Aussielicious

Now that I’ve started back at the new term of aerial silks classes as of last night, it’s time to start (finally) putting my new routine together. It’s been a long time in the planning this routine. The very talented Dan Murphy put together a custom mash-up for me to do the routine to. In the past I’ve noticed I perform better when I have a stronger costume and character to hide behind than if it’s essentially just me up there. It also helps to rehearse a bit.

So to go with the mashup of Freeek by George Michael and Erotica by Madonna, I’m putting together a bit of a fetish costume. Now I’m not usually into rubber, leather or “gear” fetish stuff, but through Sue over at Fairview I came across Slick It Up. So far I’ve got myself the Tactical Guard top which instantly does make you feel sexy. To go with it I think I’ll be getting myself some of the Sports Tights complete with the mesh arse in them.

Francois Sagat has used custom designed Slick It Up gear in his new porn directorial debut “Incubus” and it looks hot. The guy that runs Slick It Up is also uber hot and models some of the gear himself on their site. If you are into rubber/leather/mesh gear, go and have a look.

Last night was the last night of term for aerial silks and my routine went disastrously so I’m scrapping that routine for the time being and on the hunt for something new. I want to do a really sexy routine but finding the music is always a tough one. I was thinking of Madonna’s Erotica but while it’s very sexy, it’s not as ballsy as I want. It’s amazing that it was so shocking at the time but now it’s sexy but hardly scandalous.

Last Monday I got stuck at work late and didn’t get to class. The week before I was sick. So it was really good to get there tonight and haul my butt up and down the silks again. There’s a trick we learnt tonight that I really want to master because it has quite a lot of wow factor if it’s done well.

A mate of mine Steven has auditioned for Australia’s Got Talent along with his aerials partner and their routine for the audition was beautiful and elegant and also had a bit of that dangerous wow factor. Enjoy.

Last weekend the circus school I go to had a fundraising performance night. There were some beautiful and some spectacular acts, some were both. Mine was neither. I half fell out of a trick and managed to get tangled. While I got myself untangled relatively quickly, having to do that in front of nearly 200 audience members wasn’t my ideal situation. Once I got untangled I don’t think I did the rest of the routine well at all either.

My boyfriend and a friend of his were there and they loved it, but I think the longer I do aerials classes the more my expectations of myself grow but naturally your skills plateau a bit. Oh well. I’m determined to do the routine properly, even if it’s just for myself. I love the song and think the routine (when done properly) is a good one.

A girl I do my aerial silks class with is heading to Montreal to study flying trapeze with Cirque Du Soleil which is just an incredible opportunity. So she’s having an open-rig night to raise money. It’s the carnie version of an open mic night. So I’m putting together another routine for the show. I’ve chosen this song as my number but a different version that is longer. Stan did this on Australian Idol a couple of years ago and I loved it. The version I’m using is a bluesier version. Should be fun. I just need to practice!

After all the rehearsals, losing cast members, regaining other cast members and last minute tweaking of routines we finally had our Aerialize annual shows “When Pigs Fly” on the weekend. With four shows over the weekend there are bound to be highlights and some… lower lights.

For the two of us performing in the Advanced Silks class, we both had good shows on Friday night and Saturday night but Saturday and Sunday’s afternoon shows were a bit rough around the edges. The crowds probably might not have noticed a lot of difference but we could feel a big difference.

Over the course of the shows I was kicked in the balls by a girl I’d just lifted up to a trapeze (accidentally) the guy playing the pig got hit in the face by a prop pie coming down from the roof and a trapeze artist wore a fellow performer’s knee in the nose. There were no major injuries though and a lot of laughs and adrenaline to be enjoyed. It’s thoroughly exhausting but also very enjoyable!

Last night was the dress rehearsal for our circus school annual shows and through timing etc the only full run through the two of us in our class routine had. It’s a bit rough around the edges but essentially we are pretty happy with it. Fingers crossed we’ll polish it up a bit tonight in the opening show.

It also sounds a bit rough. I don’t think my video camera is exactly high quality but you get a good idea.

“Entangled” Dress Rehearsal from Brenton Parry on Vimeo.

In just under two weeks I’ll be performing in the Aerialize annual show. This year the theme is “When Pigs Fly” and the show, put on by the various intermediate and advanced classes, explores the idea of the impossible. My class was a class of three but is now down to two. One of the girls scored a 6 month gig doing silks in a Bollywood show in Dehli and had to pack up her life and move in a week.

