Ballet Balance

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And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance...
~Lee Ann Womack

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My desire to try ballet started at Circus Warehouse this March, it became a concrete goal for this summer in June, and a reality this past month. This week was the final of the 5-week summer semester course I took through a local ballet school.

Ballet is all about balance, especially about balancing in movement and at the limits of our body’s ability (known as dynamic and offset balance), so it’s an ideal cross-training activity. The focus on self-discipline and precision in ballet definitely appeals to me. Ballet is also about coordination, poise, grace, and artistry, which wouldn’t be bad things to have if ever I want to perform. As a klutz and a highly inhibited one at that, dance definitely hasn’t been my thing—at all—but I was willing to give it a try.

Trying ballet has, overall, been a truly positive experience, so I feel a bit guilty to confess that my first lesson was, frankly, fairly traumatic. (Obviously I have a pretty good life to be able to say that.) In general I try very hard, no matter how I feel, to appear and convey what is positive and upbeat. So it is positively wrenching to write candidly about that first lesson. However, I recently committed to being more honest and open in my blog, to sharing with you the bumps in my road as well as the triumphs, and to sharing my heart as well as my thoughts. So here goes:

Taking this ballet class may very well be the furthest beyond my comfort zone I’ve ever been. I knew that it was going to be a foreign environment and probably difficult, but it was one thing to tell myself that I’d probably be the most awkward and beginning-est of beginners in a room full of graceful people…it was another to live that reality for 90 long minutes. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way in those first 90 minutes.

I was indeed the only person in the class without any dance and/or ballet experience. I also hadn’t dressed the part: the shoes and the class seemed enough of an expense without adding dancewear. I arrived too late to ask how my newly purchased ballet shoes worked, so I wore socks rather than risk blisters and sloppy shoes (I thought the little bow at the front was purely decorative). Both of those factors added to the misery of watching myself in the mirror as I fumbled and stumbled through even the relatively basic sequences, out of synch with the rest of the class. This was definitely not one of the high points in my life in terms of coming prepared.

The pace of the class was fast: we went straight to work on exercises designed more for intermediate beginners than for the completely clueless. Because it seemed to me that everyone else was managing the sequences just fine, I never spoke up when the teacher asked if anyone had questions. It seemed like neither one question nor forty would even begin to clarify the utter confusion my legs and arms and brain were in.

The social aspect of that first class was probably what made it especially trying. My misery communicated itself to my fellow classmates and, perhaps to give me what privacy they could or perhaps because watching my beginner efforts was just a little painful to the more experienced, they did their best not to watch. Granted, the idea that they avoided eye contact is perhaps just stress-induced paranoia, but it is probably something that I would be guilty of if our roles had been reversed. Frankly, I needed empathy and assistance as much as I needed privacy and pity.

In spite of not having enough basic instruction, having the wrong kind of clothing and footwear, plus awkward social dynamics, I made it through those 90 minutes—those painfully miserable 90 minutes. I’m not exaggerating when I call it traumatic: I cried. Not until afterward, not until I was alone, but once I could, I sobbed. And I loathe crying.

Ok, now it’s time to put a positive spin on this experience—the positive spin it truly deserves. After that first class it would have been fairly easy never to go back—but I hate being a quitter. I’m glad I didn’t. That first lesson was five weeks ago—and I like my ballet class now.

So what changed? Stacey was the first saving grace. Stacey was one of the beginners in the class—not a complete beginner like me, but the single ballet class she’d had in college was years and at least two children ago. She sensed my frustration and positioned herself next to me as we waited our turn for corner work—and willingly expressed that she was struggling and frustrated herself. Just knowing I wasn’t the only one helped a lot. There is also safety in numbers: after class the two of us went together to the teacher about our need for even more basic lessons.

The instructor was more than willing to accommodate the needs of the beginner students in the beginner class—once we’d expressed what we needed. The complexity of the steps and the pace of the lessons did slow considerably after that. I also learned to speak up. Yes, I was that student who almost always nodded yes, please do that again…and maybe twice more after that.

Another huge help was the presence of one of those experienced, beautiful people. Britnie, a ballerina in the civic ballet company affiliated with the school, was attending the beginner class just for an additional workout. After that first lesson she took us beginners under her wing, offered clarifications and demos while we practiced sequences, and positioned herself strategically so we could follow her through the corner work. The extra coaching was incredibly helpful. (It also meant that the whole class didn’t have to pause every time I needed a little extra help.)

