[21] Tournelle du Soleil (Patreon)

I move efficiently through my warm-up:

I check on tight spots and sore spots with the lacrosse ball before I start going through my active flexibility drills systematically. I make sure each joint and relevant muscle group is ready to work and take note of anything that feels off or unstable so that I can keep it front-of-mind when I get into the tower in an hour.

I begin to stretch out my hip flexors and quads and hamstrings; I add in internal and external hip rotation strengtheners. I stretch my lats and shoulders and start to get into the upper back with miniband exercises and rotational movement.

I move through repetition after repetition of slow, mindful cobras, trying to bring awareness to each of the vertebrae I pull into extension one after the other. I think about supporting each section of my spine with all the big mover muscles and little stabiliser muscles that I know to engage. Don’t overuse your neck. Don’t block your upper back with your scapula. Glutes engaged before you get into the low back, then keep ‘em that way.

I make sure my wrists and forearms are warmed up so that they’re ready to tolerate any hand-balancing positions I might want to explore in the tower.

Finally, I finish with bridge variation after bridge variation, bringing all the components I’ve just touched on together in unified movement.

I glance at the digital clock sitting above the kettlebell rack over to one side of the gym.

Time to go.

Back in Studio AB lots of technicians and artists are hard at work. In the square where I did my hang-test in the morning, a duo fixed trapeze has been hung and a coach is working there with a man and a woman. Over on the other side of the room, a  team of riggers is assembling parts of the tramp-wall set up that the trampoline artists will be using tomorrow in their rehearsal. And next to them –tucked in between a forklift, a high-speed winch cordoned off with some lengths of caution tape, and a yellow bucket and mop … is the tower.

The Cirque team finished assembling it this morning and it’s a thing of beauty.

1m x 1m x 2.3m (3ft x 3ft x 7ft) of plexiglas held together neatly and cleanly at all the seams and vertices. One of the vertical panels contains a small door, mounted with silver hinges and two sliding bolt locks. It opens to the outside. The bolts are only accessible from the outside. That’s something to keep track of, I note.

The entire structure sits atop a wooden platform which raises the entire thing a foot or so higher off the ground: this is where the prongs of the hand-cart or fork lift slide into to lift the entire thing up and allow it to be smoothly manoeuvred around the stage – with or without me in it.

I give an exploratory push on one of the walls. It’s surprisingly rigid.

I push a little harder. Still no give. Excellent. This will be helpful when I get in there and start applying pressure with my legs and arms and chest to different panels as I used the apparatus to help contort me into different positions.

My eye catches a black metal grate blending into the wood on the back edge of the platform; correspondingly, there’s a small circle cut out of the base of the tower and a simple round plastic fan is seated flush with the floor of the volume. I guess to help move the smoke out of the volume during the act?

I swing the door at the back of the tower open to take a closer look inside.

The clanging, banging, and VRRRRRR of power drills is immediately muted inside the plexiglas volume. Might also make it hard to hear the music.

It’s also noticeably warmer inside. Nice for contortion, though.

LED bars are mounted to the inside seams of the tower; they’re on and slowly melting their way through subtle shifts in colour, varying in intensity and concentration at different points along the bars. It makes me think of how jellyfish move. Green to purple to red to blue to white to green again.  There are tiny little black screw heads poking up from the LED bar mounts at regular intervals. Can probably cut yourself on those. Going to have to be careful.

The floor is the black-painted wood of the platform. The walls of the plexiglas tower are bolted (very) firmly to it. A small circular ‘bite’ is taken out of the floor to allow the recessed fan to bring air into the space. I scan the interior, but there’s nothing present yet that will produce the FX smoke we discussed having in there to try to mimic some of the body-obscuring properties of my VACUUM latex tower. Must be something we’re adding on later in the week.

I back out of the tower and carefully step back down to the polished concrete floor of the studio, back into the organized cacophony of artists and riggers and engineers going about their work.

Time to begin researching.

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST. Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess