Episode 25: The Space Between

Announcements:

CAAS

Flourish Retreat in Italy with myself and Leah Grandstaff

Also mentioned:

Audacity Works: In Defense of Phoning it In

Connect with Fallon

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 🌐 www.inthewingsaerial.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to The Aerial Alchemist, where movement transforms into magic and stories take flight. I'm Fallon, dancer, aerialist, and storyteller, inviting you into a world where circus and dance meet creativity, resilience, and community. Whether you're here to be inspired, to learn, or to simply dream a little bigger, you found your place. I'm glad you're here. I'm really excited to talk about today, uh, prompted by a Reddit thread that I saw, and uh I'm ready to to discuss it. Uh, but first, a couple of announcements. As always, uh Colorado Aerial Arts Summit is happening the 27th through the 29th. You're hearing this on the 17th. So we're like 10 days out. How exciting is that? Why have you not signed up yet? Have you? Good. I can't wait to see you there. There's the instructor showcase on Friday, and then all the workshops throughout the weekend, all sorts of different things. Workshops that you typically wouldn't see in a class. That's kind of the the deal there. Is that things that you wouldn't get in a class that are maybe more specialized or deeper dive into something as opposed to like high-level stuff? So I hope to see you there. It's gonna be a great time. We have our aerial retreat in Italy flourish happening June 19th through the 25th. We are just about three months out and I am going to explode with excitement. I I hope that we get a few more people there. If you're listening and you want to come, do it. If you have questions, email me, DM me. Uh I want to answer them for you. It's a creation-based retreat. So it'll be myself with Leah. She is known as at Leotard Wedgie on the Instagrams. I will link her so you can check out her stuff. She's also posted stuff of us working together. Um, we are teaching at Cast together as well. And then, of course, hosting the retreat together. So there's some snippets of us being goofy and silly and figuring things out, and it's very cool. Anyways, we will be in Italy doing Ariel-based creation retreat. If you've never done Ariel, that's cool. We got you. It's all levels. If you've done it for 20 years, we got you. This is for everybody. Everybody will get something out of it. We so promise. And we'll be doing it in the Italian country countryside. Uh, there's a pool on site. It will be warm when we are there. Let's let's get out of here for a while and escape the hellscape that we are living in. Cannot wait. All the links in in the show notes for you so you can get more information, and I'm happy to answer anything for you as well. Just reach out. So let's dive in. If you are watching on Patreon today, you may see that it's a little dark in dark in here. The wind is wild today, as it does get around here. Fires have sparked. Um, there are some like dust, dirt storms that are causing accidents. I drove through one. Anyways, so all this wind and my power went out. So I am recording this on what battery I have left on my computer, and we're gonna get it done today, anyways. And then I thought, hmm, I'll just light some candles. And I thought I was gonna have to go upstairs and bring a bunch of candles down. Turns out I got a ton already in my office, and so it's very moody in here, wouldn't you say? I like it. And I have at least four or five different scents happening too, so sensory overload. So if I seem a little wild today, I have I have that going on. And the the wind is always very triggering for me. Uh, and it's it's really especially crazy today. We have a big stock tank that we had raised our chickens in that was outside, and that got blown across the yard. Our patio furniture is all over the yard. I'm hearing the like covers. My office is in the basement of her house, and the cover of the window well has been like banging around all day. So yeah, just a little triggering, but I'm gonna hopefully focus here for the next, you know, 15-20 minutes and uh get to chat with you today. So, like I said, this was sparked by a Reddit thread that I had seen, and it was someone who had posted they're new to Ariel on the Lyra, and they posted just a little flow that they had done and seemingly to me was asking for feedback, and I might have misread that. And if this is you and you're listening to this and I misread that, I apologize for offering feedback that was unwarranted if if I completely misread your post, because given your reply, I thought maybe I did. But what I had seen is uh a new student on a Lyra who who maybe is not giving themselves enough grace because they are anybody who gets on these things is strong, period. I don't care about anything, any other part of the equation. If you can lift yourself into the air, you age strong human. And you should be proud of yourself for doing that and getting up and doing the hard thing because there are so many people who are unwilling to do that, who do not have the courage to do that. So kudos to you. And what I also saw is someone