With all that going for me, the next nine lessons went much better. At the risk of swinging from the extreme of self-abasing sob-stories to self-congratulatory aggrandizing, I’m going to announce that I made a lot of progress in five weeks. More than one of my fellow classmates said I made impressive progress. (Given my rather low starting point, that is a very, very good thing.) The last two weeks especially were rewarding. I’ll be utterly, atrociously awkward at ballet for a long time yet, but by the last lesson I could at least attempt to add the correct arm movements to the steps, could often execute something that resembled the appropriate combinations—basically, I was almost dancing!

A lingering dissatisfaction I have with my ballet efforts is the stifling and inhibiting sense of caution that I'm struggling with. I quite frequently tried merely to do the steps approximately correctly to stay in synch with the rest of my classmates rather than getting the fundamental techniques correct and really going for it. I’d like to learn to throw my heart over those imaginary hurdles so my feet follow with the instinctive boldness that only true commitment brings—to go all out.

I do think that ballet will help with rope walking. After spending so much time on incredibly narrow and often unstable surfaces, trying to balance on a flat, wide, and stable surface seems like a luxury—but then the need to contort my body into beautiful shapes while standing on tip-toe negates the advantage of having a whole floor to work with. Turns on slackline and balance pipe are my current nemesis, and I do think that the chaînés turn drills—learning not to get dizzy and spot for a focal point—are helping with that.

I’d like to keep ballet as a cross-training activity I think; all-in-all I’m quite pleased with this beginning to ballet balance. Oh, and in case anyone is interested in seeing a ballet-style tightwire performance, of course I have one in my collection of YouTube favorites: here.

Hero: Bird Millman

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“The performer who essays to follow in the footsteps of radiant Bird Millman must possess a combination of beauty, personality, grace, charm, and courage, along with dancing toes so light that they may perform pirouettes and arabesques not upon ballroom floor but upon a thread of steel, a combination of artistry and talent which thus far the world of the theater has seen but one.”
~Dixie Wilson

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When it comes to my circus and funambulistic obsession, I don’t just want to learn the tricks, I also have a passion to study and research. I have a growing collection of fiction, biographies, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and manuals on the topic of rope walking. (I was rather surprised when a good friend kindly told me that this level of “delving” isn’t actually something that everyone does.) My analytical mind is looking for the how and why of balance work, my social side is looking for a glimpse into the culture and community, and my heart is looking for heroes.

Heroes are important. As Scott Labarge put it, “The critical moral contribution of heroes is the expansion of our sense of possibility.”¹  Learning about the lives of the legendary wirewalkers does indeed reinforce that feeling of possibility for me—the possibilities of achieving my dreams—of becoming a rope walker as well as a truly decent human being. Scott Labarge continues:

The term "hero" comes from the ancient Greeks. For them, a hero was a mortal who had done something so far beyond the normal scope of human experience that he left an immortal memory behind him. … We need heroes first and foremost because our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations. Our heroes are symbols for us of all the qualities we would like to possess and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy. … [T]hese magnificent spirits, these noble souls, amazingly, are like us, they are human too. They stumbled, they wavered, they made fools of themselves—but nonetheless they rose and accomplished deeds of triumphant beauty. Perhaps we might do so too. 

I’ve done enough research that the names of a few legendary wire walkers are familiar: Madame Saqui, Blondin, the Wallendas, Con Colleano, Philippe Petit, Adili Wuxor…and Bird Millman.

I was first intrigued by Bird Millman when I ran across two quotations ascribed to her; I couldn’t resist looking into an incredibly quotable tightwire artist. There isn’t much about her online, but I found a museum and historical center² in Bird’s hometown with a librarian willing to do some digging for me. You can imagine my delight when a thick packet arrived in the mail. Delving into the photocopies of countless newspaper articles, magazine interviews, and book excerpts, like the luckiest of deep sea treasure divers I surfaced with a gem worth—in my opinion—a king’s ransom: a hero.

