Ben in Tights

Weighing in at 200 pounds, I'm not exactly svelte. I don't have what might pop into mind when you think "trapeze body." My hands quickly shed the chalk I've applied to absorb sweat and help me hang on. Soon, they're bleeding. And my goodness, do they ache. I can trace the line of my fifth, fourth and third metacarpal bones via the linear bruises on my palms. My triceps are completely exhausted, and I have difficulty holding my weight in any position. The back of my knees and my oblique abdominals silently protest when I walk.

And it's only the end of my first class.

I wonder if I will be able to use my hands tomorrow. Carrying my substantial weight for an hour and a half (off and on) did a number on them. I can feel the intense build-up of lactic acid in my forearms. Closing my fists is a chore. I wasn't afraid of the work that a six-week trapeze class entailed, but I was afraid of injuring myself. In my mind's eye, I could see myself toppling off the bar and landing face-first onto the floor, my body folding up over my neck to the tune of a sickening crunch. I still can.

A certain romantic appeal accompanies the circus. To many, it's a big-top escape, always on the periphery of town, concealing a motley group of theatrical rogues, high-wire athletes and Eldritch mysteries behind a tent flap in dust-diffused twilight. If there's ever somewhere to run away to, the circus is always waiting in the wings of life, if only in the foggy recesses of an adult imagination. It certainly captured mine. I always wanted to run away with the circus, and really, who wouldn't? But beneath the glamour of performance was a personal battle with fear and self-expectation.

Even before my arrival in Santa Fe at the end of last year, I had heard about Wise Fool New Mexico and its offer to teach the art and skills of the big top to anyone. At $98 for the six-week term, it's a little bit of an investment, but that's understandable. It's easy to get excited about an adventure, but most people aren't prepared for the work involved.

The first time I approach the trapeze bar, I admit there is a fair amount of concern in the back of my mind. Though the rope that connects the bar on either end looks sturdy enough, there's that splinter in my brain that bothers me with, "You're too heavy. You're out of shape." It also didn't help that my shoulder had been previously injured. Even that wasn't from some athletic feat. I just slept on it wrong.

At 33, I already have a long line of healed and semi-healed injuries from my old pastime of Brazilian jiujitsu, and from exercise mishaps. As I rub the chalk on my hands one last time to make sure that my grip finds purchase, I begin mentally tabulating them. Will my elbows be able to hold my weight? They haven't been working too well lately. My neck and shoulders feel pretty tight, which is usually how they feel right before I hear that pop that lets me know I've just hurt myself—worse.

I look up to the friendly, expectant eyes of one of our co-instructors, Zeke Farrell. A young man, tall and without an ounce of fat on him, he seems like a coil of wiry strength with a grace that exceeds his shape, as if that's possible; he's nearly superhuman. He's also something like 10 years younger than me. I feel a little ashamed. I should be more like that guy.

"It's all right, I'm here to help," Farrell says.

It's a small consolation. I outweigh Farrell by maybe 60 pounds, and despite his strength, I begin to wonder about just how he'd stop my head from careening into the ground. There's a thick crash pad on the floor, but my worries begin to accumulate. I'm dubious that it would stop me from getting grievously injured if I took a nose-dive into it.

I grip the bar and hang, ready to push off the ground, aiming to hoist my legs in front of my face and connect the backs of my knees to the bar. I fail. The blood rushes to my face as I feel intense embarrassment. It must look like I'm just a flailing child, or somebody having a seizure. Grunts of effort escape my mouth, when I'm not holding my breath. And this wasn't even the hardest part.

Secret Origins

Wise Fool has its roots in social justice, explains founder Amy Christian as she sits in the small office area of the warehouse that makes up the studio. Beginning as a puppet-oriented street theater in San Francisco, the performers who comprise Wise Fool traveled in 1997 to rural Mexico to provide food and entertainment during the Zapatista rebellion. They were scheduled to perform in the village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas on Dec. 22, 1997, but never got the chance. That day would go down in infamy when the paramilitary group Red Mask massacred 45 people. Instead, Wise Fool gave succor to the refugees of the violence in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, after government forces confiscated the troupe's passports and kept them away from Acteal.

"We were performing basically for kids that had literally dug themselves out from underneath their dead families, and that's the only reason they were alive," Christian says.

"We founded Wise Fool New Mexico as a fresh company that had roots in San Francisco, but we really came to it with an intentional perspective. But the work in Chiapas really was the spark that [started Wise Fool New Mexico]. It really played a big role in our company coming here."

It was in Mexico that the troupe performed as a true circus, with puppets, aerialists and a ring to perform in. "We look at circus as being a way for people to recognize their own power and move beyond what they think is possible, or to do something to help make their voice bigger—to make the image you want to create bigger than life, so people will pay attention," Christian says, explaining the transition.

Wise Fool isn't just a circus arts studio; it's also a social justice-oriented organization—a social circus that's been recognized by the American Youth Circus Organization as having a positive impact in the lives of at-risk youth and the disenfranchised. "We can stand in the street and protest, and people will ignore us," Christian says. "But if we make a big, giant, beautiful puppet, people want to know what you're doing. And then you can initiate a dialogue."

No Man Is an Island

I’m one of four dudes in the room and the only one wearing tights. The makeup of the class definitely skews young and female. Out of roughly 40 people, about 14 of us are here for the trapeze class. The remaining are beginners on aerial silks. Two of the three other men appear to be close to 50, if not older. The warmups aren’t as intense as I expected, but the true work begins once you get up on the bar.

When people think about trapeze, they think about the "flying" version, swinging back and forth. I imagined being clad in a rhinestone-studded leotard and joining the club of ultra-athletic men and women catching each other in death-defying feats of skill and courage.

