Pain is Beauty in the Circus Arts

One of my most vivid early memories is from the age of 5, when I was taken to a local circus and got to experience an aerial hoop performance. The aerialist, in a glimmering rhinestone white leotard, was hoisted high into the air to contort and maneuver around the rapidly spinning shiny silver hoop. I do not remember what the aerialist looked like or what specific moves she performed, but I remember the feelings of both awe and horror as I wondered where the safety nets were, or if she was harnessed into the hoop while performing these daring drops and flips under dazzling blue lights.

The impact of her performance stuck with me for over 20 years, and inspired me to take up the art form a few years ago. My first class, I was shocked at how painful the experience was. Simply hanging from my knees on a suspended metal hoop was far different than I remembered as a kid, dangling from playground monkey bars.

Pole dancing was just as painful.

Merely sitting on a pole requires submitting your entire body weight to the friction grip between your bare inner thigh skin and the cold metal surface. A simple climb on aerial silks requires knotting your feet within the two hanging streams of fabric and pulling yourself up to be pinched and folded like a suspended puppet. By the next morning, the backs of my thighs were blue, my hands were torn with blisters, and my sides were raw from silk-burn. The only assurance I received from other performers within my studio was,

“Yep, circus hurts! You’ll get used to it.”

My choice was to either push through the pain and desensitize my body or give up on a dream that I had kept in the back of my mind since childhood. It has now been over three years since my first aerial class, and the pain and bruises have become a welcome symbol of approaching more advanced, unfamiliar skills. Pushing through pain feels unnatural, but it is this opposition and overcoming of force that makes progressing in this art so gratifying.

There is something so human about such an otherworldly art form. The raw skin twisted against metal, the opposition of gravity, and the fear in the eyes of the audience as you dangle countless feet above the cold, hard ground.

To me, that glint of fear and doubt from everyone but yourself is what circus is all about.