I say 'niche movement interest', I'm not talking about their circus disciplines; I'm talking about certain 'families' of movements within the disciplines they've spent years training on. 

Many of these artists focus a lot of time in their training sessions on a family of movements, or on a few sequences that they've taken the time to build (both artistically and technically). They've put in the years of establishing a foundation of strength, of knowing the basic movements their body has to perform to achieve 'traditional' vocabulary on their apparatus (like drops, for a silks artist; flares-to-flag, for a straps artist; etc). The niche movements that interests these artists builds on top of those foundations.

In my mind, I think that I thought everyone spent months (or years) working on their general skillsets, and that in the course of doing so developed the ability to create technical or artistic sequences that were hitherto unseen. But I was thinking of it the wrong way 'round. 

Sure, people do spend months (or years) building up a base of strength, agility, proprioception, you name it. But the movement sequences that make my jaw go slack when I see them on my screen or on a stage? In many cases, I've seen in person now that those artists spend months (years) working on just that sequence alone. 

Yes, maybe in the course of researching just that one sequence over and over and over and over again, that artist discovers new things, has happy accidents, and movement ideas and opportunities branch out from that one main river of work like many smaller tributaries – but the bulk of the work is still incredibly focused on repetition and refining of a few very specific phrases. Holy wow, Batman.

For example, there are a couple strap artists in Montréal who are technical BEASTS –Benji, Cao – both spends hours exploring tempo technique.

There's something about that kind of movement that must be particularly interesting or stimulating or creatively exciting to them, and so they spend lots of time on it.  They're certainly able to execute very clean, beautiful-looking movements in any other number of 'families' (for example, spinning technique, or movements that involve flag/reverse meathook, or strong-man-stuff like planches, levers, and roll-ups) ... but maybe that's not what they're spending an outsized amount of time on exploring, playing with, researching. 

When they whip off something that looks impossible in one of their acts -or in studio– it's the product of months (or years) of research into that specific family of movement on straps.

* * * * * * *
If I step back and try to gain some perspective on this one, I suppose what I'm describing might just be (yet another) level of gazing up the mountain at climbers who are farther along on their march to the summit than I am. 

I'm sure what some of those artists are doing doesn't feel mindblowingly amazing or impossible-seeming to them; and I'm almost sure that some of the things I'm starting to be able to do now on straps might seem mindblowingly amazing or impossible-seeming to someone else who's perhaps just starting out on the apparatus. 

The "climbing a mountain" metaphor is a handy one to reach for in these moments because it helps illustrate that our efforts to achieve something aren't linear: sometimes we have to traverse a particularly steep section through a series of endless-feeling switchbacks; maybe we have to go back down the mountain briefly in some areas so we can make a lateral move and find a clearer path upwards.

But it's not the "mountain-climbing metaphor" or "progress isn't linear" part that feels revelatory to me these days –– no, not at all.

I thought everyone was hiking up their god damn mountains.

In reality, what I'm observing is that people are out here doing funny little sideways crab-walks back and forth in a silly little dance that –bizarrely–  actuallys propel them further along their path. Just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, covering the same ground over and over and over again, and occasionally moving a lateral step or two further now and again up the path. 

And, for the sake of tailoring this visual image to fit what I described in the above even more closely –– let's add that these are very focused, somewhat isolated little crabs –– so much so that David Attenborough hasn't really narrated many documentaries on their funny little sideways dance up the mountain, so people don't have access to lots of accurate audio-visual encapsulations of how that mountain climbing is happening.

Yep.

That's right, folks.

Funny little circus crab virtuosos doing funny little inefficient-seeming sideways-dances up the mountain.

That's how the research happens, baby.

* * * * * * *

Alright, alright. Lemme take us away from the semi-exhausted Surrealist imagery that just tumbled out of my brain and fell out my fingers onto the keyboard, back to something slightly more concrete:

It takes time.

It takes so much more time than I thought.

It takes so much more repetition that I thought. 

That repetition is happening in places that I didn't expect it to be happening.
The magic is happening on the micro level: in the repetition of short phrases of movement, of the same few moves, of the same few sequences. I only thought the magic was happening on the macro level: in the repetition of the actions that add up to technical skill, or the repetition of making new circus act after new circus act.

Hell, it's happening right in my own personal practice:
Case in point, I was so excited to finally start being strong enough to do these nifty 1-arm chin-up spins for a few brief seconds. Eventually, I got strong enough to stay for 10 to 15 seconds. And after that, I started playing with it. One day while I was spinning around up there I thought, I wonder if I could grab my leg and extend it? Could I do a leg scale? Some kind of leg flexibility thing? I wonder ...

Here's as close as I've gotten:

And it's taken, non-hyperbolically, weeks to get here.
I'm really excited about this technical research.
It's also really exhausting  to practice still.

I can do about . . . 2 repetitions on each arm before I've just got no mega-squeeze left in my biceps to keep me up there (or to fall safely when my bicep-squeeze gives out). 

That means that I'm able to explore these about ... oh ... 4 to 6 times a week.
Sure, if I wasn't training a bunch of other really draining things I could spend way longer playing with those shapes. But that's just not how things are happening at the moment; and even if they were the only thing I was researching in a given session, the number of times I could hold myself there and try to grab that stupid foot would still have a finite number determined by my endurance, rather than the length of time I had in the studio that day. 

It takes longer than we think it does to condition our bodies to tolerate the strain and load of aerial training. It takes longer than we think it does for our muscles, our nerves, our ligaments, our joints, to tolerate what we ask of them without failing in some catastrophic manner that requires varying lengths of recovery.   

It takes longer than we think it does to work through and work past the psychological barriers and hang-ups that restrict or warp our movement: whether those are technical ones (being scared of hurting ourselves, of making a mistake, of not being strong/fast/agile enough to complete a movement) or aesthetic ones (I don't look good when I do this trick; when I do this movement it doesn't look impressive; my body doesn't look the way I feel like it's supposed to for this; and other un-truths we convince ourselves of).  

It takes longer than we think to shed the layers of expectation that are imposed by ourselves, by the standards of our discipline, by our peers, or by our audiences in order to sink into other metrics by which we might explore or evaluate our work.

* * * * * * *

Until next time, stay strange & wonderful, my friends.

XO

Ess