In the past blog post, I talked about scientific studies that proved that externalizing the internal sensations of proprioception through sound and sight helped increase athletic performance and artistic expression.
However, this week, I decided to take a different approach to answering the question I proposed 2 blog posts ago: have there been experimental tests to try to overcome [learning body and silk awareness off the ground] in a different way?
Instead of looking to scientific papers, I turned to my aerial silks colleagues, conducting informal group and individual interviews (n=10(+1) participants) that yielded interesting results. I asked them if they ever experienced the problem of trying to both communicate and understand body awareness and proprioception in a new figure, and what they empirically found to be solutions to this.
One participant (female, 38, Austrian) said she had a lot of problem differentiating left from right (even in normal life). Since this participant knew how to sew, she created her own unitard she uses for training, in which one half of the body is blue, and the other half is red. She also created one for her daughter (female, 7, Austrian), who is also learning silks and has the same problem. The participant cited that both her and her daughter have found success with this method, as it’s easier to both see and communicate if they have the correct leg and arm placements when learning a new figure.
Another participant (female, 36, Mexican) is a teacher, and says she takes magnetic bracelets to class. When she finds students struggling with body orientation, she gives these bracelets to them and asks them to put them on one side of their body. This way, when they’re up in the air, she can refer to left and right as “the side with/without the bracelet”. She also explains that in her 7 years of teaching, she has found that with every new student, she learns different ways of explaining the same figure, since everyone has their own understanding of their body in space. However, she mentions that since she’s very cautious, she makes sure that every student first feels comfortable doing new figures close to the floor, and then she tells them they can finally try them out higher up. Her teaching assistant (female, 24, Mexican) echoes this sentiment, and adds that when she herself learns new figures, she likes to analyze and experiment different ways to get in and out of it while she’s on the silk, rather than in theory outside of it.
A second teacher (female, 33, Slovakian) had a completely different experience. In her words, some people just aren’t meant to be aerialists, and if they can’t learn through copious practice then maybe it isn’t for them. Her approach to teaching proprioception centered more around diligent practice and repetition rather than finding novel ways to teach, which she says has worked for her students. She also incorporates “floorial” (aerial on the floor) exercises at the beginning of her workshops, to increase artists’ body awareness and get them in tune with the silk.
One student (female, 25, Austrian) said she would like to be able to have a video of the figure she’s referencing while she’s in the air, for example by projecting it on a wall. However, another student (female, 26, Austrian) said she wouldn’t like that, since she would still struggle with orientation if she’s upside down. This student also said she prefers communicating with references relative to her position (e.g. “the free leg” or “the upper arm”), instead of left and right. A third student (female, 23, Austrian) contradicted this sentiment, as she said, “my right leg will always be my right leg, and the upper/lower reference confuses me”. Both of these 2 last students, however, agreed that most of the time, while being in the air, they move one leg/arm slightly and ask, “this one?” to confirm if it’s the correct one.
Two students (female, 33, Mexican; and female, 42, Mexican) echoed the same sentiment: they first watch the teacher do the figure, and then watch someone else. The first student (33-year-old) said she repeats the steps verbally to the teacher to confirm, while the second one said she likes to take a video of the demostration in order to watch it multiple times. The second student says, “When I’m on the silk, after the first two or three steps, I find it difficult to relate what I saw in front of me to what I have to do when I’m the one who’s tangled up. I take the steps I can and go back to watch a recording.” What’s also interesting to note is that this second student separates new figures into 2 categories: hard mental process and hard corporal process. She says, “When the physical corporal process is complicated and not just the mental one, then there are other challenges, which I usually address with repetition. Front balance, for example, I added to the preparations/warm-up to better position my hands, support myself, etc. The same goes for the double bracelet (unstandardized name).”’
Finally, a third teacher (female, 39, Ukrainian), while teaching a new figure, said “the first time you just do something, and then after you can figure out what to do.” This directly contrasts the teaching philosophy of the Mexican teacher interviewed, who is more methodical and splits up each figure into smaller steps, always on the floor, before allowing students to try something new in the air.
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Source: own interviews.
