So. Technique. You step up to the low trapeze, wrap your hands around it, and hang your weight down, making sure to protect your neck. Explore moving while hanging from the bar, see how it feels, that's the first step. Next step is to get up. Hold on to the bar, drop your weight down, and kick your feet up to place them between your hands. Hook your knees over the bar. Let go with your hands and arch your back. Now swing yourself back up to hold on to the bar with your hands, and walk your hands up the rope to pull yourself up to a sitting position. Ready to move on? Disengage your right leg from the bar and extend it down. Slide your left knee to one corner of the bar, and brace your right shoulder blade against the opposite rope. It will hold you, despite what you may think. Disengage your shoulder blade from the rope, hook your left elbow over the bar, and extend yoru right arm. You should be hanging from your left knee and your left elbow, with your body in a straight line extended below the bar. For something even more advanced, straighten your left leg and hook your foot aorund the rope. Bring your right hand up to the bar and let go with your left hand. You're now hanging below the bar with one wrist and one ankle. Had enough? Now you can get down. From the hanging position, just bring both hands up to hold the bar as you kick your feet down to land gracefully below.
We practice like this for an hour and a half. As a beginner, the wooden bar hurts my hands, I get rope burns on my palms, my triceps aren't strong enough to hold my full weight for very long, and my graceful landings are often more like thuds. By the end of class, my arms want to fall off. But it's fun, and I'm enjoying it. I look forward to getting stronger muscles and bigger calluses so I can stay up longer. I can't wait to develop more technique and artistic skill.
After class today, I struck up a conversation with an older woman who was tyring the class out. Fortysomething and built like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, she understandably had a bit of trouble. But she seemed nice enough, so we chatted a bit. She said that her arms hurt, and I said that was to be expected. After my first class I could barely lift grocery bags for the next several days. Then she said she didn't want calluses on her hands, because those look bad on women, and people would think badly of her. I suggested athletic tape as protection, but then...
"Defy gender stereotypes," I said, as I often do when confronted with the idea that there are things that women shouldn't do.
"What?" she responded, as though she must have misheard what I'd said.
"Defy gender stereotypes. Go against them. They're bad."
The dawn of horrified comprehension appeared. With a look of the most righteous possible indignation, she primly said "I believe in them very strongly." Her tone brooked no argument.
Oh. Oops.
Now, I admittedly self-select the people I hang out with. Most of my friends are queer or queer-friendly or just don't give a damn one way or the other what conventional wisdom says about how they should behave. I know boys who sew and girls who fix plumbing, and they're all quite comfortable with their gender identities. Even my friends who do partake in "stereotypical" activities will fight tooth and nail to say and show that they can do other things as well. Never have I ever in my life talked to someone, a woman no less, who "belives very strongly" in a system designed to keep us all rigidly in our (subordinate) place.
This woman won't do anything that will give her bruises, cuts, scrapes, blisters, calluses, or any other blemish. She's had five babies (which is worse for your body than most other activities I can think of that would result in bruising). She likes to pamper herself. (I could be uncharitable and say that this combination probably directly contributes to her Pillsbury shape, but that would be mean and unfair so I'll desist). She proceeded to tell me, in the most patronizing way possible, that I might think differently while I'm young and foolish but as I get older my opinions will change and I'll realize, like her, that the stereotypes are true.
Not bloody likely, I thought, but did not say. I bid her a polite goodbye. I doubt that I'll see her again. Aerial dance is not for the fainthearted, and if you're afraid of a few blisters you'll never get far. (That's true of most things, after all). As for me, I take pride in my bruises. I take pride in my calluses, scratches, and scars. They show what I've done, where I've been, what I've accomplished. From ballet feet to rope-burned palms, I have it all, and I'm not ashamed. So if you're looking for a nice, pretty, scarless girl to cook and clean and have babies, don't wait up for me.
I'll be on the trapeze.
Trapeze artist Emily Schadel
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