In addition to her being quite quotable, I was, admittedly, predisposed to admire a fellow Rocky Mountain girl—an “exotic from the far West.” Jennadean Engleman—stage name Bird Millman—was born in 1890 in Cañon City, Colorado, population 2,800. She went from performing with her parents as a child in small time circuses to performing for royalty in Europe and as a repeat star attraction of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The height of her circus career was 1904 – 1920, during what is known as the Golden Age of the American Circus. She was called “Queen of Silver Strand,” “Queen of the Circus,” a “whirlwind on the tightrope,” “the most dashing, daring and fascinating girl that ever stepped upon a tightwire,” and “the daintiest and greatest of all wire walkers.”

She wasn’t from a long line of circus performers. Her father developed a passion for gymnastics during his time at a military academy. After graduating he continued to play on improvised equipment he’d rigged on the second floor of the town hall. He got his wife to try. She didn’t like it all that much at first. Then one day she slipped and fell during a stunt—and broke through the floor so her bottom half hung over the dancers performing on the stage below.  That was the day she vowed to give the town something else to talk about besides the garters and corset strings they'd seen hanging through the ceiling. The two became very good; soon enough people were definitely too busy gasping and gaping and applauding to remember that early embarrassment. The Engleman couple auditioned for and received spots in a local circus. Little Jennadean—Bird—was born and later came on the road with them, the pet of the circus…and soon joined them in their acts.

As for the origins of her stage name, the change in her last name from Engleman to Millman was her father’s doing—Engleman was just too likely to be misspelled, so he pulled out a dictionary and picked a good word. There are several conflicting stories for the change from Jennadean to Bird: perhaps it was her grandmother who nicknamed her because her cry sounded like a bird chirp, or perhaps her father just happened to be looking at a bird sitting on a telephone wire when he was trying to think up a stage name for her. Either way, it became a fitting name for a girl who, even as a small child, “had a way of ignoring the earth,” a girl with “twittering feet and lyric personality,” who fluttered “as though she wore winged boots,” who loved to flit and fly along a wire in the sky.

Bird was known for her grace and poise on the wire. She didn't perform tricks that looked excruciatingly difficult, but she made the most daring of tricks look beautifully finished. She was known for her dancing most of all—sliding, whirling, jumping, waltzing, cake-walking, and pirouetting “until the crowd completely lost sight of the fact that she danced on only a taut slender wire.” In fact, she once admitted that it was harder for her to dance on solid ground than on her wire. Her speed also was her signature: using the natural spring of the wire, her dancing toes moved "so fast it took your breath away."  At other points in her acts, she would dispense with her parasol and, freehand, dash the length of her wire, then sprint back again at lightning speeds.

Reading about her, it seemed to me that the one word best characterizing Bird Millman is laughter. Over and over again journalists talked of her laughing. That laugh was one of the things that won her such fame: “She laughed and danced her way into the hearts of the show-going public as no other had done before her.” The shy little girl who hid behind her mother’s skirts was fearless up in the air.  As a small child, even before she discovered tightwire, she participated in her parents’ act. Her father would hang from his knees on a trapeze bar, she would stand on top of the bar—and then JUMP off. She laughed while plummeting down through the air head-first in a swan dive, laughed when her father caught her ankles and swung her forty feet in the air. As she danced on the wire, the sound of the music was “punctuated with the ripple of her laughter,” laughter of “light-hearted and almost childish glee.” When reporters managed to corner her for an interview, she would laugh as, with girlish delight, she showed off a beautiful new costume, laugh as she recounted past trips and slips, bumps and bruises, and laugh that her feet—of their own accord—were tapping their impatience to be back on the wire.

In my opinion Bird Millman, an “ambitious little bit of humanity,” thoroughly deserved the public adoration she won because, in addition to daring and talent, she also had “rare charm and graciousness,” she was “charmingly natural.” She was one of the greatest wirewalkers who has ever lived and was also a genuinely decent and likable human being.  For all her fame, her stardom never seemed to go to her head. The “fun of pleasing her audience means more to her than compliments,” wrote a journalist. She avoided publicity when she could, when she couldn’t she “smilled and shrugged deprecatingly.” It mattered to her to set a good example for the other children in the circus who looked up to her as a big sister. She was one of the highest paid performers, but was generous to a fault with her money and rarely turned down requests to perform at charity events. One of her greatest stunts was a skywalk in New York between two buildings across Broadway, a free public performance to raise money for war bonds during World War I.

