Las Amigas del Fuego - New Tissu Routine

I love doing aerial tissu.  I love it when I've been doing regularly for a good long while and I'm feeling strong, and most especially I love it when I'm working on a new choreographed piece.  Regular practice is fun, but working towards a goal is just SO much more satisfying.

Right now I am choreographing a piece I'll be performing in New Zealand (!!!) for our upcoming trip in April.  It's about a 4 minute piece, choreographed to Las Amigas del Fuego, which is an original song by my hubby Darrell.  I sing harmonies on the song too, so this piece just feels creative all the way down to the roots.

It's got a bit of a flamenco "feel" to it, so I'm learning a few flamenco "florellos" and planning on working up a flamenco-inspired costume. Maybe I need a rose in my teeth.  Hmmm.

I'm at the stage where I've got all the moves I want to do, and I'm hammering out timing and synching with the music, and adding in flair and dance-y stuff.. and this morning, for the very first time, I completed the entire routine (including ending drop) in time with the music!  This is SO exciting, especially considering how a week or two ago I couldn't even get halfway through the choreography without gasping and losing grip and falling out of the tissu.  

Don't get me wrong.. I've got some good stamina, but learning a new routine is taxing on so many levels that one often forgets to do things like "breathe".   And I'm incorporating two rather scary moves, a dive and a drop - and that fear of letting go never seems to wane completely.

Still: I made it through!!  YAY!  Now it's time for tweaks and polishing and costume design.. and soon, performance!

Cirque du Soleil and inspiration

Yesterday being Darrell's birthday, I took him out to (an unfortunately mediocre) dinner and then to see Totem, the Cirque du Soleil show that's playing in San Jose.

There was nothing mediocre about Totem.

OH I loved it.  I had a smile of absolute delight on my face from the opening act all the way through to the very end.  The costumes!  The music!  The impossible feats performed in front of my very eyes!!!  Oh, I loved it.  Yes, I did.

This morning, instead of going to the gym, I stayed in and worked on my aerial tissu.  I started choreographing a new piece to Las Amigas del Fuego (which is a kickass original song by Darrell).  We've been kicking around "music video" ideas for this song for ages, and I've also been wanting to choreograph to it, and it seems that everything is starting to come together nicely.

I worked for an hour and 45 minutes and I have maybe the first 3rd of it sketched out, with ideas about the middle and the end.  I'm doing a dive!   I've always been afraid of dives.  I also feel like the choreography is already really unique.  I'm at the point in tissu where I am knowledgeable enough that I can come up with new transitions and stylings for moves, and have even made up a couple new moves over the last few months.  (New to me, probably someone somewhere has done them before, but I still think that counts)

Next week my aerial partner is getting a freestanding rig (!!!!!!!!!) and so here's hoping that she wants to take it to lots of fun places and rig a tissu on it and play with me this summer!

 

New Year's Eve Aerial & Fire & Belly Dancing

For NYE 2011, Fire Pixie was booked at the India Community Center in Milpitas to put on a New Year's Eve circus show.  We rocked the house!

Opening act was a belly dance solo by Miriam.  I absolutely love her fluttery fabric fans..

Our second act was an aerial tissu duet featuring Miriam and me.  I was all kinds of excited about this. I've never done aerial for such a huge venue before and I was nervous as all get out.
We put together a new duet for this show.. the storyline was of a dragonrider and her dragon meeting and flying together.  It was choreographed to original music by Darrell, my hubby and partner in crime.  There's something so exciting about working together with a musician.. the music and the dance can grow organically together so that they fit together like legos.  If the dance calls for a pause or a crash, the music can change to support it, and if the music calls for a legato section we can add that into the dance.  It's a fluid kind of creation and frankly, kind of a rush.  (More about making the costumes over at Fire Pixie Fashion)

Since it was a new piece, we'd had a "preview party" at my house the week before the performance, so we could perform it in front of an audience before the big show on NYE.  This upped my confidence level enormously.  And it really worked!  I had the jitters until I heard the first drumbeats of the music start, and then found myself transported to that magical timeless flow state, flying through the routine effortlessly, spinning and dancing, climbing and dropping, connecting with the audience.

Moments like that are magical.  This is why I choose this kind of life. 

See the whole photo set here 

After the show, the adrenaline rush took us right through the last set of the night, the fire show.  I'll be honest.. we've done so many fire shows of this type that we don't even bother taking pictures anymore.. but we pulled it off with our usual aplomb and then made it back to Miriam's in time for a new year's champagne toast.

Happy New Year!  I want to hear about your NYE adventures too!