After tonight’s class, I may be substituting a trick. The one we are supposed to do scares the bejeezus out of me. It’s simple but there is no safety catch and for the following sequence I have to do it right at the top. We’ll see. I’m going to do it a bunch of times lower and see if I can get past the scaredy nerves.

If you are in Sydney and want to come along the details are below.

Where: The Great Hall, 142 Addison Rd Marrickville
When: Fri 24th 8pm, Sat 25th 2pm and 8pm & Sun 2pm 26th September 2010
Cost: Adults $22, Concession $20, Children $12, Family $60
How: Bookings online here
For more information call 95601233

Note to self, performances go better if you have rehearsed the whole thing. Last night I did my routine at the open rig night and did OK. I’m not happy with the last big. I got a bit flustered and didn’t polish it up properly or execute the trick very well. I think I’ll substitute that trick for something else as there is a lot of preparation for not a lot of payoff at the end. We’ll see.

Love Fool performance from Brenton Parry on Vimeo.

Yesterday I was having a great day. I was excited about doing the first shoot for my exhibition, then had a great time doing it, then even more excited when I was editing the shots and saw that I’d got a couple of images I am really happy with.

Then today at work I was in a foul mood. My managers were just annoying me with poor planning and generally bad management, but I’m just home from a very productive aerials class. I still haven’t done my entire routine through, which isn’t ideal given I’m performing on Saturday night. After tonight’s class though I’m confident that I can pull it off. My only concern is whether I have enough in it to fill the song.

Tonight was another one of those classes at silks that both frustrates me and makes me more determined. I think with many of the arts or sports, your expectations on yourself grow faster than your capabilities which can drive you insane. It does with me anyway. I found out tonight that I have a month to put a routine together but at the half way point of class tonight I had no idea of what to do as the trick I wanted to do wasn’t working.

Thankfully I didn’t do my usual thing and abandon it in a huff but I experimented with another way of getting into the trick and it worked. Then on the way home I listened to the song again and again and a routine is forming in my mind. A few weeks of class combined with the open training session and I might get there.

For months I’ve had a particular song in my head to work on a silks routine to, but with it remaining firmly a theoretical routine so far the song has drowned in my stagnant imagination, never to be resuscitated, or so it seems. For the last week or two I’ve been thinking of this song to put together a routine to.

Bjork is the high priestess of bonkers but she’s also a creative genius. This video is proof of that. Lady Gaga may just be the Andy Warhol of the music scene for this generation but her commercialised brand of crazy, while absolutely fantastic is very different to the undiluted crazy that Bjork has been sipping on from the streams of Iceland for the last 20 years. You get the impression she’d be wailing and sampling fog horns to play to an audience of one if she had to.

This song has the tempo that I’m after to force me to perform rather than just do tricks and to think about all the aspects of the routine, transitions, tricks, climbs and story, but also has the quirkiness that I love.

Tonight was the first class in ages that I’ve felt like I was getting things right. So much fun when that happens. We were doing a trick that essentially you go from hanging by your knees to hanging just by your hands after dropping a metre or so. It’s nerve wracking when you don’t have any “lock” or safely wrapped end position, but sometimes that adrenaline is good.
This isn’t me but a teacher of mine, Ari doing a routine.

Last night at silks class was stinking hot with Sydney having one of it’s typically erratic weather days of 30+ degrees, which has plummeted to 23 or so today. I would never have dreamt  that the weather could play a significant role in circus arts before starting these classes nearly two and a half years ago but the hot weather last night was greatt because it meant we didn’t slide on the fabric much at all.

We were at the midway point of term last night and it’s time to start working on our routines. Most of the time we aim for a new routine or if you are working on something to go to the public with, refine that. I’ve been wanting to do a routine to Gotye’s “Heart’s a mess” for a while now and am finally having a go at it. The video above is only four and a half minutes but the version on the album is six minutes which is a fairly long routine but I’m looking forward to seeing if I can do it.

At the end of the class last night I did have a bit of a minor fall. Nothing was hurt or broken and it was more of an unplanned slip, drop and unwrap kinda trick gone wrong situation but I was only a couple of metres up rather than the 7 or so that I may have been for some other tricks.

Tonight the Lifesavers With Pride, my mardi gras float, is having another fundraising party at Slide Bar from 9pm. It’s $15 entry to help us put on a great Mardi Gras float entry and raise our profile to let people know that being gay and being a part of masculine domains like lifesaving is ok!

I’ll be doing another performance almost a year exactly since my first public performance! The video below is last years performance. Let’s see if I can’t do a little better this year! I’ve got music sorted and I’m kinda just winging the routine as I haven’t had time to prepare one to the music.
Update: I’m performing at midnight!