Bird Millman (Jennadean Engleman O’Day) died in 1940, succumbing to spinal cancer. Taking some literary liberties of my own, below I combine two versions of a quote that her close friend author Dixie Wilson wrote at the time of her death:

If there is an invisible thread which links the mortal to the eternal life, we may well imagine that lovely, dancing, laughing little figure [of Bird Millman O’Day] in tulle and swansdown bridging the distance between...[her] gay feet rushing [forward]…as death released the spirit of the world famed aerialist.

I love that image of a soul on tiptoe, rushing forward laughingly along a thread of light into the next world.

History is the slender strand that runs in the opposite direction, allowing us to bridge time and space to connect with the lives of people we could never otherwise meet. Nearly half a century separates my birth and Millman’s death, and yet in the last week, I feel that I’ve found an inspiration, a role model—a hero—and almost a friend. I hope that I learn to laugh in life and dance as fearlessly as she did.

Still, in spite of that sense of connection I gained by immersing myself in all the literature I’ve collected, I leave this excursion into the past still longing to truly meet Bird Millman. If ever I get a chance to meet my heroes in heaven, I hope Bird Millman is there.

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¹ Scott Labarge. (2005). "Heroism: Why Heroes are Important." Ethics Outlook. https://.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicsoutlook/2005/heroes.html
² Special thanks to the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center for supplying me with a wonderful packet of Bird Millman resources and references.

Note: The quotes and snippets came from more than a dozen sources. The former academic in me is unsettled by my lack of individual citations, but laziness is winning out over precision, and, as this is a blog, I’m hoping that this laxness can slide. Anything not my own should be in quotes, and I will gladly find and provide specific citations on request.

A New Rope

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A little rope to tie the world together.

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As a first step toward my summer goal of rigging a basic tightrope, I purchased the all important first component: the rope. Through internet research I learned that the low-stretch, high strength ropes ideal for tightrope and slackrope are generally manufactured for marine rigging. Living a good 700 miles from an ocean and nearly 100 from the nearest real marina and large body of water, this purchase was yet another new adventure for me. At LFS Marine & Outdoor’s online store I found my impressive Samson Amsteel rope: dyneema fiber (“The World’s Strongest Fiber”), size for size the strength of steel but at 1/7th the weight, flexible, and spliceable, non-rotational/torque free, and less than 1% elongation.

It’s so pretty.

I‘m still working on obtaining the necessary additional hardware—and technical knowledge to use said additional hardware—for tensioning the rope as a tightrope. For now, my shiny new rope is serving quite creditably as a slackrope.

My second slackrope session was a lot of fun—and considerably more successful than my first attempt. Slackrope is easier on a non-stretch, non-rotational rope: the rope still pitched me off, but unlike my first rope, it didn’t roll out from under my foot unexpectedly and snap up at me.

This time I was able to walk forward and backward, sit down, and stand up. One last trick was laying down. I haven’t quite acquired the elegance and attitude of historical slackroper Oceana Renz, but I had fun mimicking her reclining pose—a pose said to be ideal to “exhibit her beauty without too much exertion.”

Actually it was quite comfortable.

It’ll take a while to get comfortable and confident on slackrope, but I’m going to enjoy breaking in my new rope.

Redefining Success

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“[To create] interior conditions for exterior achievements…[Do not aim] to perform a move successfully but, rather, to discover a ‘consistent feeling’…an index of interiority.”
~Duncan Wall, The Ordinary Acrobat, page 86.

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In the last few weeks I’ve had the chance to introduce a few friends to slacklining and balance pipe. It was rewarding not only to share my passion, but also in watching my friends’ first steps—shaky uncertain steps—and to remember: to remember what it was like three years ago when I was just beginning, to remember how hard it was, to remember those first victories, and to remember those early lessons.

Honestly, my first experiences slacklining were highly disappointing: I’d wanted to try for longer than I could remember, I’d been in love with the idea since I was a child. I wanted to walk back and forth free from the ground. I wanted to turn and kneel, jump and dance. The reality: I could hardly stand up, let alone walk; when I put my foot on the line it shook wildly, and the more I told my foot to hold still, the more wildly the line oscillated.

