Actor's Gym - Circus Day 3 & 4, Aerial Day 4

I am a little behind on blogging due to being out of town for a week.  Here we go.

Circus Day 3:

I suck at tumbling.  My darn back messes everything up.  The instructor is right.  The handstand is the basis for everything.  And I can't do one.  Therefore, I can't do anything.  Not completely true, but the tumbling stuff is a lot harder for me than it is for anyone else.  The tumbling was incredibly difficult last week, maybe because there was so much of it and I get tired.  Long story short: Chris is good at tumbling, Kathleen is good at tumbling, and Elizabeth is at least trying.

We did unicycling in this class and it is a lot of fun.  It is very hard to keep your balance, as you can imagine, but it didn't feel like I had anticipated.  All of your weight needs to be in the seat, which makes sense if you think about it, but before last week I had never had to think about it.  We didn't get to explore very much of it, but I was able to wheel myself forwards and backwards a bit with a little bit of help.

We then did more silk knot, my favorite thing in the world.  Unfortunately, the stuff we worked on was the same as the class the day previous to this one, so I didn't get to learn anything new.  However, I got to show everyone in my group who had never done it before how to do it.  That's always fun, being the example.

Aerial Day 4:

We worked on Lyra today.  This is Lyra:



Chris hates Lyra.  I love Lyra.  Lyra hurts.  A bunch.  We learned how to get up and a few combinations, and eventually we moved to partnered Lyra, where two people are up at the same time like this:



Chris and I got to do duo lyra.  This is the first partnered skill we've learned, at it is tons of fun.  I thought I would be terrified doing it with someone else since I would not only be responsible for my own life, but potentially someone else's life as well.  It was a lot easier than I thought, and it was so much fun.  My legs are covered in bruises, but I think it was well worth it.

Circus Day 4:

We skipped tumbling today.  Thank the dear sweet lord.  Chris was bummed, but I was praising Jesus.  I was definitely not feeling tumbling today, especially because Lyra uses so much arm strength, my arms were sore from the previous day's Lyra.  Instead, we split up into our groups right away.  The ground skill today was tightrope.  Elementary school Elizabeth always wanted to learn how to tightrope walk.  Today, that little girl's dream came true.  I'm not half bad either!  That was super exciting.  I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to balance at all because of my back, but the balance I thought myself in ballet classes paid off because I can walk backward and forward and lunge on the tightrope.  Lots of fun for Elizabeth today.

We then moved to Lyra, which I got to demonstrate again.  Again, we did moves similar to the moves we learned in yesterday's class, which was fine.  More practice for me.  Lyra wasn't as frightening and new as it was yesterday, as is with most things.  Looking forward to practice the Lyra more.  Lyra is my second favorite thing, I think.  Even though it probably hurts the most.