who was hitting the poses and getting straight to the poses and holding them for a second and then getting straight to the next pose. And there is nothing wrong with this. And what I wanted to point out is something that I see with almost every new student that I teach. And it is what happens in between the poses, the space between the poses, the transitions, the entries and the exits, and the stillness that is in there, everything that is not that mermaid or star position or whatever it is that you're doing and getting from point A to point B. And sometimes that's the most important thing. And I remember my first instructors also like trying to convey this to me. And I remember it was a a difficult thing. I did an exercise. So my one of my first aerial teachers had us do this exercise where we had a sequence that we, you know, had to come up with, whatever it was, it didn't matter. Truly didn't matter. We had the sequence, and then she said, Cool, I want you to perform that sequence, and I don't, I don't care about the skills you're doing. I want you to pay attention to every moment in between, every grab, every hook, every movement in between those poses. And I didn't really understand it until later. And I had my students do this a week or two ago, and they kind of looked at me like I was crazy too. And then it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, you might, you just might not understand what I'm asking you tonight, but you're gonna do it and find something in there. The thing that I remember so clearly still, this and this was 15 years ago. The thing that I remember so clearly about that exercise was just my hand reaching up from I was on a trapeze from the bar to the rope and just being so intentional about this grab and about this reach up and what that looked like. And that was the point. I didn't really understand it in the moment, but that was the point of this intentionality in every single moment. And coming back to this new student that had posted, what I also realized, and I realize as I'm teaching all the time with beginners, is that new students are so, I don't know what the right word is. They're focused on getting to the thing and doing the thing correctly. And again, there is nothing wrong with this. This is all part of the process, this is all part of the journey, uh, and it's all important. But the but the instinct is to just like hurry up and get to it. And in doing so, what they unintentionally do is waste a ton of energy that they don't realize. And so when I have my students go, oh, you made that look so easy, how'd you make that look so easy? I was intentional and I was lazy and not really lazy. I am efficient because I've learned that I don't need to grab three times here, I can grab one time, or by using my momentum. If I throw my leg down here, it lifts up my torso. So I don't have to hoist myself up by doing mini pull-ups. I can like use a more efficient pathway into it. So this is what I'm talking about with that space between in so many ways. Like the art of it, for sure, of like make it interesting, because I truly don't care if you can do all these skills, if they just look like you just mashed them together and the in-between part is a hot mess. Like as an audience member, what? Like, no, no one wants to watch that, right? They want to see like intentionality throughout, not just in the poses or in the skills that you have. And then on top of that, it's making it easier for you if you can make it more efficient. And we do that by focusing on it, right? So when you are training in open gym or especially in class, I mean, just whenever you are training, um really start to focus on that space in between. If you're somebody who struggles with this, like focus on the in-between bits. And if you feel like, well, if I do that, my teacher is gonna think that I'm not focusing on the skill. I mean, maybe, and have that conversation with them. I'm sure they'd be super open to like, hey, I really want to work more on my transitions. Never once have I had a student come to me and say, Hey, can you help me with my transitions? Nope. Nope. I think that in the aerial community, we are so like skills-based and tricks based that we forget about all the rest of it. It's all about getting that new skill and that takes priority over everything else. And the thing that like I will the hill I'll die on is that that's the least important part if you want to perform, if you want to make a living out of it. And if you don't, that's fine. And you just want to like like Pokemon and collect, collect all the Pokemon, do that. This, I mean, this is this whole life is made up. Everything's made up. You should just do what makes you happy. But if if something, if performing or perfecting or elevating it in a new way, because I'll tell you at some point you will have all the Pokemon that you desire, but you'll still desire to be pushed and get better, then this is where you start looking. So just a few other thoughts about how to train, train this part. Like I said, there's this exercise where it's like, don't even focus, like have your sequence, but don't focus on the poses in this sequence. Focus on everything