With 10 toes gripping the platform and my stomach in knots, I grabbed the bar in front of me, took a deep breath, bent my knees and hopped off the edge — soaring through the warm summer air on a trapeze more than 20 feet above the ground.
On the swing backward, I pulled my legs up and over the bar and, dangling by my knees, arched forward to find the hands of the catcher who was swinging upside down from a second trapeze.
We made contact mid-air; she grasped my forearms, saying, “gotcha!” to let me know it was time to release my legs from the bar. With our arms locked in a sturdy grip, I floated down through the air beneath her, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
It was my first flying trapeze class at the New England Center for Circus Arts in Brattleboro, Vt. and I couldn’t believe I’d completed a catch on the first try.
“It’s an amazing eye-opener for many people about how brave they can actually be,” said Margaret Butterfield, NECCA’s flying trapeze program director and one of my coaches for the evening.
When the opportunity presented itself to take a couple of circus classes at NECCA and write a story about the experience, I literally leaped at the chance.
I was a gymnast for more than 10 years and stopped when I went to college, but miss the physical and mental challenge of the sport. Nothing compares to the thrill of completing a new trick, or the courage and determination it takes to even try it in the first place.
I was nervous on the 30-minute drive from Greenfield to Brattleboro, but it was an excited kind of nervousness. My first class was with lead coach Kate Law in NECCA’s gymnasium on the former Austine School grounds, where I’d get a crash course on the Cyr wheel and aerial fabric.
“I think in the popular mind, when you think of contemporary circus, you think of a beautiful female acrobat on red fabric,” Law said. “For most people, it’s their gateway drug into circus.”
It’s also one of the least painful pieces of circus apparatus. Others, she said, can leave performers with bruises and raw hands, which I quickly discovered during my trapeze class the following week.
The aerial fabric, divided into two pieces that hang from the ceiling, has an almost sticky texture that makes it easy to grasp. After learning how to tie a foot lock by using both feet to knot one section fabric around my foot — which I could then stand on while suspended in the air — Law guided me through a series of aerial movements.
“The founders of NECCA and head coaches are pretty well-renowned for their fabric theory and the innovations they’ve made here,” Law said. “They teach in Europe — students come from all over the world to do the professional-track training programs here.”
But total beginners, like me, can also sign up for classes. During our lesson, Law guided me through some basic skills including splits — a backward straddle and an arabesque — all while suspended from the fabric.
I wasn’t nearly as graceful as the beautiful female acrobats she had been referring to, but it was a great workout and Law was patient, going over the instructions with me as many times as I needed.
I also got a quick lesson on the Cyr Wheel, a 35-pound metal ring invented by Daniel Cyr, who graduated from the National Circus School in Montreal in the late 1990s. Standing inside the apparatus, the performer makes the wheel spin and roll while performing a variety of acrobatic moves.
Law started me off with some basic skater turns to help me learn to keep my shoulders stable while spinning in the wheel. Gripping the top of the ring with my arms forming a narrow Y, I used one foot to push off the ground — like riding a skateboard — while my other foot remained stationary on the bottom of the ring, causing the entire apparatus to turn. Once I got enough momentum, I was able to step inside the ring with my pushing foot and stand upright while it spun.
Then came the hard part — the waltz, executed by rocking from one foot to the other while spinning inside the wheel.
I watched Law demonstrate the move, my eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
Imagine a person waltzing gracefully across a ballroom floor without a partner — and wedged inside a giant ring. Or a coin spinning on its edge in slow motion. I couldn’t understand how Law was making the ring roll and turn the way it was, but she explained the movement is actually a principle of physics called angular momentum — not some sort of magic trick.
She said the goal is to spin on one foot, called your leading foot, and then add on your second foot, called your trailing foot.
“You’re basically rocking your hips in and out the wheel by straightening and bending your knees,” she said. “It’s the rocking of your hips and the tilting of the wheel that allows you to do a controlled and continuous spin.”
I could barely get my trailing foot inside the ring during our 45-minute class, but Law told me the fastest she’d ever seen a beginner successfully complete the move was after four hours of instruction.
She also spotted me for a cartwheel inside the Cyr wheel. Eyeing the hard gym floor, trying to gauge how badly it would hurt if I face-planted out of the wheel, I positioned my hands and feet inside the ring like spokes in a wheel, and turned upside down as she held rolled me through the turn.
Keeping myself in place was a weird feeling — like being spring-loaded inside the ring — and it took all my strength to stay in that position. To both of our surprise, I managed to keep all limbs inside the apparatus and complete the trick.
Law told me the Cyr wheel is starting to gain popularity in southern California as a fitness fad, because it’s great for cardio and core and shoulder strength. And I could tell — by the end of our session I was sweaty and tired, but the time flew by.
A week later, once the aching in my arm and leg muscles had subsided, it was time for my flying trapeze lesson. I headed over to the rig and joined a class of seven other beginners and a handful of more experienced students.
We stood in the grassy field while Margaret Butterfield and Henry Wheaton, two of our coaches for the evening, gave us a quick safety lesson. My gaze fell to the net. It looked reassuring. Even better, we’d be harnessed to safety lines.
Finally it was time to get flying. Wheaton belted us up — tight.
“I’m shooting for somewhere between uncomfortable and unbearable,” he told me as he cinched the strap just above my belly button.
I thought I’d swing back and forth from my hands a few times before safely falling into the net below, but the coaches had a more ambitious plan in mind.
We were told our first move would be to hang upside down. By our knees. While swinging.
My heart raced as I climbed the ladder to the 22-foot platform, trying to ignore my sweaty palms and the knots in my stomach. Once at the top and hooked into the safety lines, I grabbed hold of the trapeze with one hand. It was surprisingly heavy.
An instructor held my safety belt to keep me from falling off the edge as a leaned my hips forward. After grabbing hold with my other hand, the instructor called out, “READY!” — the cue to bend my knees.
There was no turning back.
On “HUP!” I bunny-hopped off the edge of the platform. I was soaring.
Because it’s difficult to time your tricks on the trapeze, an instructor on the ground shouts directions. That meant blocking out everything around me so I could focus solely on the instructor’s voice. That’s how I knew when it was time to bring my knees up and over the bar, and when to release my hands and arch forward.
The feeling of flying through the air was thrilling and terrifying — especially while hanging upside down. But while I was up there, everything fell away but the present moment.
“All of the things that you’re worrying or stressed about, or the list of things you have to do — that all just goes away,” Butterfield said.
She added the flying trapeze is accessible to people of all physical capabilities. During my class, there was a 66-year-old woman in the more advanced ground who began flying three years ago and lost 70 pounds.
“People who don’t think they like being physically active really end up loving it, and it helps them appreciate things their bodies can do in ways they hadn’t before,” Butterfield said.
During the lesson, I also learned how to let go of the bar and do a backflip, although I was so nervous it took me a couple of tries to actually do it. By the end of the evening, I was one of two beginners that made it to catching.
I missed Butterfield’s hands — who was swinging upside down from the other trapeze — on the second try and fell into the net below, but completing that first catch was exhilarating. My arms and abs were sore and my hands were raw by the last turn, but I wasn’t ready for it to be over.
“It’s the thrill of a lifetime,” Wheaton had told me before the class started. And he was right.
You can reach Aviva Luttrell at:
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