Plenty of things in my life have come easy; I’ve just done them—no fuss, no muss, I just went ahead and did it. This, obviously, was not going to be one of those things: rope walking is a slowly learnt skill, often with very little visible success early on, which was—and is—a difficult thing for a perfectionist like myself to swallow. This has forced me to radically change how I define success—because if success is never wavering, flailing or falling, I’ve been a complete failure ever since that first time I tried to stand on a slackline.

Knowing the pitfalls of my perfectionist tendencies, I decided to keep it simple: I decided that mounting (stepping up) and getting my other foot on the line to take one additional step was a “success.” If I could do that much consistently, the rest would come. It was a goal that focused me on persistence aimed at consistency and proper technique, an ideal small goal that lays the foundation for the broader and bigger goals.

That minimal goal also kept me motivated—a failed attempt took less than 10 seconds (prep, breath, step up, flail, fall, return), and I could immediately recommit and try again to achieve a success. For more than two weeks I kept that goal, slacklining almost every day. I frequently fell off before I ever got my other foot onto the line, but I got better. Often enough I went more than a step; occasionally I even went the length of the line. That was bonus; one solid step was success.

Those simple goals that redefine success as something readily achievable and build up naturally to bigger successes really do work. After weeks of sticking to my one step goal, the day came when the line shook under my foot, I told it to stop…and it did. It was a magical moment. I hope to be present someday when that moment happens for a friend of mine so I can see their faces. And you friends are always welcome to invite yourselves along for a balance session—and no worries about judgments on my part if you’re awkward and fall off constantly. I’ve been there. I’ve done that—and quite thoroughly. I remember.

I’ve tried to hold on to that early lesson even as I’ve progressed. Sometimes to keep myself motivated, I have to focus simply on putting in the time, and trying to find that consistent feeling, rather than focusing on any readily visible or measurable definition of success. Suddenly all those clichés about “finding joy in the journey” make so much more sense.  I balance because I love trying as much as I love the capstone achievements. Success has been redefined as persistence, enjoying the practice, and finding that index of interiority—making my balance internal and instinctive.

Doing the Chongo!

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Don't you fight it 'til you tried it, do that [chongo] beat
~Gloria Estefan, Conga

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Oh wait, my bad; conga…chongo…not exactly the same thing. But I needed a song for my victory dance when I mastered the chongo.

The chongo mount, or simply “chongo,” is a specific way of mounting (getting up on) a slackline without using anything but the slackline itself. Going from sitting to standing is no easy feat in rope walking and there are quite a few ways to do it. In my opinion almost any high mount is daunting if not downright counterintuitive in the beginning; it’s just not normal trying to stand up with nothing to grab onto or step up on. I’ve worked on several mounts for wire and slackline, but, until the All Girls Slackline Festival, I’d resisted learning chongo. The instructions for a chongo in my How to Slackline! book were clear enough, the issue was my phobia of any move or trick that involved having my hands on the line. I’ve felt like my hands work against the rest of my body, jerking the line out from under me or pulling me off balance. I’m working through this issue slowly but surely.

Learning chongo wasn’t just about pushing myself outside my comfort zone, it was practical and even important. At the Festival, one of the things that definitely scared me out of attempting to walk on the highline was how, when prepping for one of my regular mounts, I felt like my legs were precariously tangled in the leash. Funny isn’t it? I was scared of the safety equipment more than the heights involved in highlining. Chongo is probably the best way to mount a highline wearing a safety leash because legs are less likely to get tangled in the leash if the mount isn’t successful.

I want to highline, so it’s time to stop fighting and try chongo. For the last two weeks when I’ve slacklined for my lunch break, I’ve set my slackline much higher than usual: chest or shoulder high at the anchors. Sitting near the anchors, I could straddle the line without my feet touching the ground to really practice mounts as if I was high up.

This week my chongo feels good and solid, and just like any new skill, mastering it makes me want to do a little victory dance. Queue the theme music! …and do that chongo mount!

