February 2012 Activity -- Static Trapeze

Dilettante Kathleen and what may be her new LinkedIn
profile picture.

Trapeze School of New York
Sunday, February 19th
7:00pm-8:00pm
4th St & Tingey St SE
Washington, DC 20003
www.washingtondc.trapezeschool.com

Cost: With the application fee, it came to $46.666666 per person.
Dilettante Amanda (who registered our group for the class) requested that we reimburse her with exact change.

Call us perceptive -- we assume that the Trapeze School has had a lot of people showing up for class and thinking they were going to participate in a completely different class:

Please Note:You have signed up for static trapeze. Please note that static trapeze is very different from flying trapeze. The trapeze bar doesn't move, and you don't swing toward a catcher. What you've seen on TV is flying trapeze. If you meant to sign up for flying trapeze, please call the office immediately at (410) 459-6839

>sigh< as much as we love any activity that involves "swinging" and "catchers," we decided that static was the smarter option for our first foray into the circus arts. (Well, for most of us it was the first foray, there was that drunken "summer o' Carnies" for Dilettante Amy when she was in college, but she really doesn't like to talk about that.)

Dilettante Amanda doing a very graceful "mermaid." Interestingly, after
she performed this, she saved a handsome prince from drowning and
then gave up her beautiful voice to become human. It was odd.

Walking into the tent was pretty cool. There were different areas for all of the different activities that are taught there -- static trapeze, flying trapeze and silks (long silk panels you use to perform acrobatic stunts like in Cirque du Soleil). Dilettantes Amy and Kathleen drove together and arrived first and got to sit an enjoy the stunts being performed by the flying trapeze class.

(Aside: What's the difference between a circus and a sorority? One is a cunning array of stunts... You're welcome.)

Dilettante Amy doing a very nice "Moscow Angel."
(As far as we know, that is not also the name of a cocktail. Though, it should be.)
This was by far, the most difficult stunt we did. It took Dilettantes Kathleen and Amanda
two tries. Only one for overachiever Amy.

Dilettante Amanda walked in a few minutes later and our instructor, Jess, got us busy right away doing a warm up on the mats and then jumping right into trapeze. Our first stunt involved us pulling ourselves up on the bar, kicking our legs through and then doing the splits upside-down. Yes, the first stunt. It only got more challenging from there. And more fun. The more complex the stunt, the more exciting it was and the more we felt like Superstars when we had done it.

(Highlight: we got to put talc on our hands before every stunt. It all felt so official.)

In the first half hour, we did a lot of activities that required us to pull ourselves up on the bar and then pull our legs through. For the second half of the class, Jess lowered the bar (literally, not figuratively) and had us perform stunts that had us starting from a seated position and then standing and doing some progressively more difficult positions. We all were able to do every stunt and got much better from the beginning to the end of class -- a class that was the perfect length of just one hour.

Ta-dah!

Jess was an amazingly patient instructor who instilled us with confidence and made every single stunt look ridiculously graceful and simple.

After a cool down, we headed out to dinner. And because Dilettante Amanda had spent the prior two days at a Belgian beer festival in Baltimore (because she loves alliteration) and Dilettante Kathleen had gone to a Belgian beer garden for brunch (it's addictive), all of the Dilettantes decided that Belga Cafe would be the best place to go for dinner and drinks after. Over some fantastic beer and mussels, we all decided this activity (and evening) was easily one of our favorites.