2 B Process overview
1. Describe your process. How did you choose your project? Why did you choose this method?
It took me a while! I thought about incorporating the silks when I first heard about the final project we should prepare, as silks training includes close to 0 % work with the floor. However, it took me five months to figure out how to combine silks and the floor in way that wouldn’t ask my students to think as much as they need to in a regular silks class. Apart from strength, silks require tons of brain work, as you don’t only need to think about what to do with your own body, but also with two tissues. And you better not fail, or you might fall. A situation that makes it quite hard to be within one’s own body, feel and breath.
2. What felt good (or provided a healthy challenge) in creating this project?
As said before, the floor is usually not a part of an aerial silks class. And although I love low flow and freestyles, using silks instead of a pole is out of my comfort zone. The tissues remain somehow unpredictable and loosing focus often leads to being strangely wrapped up within the silks. For this project, I decided to use a knot which allows the participant to not focus so much about how to not fall of the silks while allowing to access both the tissue and the floor.
3. What do you think your project offers to the viewer/ participant? (Tools for accessing a Flow State, more awareness of the floor, etc.)
My most dance-phobic participant described the experience as ‘meditative’. I introduced a way to play with the floor – something they didn’t consider to be an apparatus before – while softly pushing them out of their comfort zone. I tried to introduce not too many different tools and focused on conscious breathing and moving slowly to make them be present in their bodies, while introducing more and more contact points with the floor and one way to interact with them by pushing into the floor.
4. If there is ONE thing that you would do differently, what is it?
I would love to go a step further and have them play with un-knotted silks in the very end.
5. What did you learn from this experience that you will apply to your own training or teaching?
There is always a way to play & slowing down opens up tons of new possibilities. Even if the floor probably won’t be a regular part of my silks classes (it definitely is in my pole classes!), I encourage finding stillness and play within wraps that allow for it much more.
2 C Summary
How do I get my rather floor- and dance-phobic aerial silks students to PLAY? Aerial silks are pretty demanding for body both & mind, my goal was to make my students curious about an apparatus much more consistent than tissues: the floor.