The Best of Both Worlds

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“Keep my feet on ground, and my head in the clouds.”
~Time of Your Song by Matisyahu

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Flying trapeze is often thought of as the quintessential circus discipline. I can’t remember the time when I couldn’t hum along to, “He flies through the air with the greatest of ease …” ¹

Flying, twisting, and spinning through the air is certainly a feat that captures the imagination. In spite of how cool the idea of flying trapeze is, the thought of actually doing it doesn't appeal to me—letting go of the bar, tumbling through the air toward a catcher I can’t even always see…nope, no way. Thank you very much, I’d rather dance through the air going higher and higher, as the daring young girl on a great long tightwire.

Highwire to me seems like the best of both worlds: walking in the clouds with feet firmly planted on a sturdy (if narrow) wire. It might not be the ground, but it is something—a very real something.

I’m still so far from that goal; my practice is—literally—very grounded and my dreams are anything but. No surprise: in order to achieve my highwire ambitions, I need to find a balance between, as author Mike Robbins described it, “the yin and yang energies of dreaming and doing” – between “thinking about big goals, dreams, and ideas” (head in the clouds) and “staying grounded in reality, taking practical action and keeping things real” (feet on the ground).

The last few weeks especially have been a time for me to re-evaluate how well my head and my feet are connected on this journey of mine. The prompts in Mike Robbins’ blog post Keep Your Head in the Clouds and Your Feet on the Ground were helpful for that evaluation:

1. Notice where you are on this spectrum.
   On average I definitely tend to be a thinker, a dreamer, a fantasizer. Now I want to realize those big dreams.
2. Allow yourself to focus on your dreams.
   That’s what this blog is all about! With dreams that sometimes seem bigger than me, it’s easy to lose sight of them. The time I spend crafting my thoughts to share with you really does help, as does having a record of those thoughts.
3. Take intentional and effective action.
   This was the big one for me. It’s time for summer goal setting. Here’s what I’ve come up with: #1: learn to rig a basic tightwire—it’s time for more than close substitutes, #2: take a beginning ballet class for poise and performance flair, #3: get comfortable on longer slacklines to prepare for more highlining, #4: conquer full turns and spin walks by practicing daily: both have been my nemesis this last year.
4. Get good support and feedback.
   You, readers, are awesome support! As I’ve opened up and shared my dream and obsession with friends—and even strangers—the outpouring of support and enthusiasm has done my heart good. Part two though still needs attention: I lack good sources of feedback since I train solo so much. I’m not quite sure what to do about this right now. I guess that will be summer goal #5: find an avenue for feedback.
5. Have fun!
   Now that, I can do. Fun, happiness, and serenity are what draw me to balance.

With this balance of goals to keep me grounded and dreams to give my heart wings, I hope to make progress toward my goal of highwire—make progress toward experiencing that best of both worlds: my feet gliding firm and steady on the wire, heart reveling in the joyful abandon of walking in the sky. While it isn't always easy for me to balance those dreams with what I need to do in the here and now in order to achieve them, I have to believe it’s possible. After all, I firmly believe in my ability to navigate and master even the most daunting of balance challenges.

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¹ The song was inspired by acrobat Jules Leotard—the inventor of the flying trapeze…who also did indeed popularize the one piece, skin-tight item of clothing named after him: the “leotard.”

Beautiful Day, Beautiful Dress

I have a beautiful new summer dress—with a full skirt that is a dream to twirl in, perfect for skipping, dancing...and balancing.   An idyllic early summer Sunday afternoon with blue skies, white clouds, and green mountains was the perfect backdrop for a photo op—especially when I saw not one but two balance challenges on my drive home from church. I couldn't resist!

When I drove past a green, green field and saw the irrigation pipes suspended over the crop, I was astounded that I hadn't thought to walk this before. It was time to fix that oversight!

After over half a dozen trips back and forth from my camera (setting for time delayed photos) to the pipe, my friend Stacie happened by and helped take some of the photos.

The other photo op was a handrail outside my old highschool and the rec center where I swim.  It's a high rail with no middle bar to step up on.  I didn't think it was possible to mount—decently—in a dress...until I got this one.  There is so much fabric in the skirt that not only can I hold the sides up to my head and still have the center hanging loose and free, I can also hop up and straddle the rail and still have the skirt fall to my ankles on either side—and from there I can mount, still modest. Yep, I love this dress.

 I also love this rail.  It's high enough to keep me motivated not to fall.

Blue dress, blue sky, even a blue rail. Beautiful summer blues, beautiful summer balance.