The Circus School 9-5 Grind

Jannis giving some helping hands

The much-anticipated time came, the time to officially begin my circus schooling. I intend for this blog to give you a glimpse of what circus school looks like. It was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. A soup made up of Jedi artistic warriors from all over the world fighting for their dreams to live a life where they could subsist off their art. My class had people from Chile, France, USA, Spain, England, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Mexico. At any point in time within the circus hall, you could see people swinging from the trapeze, juggling clubs rotating in the air, acrobats twirling and spinning across the floor, hand balancers questioning their life to be hand balancers, and the occasional epic fails—sometimes funny and harmless and sometimes extremely dangerous. The type of person that circus attracts is not always the same, but I would say that the words: intense, obsessed, disciplined, and a dash of crazy could be applied to all within it. This is what a typical day at circus school would look like...

9am-10am Physical preparation/ Group warm-up

As a class, we did a choreographed gymnastics-style flexibility routine that was done to specific music. The same one...every...single...day. At the start of the year, this warm-up alone was already very difficult for me to do. Nothing like coffee and the 'split' positions to wake ya up! My body was still very tight at this time in my life, thus to do the normal class warm up right away was too intense and brutal on my body.  Therefore, I would arrive at 8am to do my personal ashtanga inspired yoga practice so that I could warm up for the warm up.

10am - 12:30pm Specialty Training

We would then divide and train in our specific disciplines. Imagine, in a class of about 20-25 people, this meant each discipline had about 2-3 people: 2 jugglers, 2 rope artists, 2 trapezists, etc. For me, this meant handbalancing. I had one partner in suffering. Coincidentally, as I write this, I just met up with her the other day. It had been 6 years since we saw each other. We are both now traveling the world working as hand balancers. We also are both still fighting to improve in our hand balancing - some things never change. The thirst for improvement seems to never go away, especially with handbalancers (we are a fixated subgroup of people.) Our old selves would be so ecstatic! If only we could relay a message from the future telling our past selves to have a bit more self-compassion, and maybe to take a few more rest days here and there. Anyways, two and a half hours of suffering on our wrists every day, 5 days a week. I don't use the word 'suffering' lightly. Some days I wanted to cry from the wrist pain. Some days I did (secretly hehe). Some days I wanted to throw my handstand blocks through the windows due to my frustration and the countless failures that I was experiencing. I would look around and see all my friends learning badass new tricks. Yet I still was only adding milliseconds onto my holds times in the different handstand positions. My progress was almost unrecognizable. So much fucking work and so little to show for it. My teachers (ex-professional handbalancers) would look at me with a knowing smile and say something like, "Take a breath and try again." Or if they were feeling feisty, something like, "Why are you falling? It's simple - just don't fall." One teacher in particular always reminded me that 2.5 hours a day wasn't enough and that I needed to train in the evenings also. I would look at my inflamed tortured wrists and think, "How?". I never felt like I was doing enough. My visions of what I wanted seemed impossible, and every attempt at inching closer just reminded me of how far away I was. Mentally, it was daunting. Now I understand how to manage this mental pressure, but back in the day, it was slowly eating me away like a self-inflicted mind cancer. I was both the cause and the cure. However, because I'm a bit strange and need intensity to feel alive (or to feel anything at all sometimes), I absolutely loved the insanity of it all. Every day was a battle with myself, my wrists, and my ego that couldn't help but be humbled by my evident inadequacies. I was right where I wanted to be.

Scorpion

12:30pm-1:30pm Lunch

Normally by this time my body was screaming for calories. At this point in my life, I was always doing the first half of the day without food. It's quite complicated and uncomfortable to train hand balancing with a full stomach, so I would always train fasted, only fueled by coffee and soul energy. Plus, I was still battling a food fixation (I'm hesitant to say 'disorder', but maybe it was...) called orthorexia (an extreme obsession with eating 'healthy'). It seemed impossible to eat before having trained like a samurai. By the time it was lunchtime, I was always in my animal mind - fucking hungry!

The tiredness was impossible to hide.

2pm-3:30pm Physical Theater

Being that I was attending a "contemporary" circus school meant that we did a lot of mind-fuckery. I remember one class where we practiced how to be a coffee machine. Not someone who drinks coffee, but how to be the machine itself. There were so many exercises that I still don't understand even today. I suppose I wasn't ready, and maybe now I'm still not. Nonetheless, they were fun. I always had reasons to laugh at myself and others.

4pm-5:30pm Contemporary Dance or Ballet

Dance. What I needed most as an artist, but what is my kryptonite. It was true all those years ago and it's true now. We had ballet once or twice per week (I don't remember). It absolutely demoralized me. The teacher would try his best to be understanding of my lack of ability, but I knew he was always holding his tongue. I couldn't do any of the positions. I couldn't remember choreography to save my life, and to do anything on the correct rhythm of music (I had zero feel for musicality) was impossible. The class was too advanced for me and I felt that I couldn't take anything from it. On days where I had ballet I felt like I was in the wrong place and that maybe being an artist wasn't for me. I would leave class and instantly find a place in a nearby park to smoke a joint. I always needed to release myself from my own disappointment. Contemporary dance class was a different story. Less technique and more feelings. I remember one teacher said (I'm definitely paraphrasing here), "Imagine we all just took magic mushrooms together and we're finding our place within the universe together." With this input, and some emotional music on full blast, we would then dance. Many beautiful moments happened in these classes. One time at the end of an exhausting nonstop class, we as a class ended in a group hug. It was powerful. People cried. Something within us was touched. I suppose that is how to become a dancer, to be able to find that "something" within yourself (that is perhaps deeper than the 'self') and then to let it move you. Maybe it's the most powerful truth that we can tell. It's without words (which act as barriers). It's pure. Unless you've experienced this yourself this is all probably sounding like philosophical jibber-jabber that makes no sense...and maybe that is correct. None of this makes sense.

Eat, Rest, Repeat...

By the time I had finished the final class of the day, I was famished, emotionally and physically. I only had energy to go home, eat a meal that could feed a small family, and smoke the devil's lettuce. I'd pass out exhausted with all parts of my body in various degrees of pain only to wake up and do it all over again. Many days I wondered how I would manage to make it to the end. I'd show up to the handbalancing class already completely smashed. I'd relay these feelings to my teachers but they never gave me any slack (thankfully). They would say something like, "Start slow, listen to your body, but you will train today. You can rest on the weekend, but not today." They knew what it would take to get me where I wanted to go. Being gentle and resting has a proper time and place, but for the most part - you can rest when you're dead. These last words weren't theirs, they are mine.

...More or less, this is what a typical day would look like. Somedays we would have different classes that focused less on the physical training such as: anatomy, circus dramaturgy, history of circus, and some production focused classes. For me, everyday was a battle, but it was a battle that I was happy to take part in. Perhaps, I would do it all over again just to feel the intensity of it all because through intensity, I feel. Upon writing this I feel that I'm drinking a cocktail of nostalgia, wrist pain, and joy. Oh what a life this is. I never could have imagined that it would go this way and I never will be able to imagine how it will continue to unfold. Onwards ever!

"I get by with a little help from my friends"...