Much to my disappointment, this is not the trapeze that Wise Fool teaches. It's a static bar suspended above the ground. You toss yourself (or, if you're good enough, another person) around a stationary bar and rope. In retrospect, just getting close to comfortable with this much air-time is enough.

The fear is still there, and when you get up on a 5-foot trapeze, it's much higher than you think. At 6 feet tall, my point-of-view is 11 feet from the ground. And that's not the highest trapeze. There's an 8-foot rig suspended from the ceiling, away from the beginners, coiled away in the rafters, like a resting spider waiting to ensnare another victim.

Standing up on the trapeze comes about midway through the first class. To stand, you have to be hanging from your knees with your hands on the rope and lunge one leg in front of you, for your foot to gain purchase on the bar. When I first place both feet down, I feel like a gimbal moving in all directions. My body reflexively starts making micro-corrections in my stance. I guess you could say I was shaking. Standing on a 1-inch-circumference piece of pipe suspended between two long ropes is apparently going to take some practice and time, something the co-instructor Ilana Blankman calls "getting used to the view."

Blankman, who doubles as the youth and adult programs director at Wise Fool, is a legit circus performer with experience in a traditional red-tent circus touring around England. "After I turned 30, I quit my job and went to circus school in England for a year. I left early because I got a job touring with a traditional company, and we would go to the smallest little towns in England. I mean, they would have, maybe, a pub. And that's it. It was the most boring job I'd ever had, and I was a grant writer before that," says Blankman.

After a short while living the circus life, Blankman said goodbye to the big red tent and moved back to the States, where she started teaching circus arts in New Mexico. "I love teaching. I love to see the little victories of my students every day. It's about watching the joy in someone's face when they go upside down for the first time in 50 years."

As a performer, she adds, "I love the endless ways that you can twist yourself up, and fall, and fly, and also create meaning with your body."

The techniques have names like dolphin, angel, half-angel and bird's nest. Watching experts move from one pose to the next, their grace belies the strength and coordination involved. I have this persistent feeling that I should be learning faster, I should be in better shape than I am, or I shouldn't have gotten as far out of shape as I have. Trapeze demands that I confront how I look at myself, especially my self-talk. There's no room for anything but total concentration when you're suspended above the ground. Anything less is taking too much of a risk.

A Tale of Two Daves

My classmates include two middle-aged Daves—at least at first. In my internal monologue, I think of them as Medium Dave and Silver Dave. Silver Dave is so named for his near-flattop haircut that's a shock of silvery-gray. His mustache is reminiscent of every highway patrol officer you ever met. Soon, he's huffing and puffing; he may have an old knee injury, considering the difficulty he's having standing on the bar or maneuvering beneath it. His wife is trying the aerial silks.

We don't see them after the first class.

Neither large nor small, Medium Dave Jackson, 51, and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Jeffreys, 49, appear again at the second class. The couple is outside the dominant age demographic, but they're keen to step up for every new pose the instructors teach us. "We have desk jobs, and it's taking its toll on us. We needed an interesting way [to work out]. We tried running, but Dave fell out of love with running—he never fell in love with running," Jeffreys says over drinks at Cowgirl.

"They didn't mention we were going to be hanging from our arms. I had some issues with the class, because my shoulders kept hurting. And when you're our age, and we're roughly middle aged, it tears your muscles down, and it takes longer to recover," Jackson adds. "If you haven't been hanging from the ceiling for work, you're using muscles that you haven't used in a while. But there was something charming about going back to kindergarten, in a way, and looking at your toes."

Jackson had a self-described problem with heights before he started the class. "I'd been working on it for a couple of years, and I thought I was over it, until a few days before the first class. It's not that I had a fear of heights, I just have a fear of falling. But the moment I went in and saw the process the instructor was going through, I just thought, I'm going to go up there and have fun."

I was impressed that the couple continued to show up, only missing one or two sessions. It's true that each passing year can affect your ability to be physical in any capacity. It doesn't have to be so connected. Trapeze seems to have this leveling effect. It's hard for all of us.

The second class introduces us to the lyra, a suspended hoop. The lyra is a completely different animal, and my sworn enemy. With no hard angles to control, even getting on one is a serious challenge. It takes me the entire class (and a remarkable amount of cursing) to hop up inside one. The pose we learn on the lyra is called man in the moon. You place the bar more or less between your buttocks and place your feet higher within the hoop. The effect is that of a gentle repose. It feels like anything but.

Vigilant Gaze

I caught the creeping crud. It had been making its rounds in the area and put me flat on my back for a class, and so I decide to make up for it by getting a private lesson. This time, it takes place on the eight-foot trapeze. Grasping the bar and hauling my rear end toward my face somehow seemed easier, despite the added challenge of height. When you're on the higher bar, there isn't much that an instructor can do to spot you. If you fall, the only thing they can do is bear witness to your impending doom. Every shake and tremble seems to become more amplified with the height. With focused attention, I make small adjustments here and there. Before I know it, all the small adjustments add up to one moderate improvement: I don't need help up the bar any longer. I am relieved. This meant I could work on embarrassing myself in other ways.

By the time we get to the last class, its size has exponentially decreased. Out of the 14 or so people who started, only five remain. Circus arts are for everybody, but they're not "for everybody." It can be a mentally difficult process, as it challenges your fears and ego. There's a resistance to looking ridiculous that I experienced which I haven't felt since junior high school. We all bring our personal demons to any type of adventure that pushes us out of our comfort zone.

However, I can attest that it is some of the most fun that I'd had in a very long time. There's more possible than I imagined when I began. There's a challenge between yourself and the bar, and a little bit of a charge knowing that you're in a dangerous situation, with only yourself to count on. I might not be ready to run away with the circus yet, but I'm eager to continue to test myself. Maybe one day, I'll be a "Flying Kendall."

Santa Fe Reporter