Command Performance
I am not one of the world's great self-promoters. This is not the result of any kind of natural modesty - I think I am quite wonderful - so much as a conviction that if you are doing things right, you do not have to self-promote because people will recite your achievements in awed whispers as you walk by. That is why I didn't tell that many people that I was doing my first paid solo aerials gig the Friday before last. Well - that and I was afraid that if I told them, people might show up and see me.
You see, aerial circus arts are hard. This is not the first time that I've pointed out that I had to work very hard just to be a bad aerialist. I'm lucky enough if I can do some basic choreography while remembering to maintain leg extension and point my toes. Humans were not meant to think while hanging upside down from lengths of fabric - there is no evolutionary advantage. I will never have to avoid a predator by performing a perfect star drop. Cirque du Soliel has nothing to fear from me. I will probably never even be as good as the aerialists in the Vau de Vire Society, who regularly perform moves that I am unable to duplicate on my own while wearing glassy expressions that suggest they are trying to recall last week's grocery list. I am surely too old and chubby to ever be a great aerialist, but I am much better this year than I was last year, and I think that if I keep this up, I may one day achieve a sort of passable mediocrity.
As if that isn't bad enough, performance is hard. It doesn't even matter what you're doing. It is hard to get up on stage and own it. It hard to hang upside down and think about where the dead end of tissu needs to go and how much you need to point your toes and extend your arm just so on the beat, all while wearing a serene expression. You can become a better aerialist by practicing over and over again in the relative solitude of your studio, but in order to become a better performer, I am certain that you have to perform. This is the terrible paradox of performance: in order to become a great performer, you have to be willing to be bad. A lot.
I can accept that I may never be a great aerialist, but it bruises my pride to be a bad performer - and the combination of the two is positively mortifying. It is awful to think that if I ever want to get better at this, I am going to have to embarrass myself this way over and over again, with people watching my stupid facial expressions and my missed transitions and that inadvertently crunched toe and sickled foot. I don't understand how it is that people do this without feeling such shame that the earth opens up and swallows them whole.
I should have taken up knitting.
And then somebody walks up to me and tells me that was great! How long have I been doing that? Where do I study? Do I have a business card? Somebody walks up to me and tells me that I was the best thing at the show (possibly damning with faint praise if you are not a fan of full-body meat hook suspensions). Somebody walks up to me and complains about someone else's (extremely good, highly expressive) performance being "boring" because they were "holding the poses for too long." Someone asks if I teach classes. The crowd cheers for simple, easy things, like hip key. They tell me that my simple little drop was terrifying because my head was just a foot off of the ground. Sure, I know that the people who rightfully thought that my performance was less than brilliant are unlikely to seek me out in order to tell me how awful I am, but I am pleasantly astonished to find that I've fool anyone at all. Maybe this is how it happens: you fool a few people, then you fool a few more, until finally when you get up on stage most of the audience believes.
Besides, aren't there enough knitters out there already?
You see, aerial circus arts are hard. This is not the first time that I've pointed out that I had to work very hard just to be a bad aerialist. I'm lucky enough if I can do some basic choreography while remembering to maintain leg extension and point my toes. Humans were not meant to think while hanging upside down from lengths of fabric - there is no evolutionary advantage. I will never have to avoid a predator by performing a perfect star drop. Cirque du Soliel has nothing to fear from me. I will probably never even be as good as the aerialists in the Vau de Vire Society, who regularly perform moves that I am unable to duplicate on my own while wearing glassy expressions that suggest they are trying to recall last week's grocery list. I am surely too old and chubby to ever be a great aerialist, but I am much better this year than I was last year, and I think that if I keep this up, I may one day achieve a sort of passable mediocrity.
As if that isn't bad enough, performance is hard. It doesn't even matter what you're doing. It is hard to get up on stage and own it. It hard to hang upside down and think about where the dead end of tissu needs to go and how much you need to point your toes and extend your arm just so on the beat, all while wearing a serene expression. You can become a better aerialist by practicing over and over again in the relative solitude of your studio, but in order to become a better performer, I am certain that you have to perform. This is the terrible paradox of performance: in order to become a great performer, you have to be willing to be bad. A lot.
I can accept that I may never be a great aerialist, but it bruises my pride to be a bad performer - and the combination of the two is positively mortifying. It is awful to think that if I ever want to get better at this, I am going to have to embarrass myself this way over and over again, with people watching my stupid facial expressions and my missed transitions and that inadvertently crunched toe and sickled foot. I don't understand how it is that people do this without feeling such shame that the earth opens up and swallows them whole.
I should have taken up knitting.
And then somebody walks up to me and tells me that was great! How long have I been doing that? Where do I study? Do I have a business card? Somebody walks up to me and tells me that I was the best thing at the show (possibly damning with faint praise if you are not a fan of full-body meat hook suspensions). Somebody walks up to me and complains about someone else's (extremely good, highly expressive) performance being "boring" because they were "holding the poses for too long." Someone asks if I teach classes. The crowd cheers for simple, easy things, like hip key. They tell me that my simple little drop was terrifying because my head was just a foot off of the ground. Sure, I know that the people who rightfully thought that my performance was less than brilliant are unlikely to seek me out in order to tell me how awful I am, but I am pleasantly astonished to find that I've fool anyone at all. Maybe this is how it happens: you fool a few people, then you fool a few more, until finally when you get up on stage most of the audience believes.
Besides, aren't there enough knitters out there already?