else. Another thing is to slow down. Oh my god. The amount of times that I have to tell people to slow down. Always. I encourage you always to video yourself. You'll learn so much by that because you'll feel like you're moving very slow in the air and holding poses long enough and whatever. You like you never are, ever. Especially if you have a spin. Oh my gosh, because now we're seeing it from like, you know, 360 degrees, and I see all these different angles and I can and I can appreciate it for longer. So I'm just gonna, this is kind of kind of off topic. But if you are in a spin, my recommendation is to make sure that you get at least one full rotation in each pose, if not two, depending on the speed of the spin, if not more, depending on this if it's a very, very fast spin. So yeah, and you can move so slowly. So I say hold poses, and you may, but think about how you can continue to move in a pose even if you're not moving. I know that sounds like a crazy dance teacher thing, but it's such a thing. How else can you expand and find space or contract and and create more negative space when you're in the pose? If you let's say you're in a mermaid, everybody knows a mermaid, right? Or star position. Say you're in that position, okay? You got to it. How now can you expand further? Where in your body can you expand further? I guarantee there is a space. There is always a space. And again, video yourself because you may do that and hate how it looks and maybe, oh, but if I move this other way, I think that could look nicer for whatever the pieces. I talked a week or two ago about the about fixing your face and having the dead face, the dead eyes. So not so as we're moving through, staying intentional throughout the whole thing, no dead moments. This all come this all comes back to creation. Always come flourish with me. We'll we'll do all of this stuff and it's so much fun. It's so juicy. But how can you how can you relate to your apparatus? How can you move through? That was again going back to like reaching for that trapeze rope. What did that signify for me in the moment? I don't remember actually, but I remember things that it could have been. I mean, I think at that point I was in nursing school, reaching for my goals, whatever. It can be abstract or not. It could be, sure, reaching for the rope. Is that rope a lifeline, though? Does it mean something else? Does it s symbolize something else for you? And if you're performing, it doesn't really matter if the audience gets it, but they'll see the intentionality in it. You will grab differently, things will happen differently. I feel like I've gotten off on a bit of a tangent where the beginning piece of this was more about like staying efficient in the air, and it is, but this is who I am and this is my life. I love the creation piece of it. So it always, almost always comes back to that for me. But anywho, that's what I have to say about that. I am taking a little cue from my beautiful friend Rachel Strickland, who I will link this in the show notes. Uh, she did a podcast um a couple weeks ago about the med, the minimum effective dose. And I was struggling to get on and record this podcast today, as she was that day. But as I mentioned, it's windy out. I've had a couple of things not go the way that they had planned to go today with meetings and my power and different things. I almost didn't record this podcast because I thought, well, there's no power. And then I thought, but there's still battery on your computer. Anyways, her whole point was what can you do to just count it as done? And I enjoy doing this. I enjoy chatting with you every week and sharing these little nuggets that I've gotten throughout the time. And sometimes it doesn't have to be 30 minutes, and I have to remind my recovering overachiever self of that. So maybe it's a little bit shorter today, maybe it's a little bit shorter from here on out. I don't know. But we are going to be here and we are going to do the thing. So if you made it through this far, I'm gonna challenge you this week to pick one combo that you're working on, one sequence, and then perform only the transitions. But don't worry about the rest. Record yourself, send it to me. I want to see it. Even if you think it's bad, because it's not, I promise. I want to see it. If you have requests for future episodes, please let me know. You can find me on all of the social medias at In the Wings Aerial and on Patreon at In the Wings Aerial. I want to hear them, I want to talk about them. And if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast, it would truly mean so much to me if you hit that little subscribe button and or shared it with a friend who you think might would it, who you think might would have enjoyed it. We're gonna leave that in there. That's what my day sounds like today. My brain is not firing all the way. As always, thank you to my patrons on Patreon. Thank you for standing with me. Thank you for supporting me and my work always. I could not do it without you. I love you so much. I hope you all have a beautiful week, and I will see you next week. This has been the Ariel Alchemist. Now go create some magic of your own. Happy flying.