Flying Through The Air

By: Madeline Goss

M&M TIPster

What do “Utility man,” “Crusher,” and, “Grandma” all have in common? They are all names of moves done on the trapeze. While some kids do ballet, and some do soccer, others do trapeze. Katie Elliote-Gower, Addie McClure and Gemma English are all rising 8^th graders and enrolled at Canopy, Flying Dance Trapeze Movement Arts & Performing Center.

For Katie and Gemma, they have been doing this for 7 and 8 years. They saw a trapeze show and were hooked. As for Addie, when she moved to Athens in the 4^th grade, she picked it up. The three best friends have been doing this once a week ever since.

The trapeze is not all that they are learning. Katie also does silks. Silks are long strands of silk hanging from the ceiling, the performer will wrap themselves in the silk in a certain way and then let go, gracefully unraveling until the silk catches them. It can be very dangerous; safety and precision are of the utmost importance. “It’s just, like, fabric wrapped around me and I’m supposed to, like, let myself fall,” Katie says “I just have to squeeze my eyes shut and go for it.” She said that when she first began it was pretty freaky because you can go up really high with silks. There are dangers that come with silks and trapeze. The girls talk about the bruises and rope burns that they get all the time. They have multiple scars from the trapeze, but it can get a lot worse than that. There have been deaths from carelessness on the trapeze. Katie has actually sustained a minor concussion from an accident in the air.

They also practice the art of clowning, which is learning things like juggling and miming. Miming is important because when on the trapeze you “tell a story with two ropes and a bar.” Without emotions, it can get pretty boring watching a performance, say the girls, but when the person is animated it makes the performance a lot more enjoyable to watch. It’s all about letting your emotions show through the performance.

Trapeze and Silks are very demanding hobby. The trapeze artists have to be very strong so that they can be able to pull themselves up and win the fight against gravity. They have to go through intense core conditioning and daily stretches to retain their strength and flexibility. If they even take a short break, when they come back it will be a lot harder for them than before they stopped. As trapeze artists get older, they become less flexible, so daily stretching is imperative.

Though it can be very dangerous, they all love the art. They all agree that the look on people’s faces when they tell them they do trapeze is awesome. In Athens it’s not even that uncommon. Though, there still aren’t too many people that do it. In the summer camp they are currently enrolled in there are only about twenty four people. Out of those twenty four there are only three boys, and they are all still pretty young.

There are performances put on twice a year, with themes like fairytales, pirates, and dreamland. The performances are always packed to maximum capacity. The audience members love the art as much as the performers. The performers all choreograph their own routines, and Katie compares meshing the moves together to dancing, you just know what goes with what.

Though it’s really an unusual hobby, and pursuing it as a career would involve joining the circus, the girls all love it and plan to keep training in the future.

Madeline Goss, rising 10^th grader, Richardson High School, Dallas Texas

Video of Canopy preformers: