The Aerial Alchemist

Episode 44: Where Did the Nuance Go?

• Fallon Voorheis-Mathews • Episode 44

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SPEAKER_01

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. Welcome to the Aerial Alchemist, episode number 44. Today we're gonna get into some controversial talks. Uh, before we do, reminder that Circ and Spook tickets are on sale. Come and see us on 8 8, August 8th at the Savoy in Denver. It's gonna be such a fun time. We've got a live auction and a silent auction this year. We have our Skypour that is available. That is an add-on this year, so it doesn't come with any of the tickets like it did last year. You just get to add it on to any of the tickets. So anybody is able to do that. But go ahead and add that on so we know how much champagne to get. Uh so that's at when you're checking out, scroll down to add-ons and add it on. What else? Aerial performances, obviously. We've got both spotlighted and ambient. We've got like literally every single apparatus happening. We've got straps and silks and sling and trapeze and coffin. And I'm probably missing one, but that's what we're doing. Uh all spooky, spooky for summer ween. We're we're ready. We're ready for the spooky season. I don't know about you, but it has been too hot since I got back from Italy, where, you know, there was this unprecedented heat wave, and now back at home in Colorado, and it has been so hot, like record-breaking highs, and I'm and I'm ready for some cooler weather and the spooky season, which is unusual for me. I usually really enjoy summer. And not that I'm not enjoying it. I just would love a little break from the heat. It's just a little too much for me this year. So August 8th at the Savoy, 4 to 6:30. Join us for cocktails and light bites and aerial performances. And people are asking me how to dress. Well, dress up, of course, so that you're feeling all snazzy. It is a gala. And it's a spooky gala. So you want to come in your best vampire glam, do that. Uh, if you just want to get dressed up, whatever you feel good in, that's what you should come in. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what everybody else thinks, so long as you feel awesome. That's what we want you to be. So you know where to find, you know where to find the links. I'll put it in the show notes. And yeah, and we'll see you there. So let's jump in today. I'm nervous. I'm just gonna go ahead and and name it and tame it. I'm a little nervous about what we're talking about today, and I'll talk about why. I've said before that sometimes like I'll gather my thoughts and then I'll put them into a robot to like organize them for me, put it in an order. And I tried doing that for this one, and it's just it's not hitting for me. And my brain, I'm going through some stuff in my personal life, as I've alluded to, which I will eventually be ready to talk about. I'm just not yet. And and so my brain's just like it feels a little scrambled in here, which is why I feel like even more nervous to talk about this because I don't want it to come out like a wrong way or the way that I don't intend it. But we're gonna do it anyways. And yeah, here we go. So I was listening to the Audacity Works podcast a few weeks ago by Rachel, and it was actually right after I had seen the thing, the thing that had happened. Uh, it was right after the 4th of July. She said it. I'm gonna say it because you can Google it. You probably already saw it. Everybody saw it. So Circ Mechanics decided to perform at the great, what was it, the great American State Fair event. I wasn't even following any of this. So I'll briefly catch you up. It was a event that was originally sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts. And then come to find out after people had signed their contracts and were gonna do the thing, it turned out to be put on by the Trump administration. And several of the artists who were performing pulled out once they found that out. Cirque Mechanics was not one of them. And they performed and there was a big backlash about it in the circus community. And so that's that's what we're talking about today. I'm gonna start. Rachel has already talked about it and given her point of view on the circumstance. And I I agree with what she said, and I feel like I have another little bit of perspective and a little bit more I wanted to say about it. So I will link her episode in the show notes so you can go listen to it. I thought it was very good. And I'm following her her bravery in doing so. Because the thing that I want to say to add to this, uh, I I reached out to Rachel after I heard that episode and I said, Hey, that was like such a good episode. You you captured so many things that I was thinking and feeling when I saw what was happening on the internet with this circus company. And she said, Oh my God, thank you so much for saying that. I almost didn't publish it because I was so scared of what would happen, of what people would say about me. And maybe I would lose my following, I would lose like my business. Because at the end of the day, this is like, this is our business when we are performing. And, you know, if we get canceled because of our thoughts, opinions, feelings, that can get in the way of it. And that's a scary thing. And so that's that's my first kind of point about all of this is I'm so I'm so saddened at that world that we live in that we can't have an opinion about something that is differing from anyone else's without this very real fear that people will cancel us, that we won't, that we will lose important people in our life, that we will potentially lose our income, that we lose our support in our community. That is so it's so sad to me that that's where we're living, that we have come to a place where we no longer see the human on the other side. And instead of approaching with curiosity, we immediately shut down anything that isn't in our little echo chamber of it aligning exactly with what we believe, then we immediately have to push it away and put those walls up. And what is that doing to our art as we're creating? And what is it doing to us as humans? Are we able to live our most authentic selves and our most authentic lives in that state? It's so it's so upsetting to me. And it's so ingrained in our culture right now. And so maybe this episode is is less about the thing that happened, more about that. We'll see what where what direction I go in. And this maybe is a couple of episodes, but that is where I'm coming from. I do think maybe it's important up front for me to say my values and what I believe. Uh, you've heard me talk about community a lot. I believe in community, I believe in supporting each other, I believe in lifting each other up no matter who they are. And there are lines there, right? When I say that, I of course mean no matter your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, any of that stuff. I of course mean that. But the really touchy button right now is the political orientation in this country. And I live in a in a place that's mostly blue. And I like that. But it's not all the way blue. There's a lot of red around here, and you know what? There's a lot of purple. And if I'm being very honest, I'm I'm purpley in a lot of ways. And my experience with the fire has done that to me. I no longer trust any sort of government, red or blue. And so do with that information what you will. I'm always happy to have conversations, but being in this place that has political diversity, right? I do have friends who believe different things than I do and voted in different ways than I did. And what I have found and what I have done is to instead of shutting down, starting to get curious. I'm gonna reference this book yet again, but Unbound, A Woman's Guide to Power by Kasha Urbanayak. She talks about when you start feeling the resistance, when someone says or does something that you immediately resist to, clock that, note that, and then start getting curious. Curious about yourself and curious with them, start asking questions. So that's what I've done. When I've had people that I work with, nurses that I worked with, who the first time Trump was elected had voted for him, and I could not wrap my head around it. How on earth can a nurse vote for that? And these were kind, caring people that I worked with for years that I knew. So what did I do? There were people that we worked with that found that out and just shut them out and just stopped talking to them. That gets us nowhere. And so instead, I had conversations with them. Tell me about that. Tell me more about that. Why are you okay with that? Here's how I see it. How do you see it? And I am still friends with those people. Actually, I work with some of them again. And they're kind, caring humans and they believe they're doing the right thing. And I think if we can start to wrap our heads around the fact that people think that they are doing the right thing and it shows up in a weird way, and we are programmed in different ways. And some of us have done better about breaking that down. And if we can meet it with kindness, that's where the change happens. Because right now, the way I see it is we've got two polar opposite sides, and no one's extending the olive branch, and no one's coming across to be like tell me more. I can see you're hurting. I can see this is happening, but how can we find like a middle ground here? What do we have in common here? And I want to say that I'm not excusing any of the horrific behavior that's happening in this country, and it is horrific. And I'm actively doing things to fight against that, and we can be kind to each other. So when it came to this whole controversy with cirque mechanics, I originally just saw their apology post, if that's what you want to call it, and read through it, and I was like, oh no, I okay. And I started reading the comments, and that's where I got really sad. Because I see I see it from several different ways. And listen, I'm not gonna condone nor shame them for the decision that they made. That is their decision that that they made with the information that they had, and I believe that they believe made the best decision they could in the moment. And we don't have the whole story, we never will. But I can make some speculations as a business owner. So, not knowing who hired you. They hired you, they offered you this big stage with a good amount of money. They offer you rate, are you gonna turn that down? And I want you to be honest with yourself. Some of us come from a place of privilege where we can turn things down, some of us don't. Some of us really are stretching the funds and have to pay rent and have to put food on the table, and that may be the only way that we could do it. And if they're paying your rate or more, please, please be honest with yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Would you not take it? And again, I don't condone or shame you for that.

SPEAKER_01

It's all your decision. And something that Rachel said is that she has had gigs where she showed up, realized that she was not in the room that she thought she was, because she lives in the south, but that's probably like a lot of the gigs. And what are you gonna do? Just pack up your stuff and go?

unknown

No.

SPEAKER_01

No, you're gonna just do your gig, you're gonna take your money, and you're gonna go. And then can we talk about the money? If they're paying like a very good rate, which I'm I'm assuming they were, I don't know that they were or not, but if they're paying a good rate for what you're doing, isn't that just like taking their resources so that they have less to spend on those other bad things that they are doing? Just saying? Is that a bad thing? Something else that was mentioned on Rachel's podcast too was going into that space as someone who is inclusive, who is kind, who is warm and welcoming, and on the other side, which is kind of just speaking to my point too. Do you think that maybe we could change minds that way? I just feel like all of this is we don't fight fire with fire. It doesn't mean negating your values or your beliefs. But I don't think performing at a Fourth of July event goes against that. Inherently at the core of it, if that makes sense. The other little piece that like I'll come from like the business owner is how many mouths do I have to feed? I want to make sure that my artists have work so that they can pay their bills. And if I had been offered a very large event with a very good paycheck that would pay a lot of my dancers, again, are we gonna not take it because the person paying you believes something different than you do? I just think there's a lot of nuance in all of this, and I don't think that there is any right or wrong. In my brain, for most things in life, they are not black and white. Things are not black and white, they they are nuanced, and several things can be true at once. And I think what has come into our culture is this very black and white, and then let's shut it down.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm I'm just gonna ask you the question, where has that gotten us? Has it gotten us to a place that you like that feels good?

SPEAKER_01

I know the answer for me, I don't know the answer for you. And the last thing that I want to say about this is that when it came to this situation in particular, this is a circus company who is part of our community and getting backlash for their decision from our community. And I just want to remind you that we are on the same team, we are on the same side. And if we start fighting against each other, how are we ever gonna overcome the stuff that we're fighting against? It's something that I've been saying for years, and I feel like this happened, I don't know, eight, eight, ten years ago. There was this feeling of it was, I think for me it was like I really saw it in the LGBTQIA when we started adding all of the extra alphabets and making sure everybody was included. And I'm not disagreeing with that, but it had gotten to the point where people in our community were pushing so hard that they were ending up excluding the same people in the community. And in doing so, not getting anywhere, like because the the point is, is we're all on the same team, we're all on the same side in this community. And just because I'm just gonna use this as an example, if I messed up someone's pronouns unintentionally and then getting lashed against about that because I'm human and I make mistakes, instead of meeting it with kindness or a gentle correction, we would get a lash out. And then people were terrified to say anything at all. And then we just shut down and stopped talking. That's a micro example of kind of like a bigger thing that I'm talking about. And I do believe that that has fully like evolved and gotten so much better as time has gotten on. I think people have seen that. So I'm I'm hopeful that that maybe that can permeate throughout the rest of this and people can start to realize that this is not working for us. Us canceling people and shutting people down because they believe something different is not working for us. And do I believe that there are very bad people doing very bad things that I will not stand for? Absolutely. But but I don't think most people are like that. I think most people want what's best for each other and are really just trying to do the right thing. Even if it's misguided. And so remembering to see the human on the other side. The human that you're talking to, even if it's through the internet, especially if it's through the internet, please remember that there is a human just like you on the other side, a whole ass human with thoughts and feelings and emotions and nuance on the other side. And if our whole thing is about being empathetic and kind and caring for all people, then do that. Then be that. That's all I have to say today. I hope you don't cancel me after this, and if you do, then that's what it is. I accept my fate. But I am going to edit this and I am going to post it and I'm gonna do it scared. Because that's what Christine reminds me to do. Do it afraid. I think we need more authenticity in this world. I think we need more uh nuance, and I'm gonna do that. I'll be one of them doing it. And I hope, I hope you'll join me. I really do. That's all for today. If you uh have requests for future episodes, if you have thoughts about this, please, like let's have a discussion. My goodness, I would love that. You can reach me on all of the social medias at in the wings Ariel or on Patreon at in the wings Ariel. And speaking of Patreon, thank you to my patrons. Thank you for standing with me. Thank you for supporting me in all the ways, always. I hope you have a beautiful week. I will see you next week. This has been the Arial Alchemist. Now go create some magic of your own. Happy flying.