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Aerial silks are completely counter-intuitive to my body type, strength level, and comfort level. Nothing about my 6’3” frame suggests that I would feel comfortable on the silks, or even attempt them. When I told one of my oldest friends that I was planning on trying them, he laughed and said “I have no idea what that would even look like.”
And yet I find myself in the Costa Rican jungle, flailing around on fabric that’s woven into the beams of a twenty-foot steel hut ceiling.
I was first attracted to aerial silks when I was traveling in Cambodia in 2019, and attended a performance put on by a circus called Phare (a wonderful non-profit that finds children affected by landmines, trains them in circus arts, and gives them the skills to build their own hour-long performances from the ground up).
There was a breakup between the main characters in the show when the female star of the show acted out heartbreak on aerial silks. It was the most beautiful use of a human body to convey an emotion that I’ve ever seen (similar to this Cirque de Soleil performance). I cried my eyes out just from watching this girl perform, which had never happened before and hasn’t happened since.
Could I be that beautiful? I filed away in my head that I wanted to take classes in this art someday. At the beginning of summer 2021, I got my chance.
I made friends with a circus performer named Ariana “Air” Gradow at a post-river-float after-party and found out that she taught silks on Wednesday nights. So I began taking classes.
Let me tell you folks, this s*** is exactly as hard as it looks. After a month, I had barely started inverting. I decided to continue training in Costa Rica as part of The Unfamiliar Movement Project. What better unfamiliar movement to heal with than one that makes absolutely no sense to my body?
What makes silks so frustrating to learn (for me) is that they’re not like anything else. There’s no comparable athletic crossover that I’ve thus far experienced. The only thing that comes close is climbing, but climbing happens on a two-dimensional plane. Silks happen in every direction. There’s no wall to brace yourself against.
Luckily, it’s much easier to learn new physical skills (especially if they contain an element of danger) in the “developing world.” There’s no liability culture here. If you fall off of a silk 15 feet in the air and break your hip, you don’t have the power to sue.
I love this aspect of what we call “second world” countries. This lack of liability allowed me to rent a motorcycle and figure out how to drive it without prior experience in Vietnam.
In a recent conversation with a friend who’s a fire-spinner in Florida, she told me that where she learned, there’s a huge emphasis on fire safety. They use white gas to lower the risk of burns, and they wear flame retardant clothing. We discussed this at a fire-spinning performance on the Costa Rican beach, where the performers invited anyone from the crowd to try, and the fuel of choice was… Straight gasoline. And you know what? No one got hurt!
I love this country.
As you can see from the above photos, my first silks lessons in Costa Rica were… Less than graceful. This was not a problem for my visiting sister, however, who has a history of dance, is wildly flexible, and picked it up right away:
I’m proud to report that in my first week, I’ve plummeted to my death zero times. Pretty impressive, right?
Now I’ve just got to focus on making it look pretty.
That’s all for this week, everybody! If you’re loving The Unfamiliar Movement Project, please consider gifting a subscription to someone you think would appreciate it! Also, if you know someone who would love to read along but can’t afford it, send me their email and I’ll add them for free.
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