Hoop Dreams

I was never a fit kid.

I still remember trying and failing to hold back hot, embarrassed tears on gymnastics day during our Grade 6 physical education classes. My gym teacher noticed and once let me sit it out instead of failing to reach my height on a climbing rope.

But he was also the same teacher who told my class that some of us were overweight. As one of the fattest kids in class, already subjected to bullying about my size, I knew he was talking about me.

In Grade 10, I finally had the option to quit PE, so I did. The pop culture of my ‘90s youth made it clear to me that in the social hierarchy of school life, there were the jocks and there were the arty kids. You could not be both. I’d long ago chosen my team, and found affinity with my fellow dreamers, goths and weirdos.

My lack of physical fitness would occasionally come back to bite me. Like in university when I landed in the emergency room with chest pains that turned out to be a pulled muscle from lifting two dozen beers.

But in 2017, then age 32, I found myself at a personal crossroads. That summer I ended my first live-in relationship with a partner who spent our six years together showing me how little he liked or respected me.

So, it is ironic that my ex was the one who told me about the backyard aerial hoop lessons that changed my life.

Backyard basics

I first saw an aerial performance long before I imagined practicing such an art myself. It was 2008 or 2009, and I was still new to Vancouver and attending the Parade of Lost Souls. I stood in awe as an aerialist climbed up, tumbled down and flipped upside down on two long “silks” suspended high in a tree in Grandview Park.

I was jealous. But not even 25, I was already convinced I was too old to do that. Plus, I had and still have a debilitating, palm-sweating fear of heights.

My lack of faith in myself partly came from media messages about who was fit, what counted as exercise and my own perceived physical limitations.

But it was also because sports and fitness are marketed mainly to the very young, those with a whisper of a chance of taking athletics from a hobby to a lucrative career. And I was never going to be on a box of Wheaties.

Almost a decade later, my friends took up aerial silks in their late 20s and early 30s. I was impressed and curious. Not wanting to copy them, I set my sights on the lyra, or aerial hoop.

Aerial hoop is acrobatics performed on solid or hollow steel hoops covered in hockey tape for grip and suspended from the ceiling. It’s like trapeze, except your device is a suspended circle instead of a bar.

While I’m not clear on the origins of this aerial hoop itself, the circus arts in general had their beginnings with the Aztecs and China’s Qing dynasty, before being appropriated by European circuses.

A more modern and Canadian example of aerial hoop can be found in Cirque du Soleil.

Because my parents had at-times debilitating back and knee injuries in their 20s and 30s, those decades of life seem much younger than they used to.

Perhaps that’s because I’m no longer looking at them through a child’s eyes. Or perhaps the decision to have kids later — or, in my case, not at all — has left young adults with more disposable time and income to take on new hobbies (but not a mortgage).

So when my ex mentioned the backyard aerial hoop lessons he saw offered on Facebook in the summer of 2017, I — armed with not a little “I’ll show you” attitude — jumped at the chance to see what my body could do.

My first experience on the hoop wasn’t the safest of setups: a hoop suspended from a tripod in an East Van backyard, with only a mattress between us and the nearby concrete stairs.

Yet I am eternally grateful to the two women who opened their yard, expensive gear and patient instruction to a ragtag group of strangers for $20 a pop that summer.

I learned two important lessons in that backyard. First, that I was far from too old to do this. Secondly, the diversity of bodies capable of aerial hoop has a limit, sure, but the range is much, much broader than I realized.

Over the following year, I enrolled in women’s weight-lifting courses, which I highly recommend for any woman or nonbinary person intimidated by both gym equipment and the bros one would normally share it with.

And I started taking regular aerial lessons in a studio.

Pain and gain

Aerial is pain. Every beautiful, elegant move causes a bruise, a friction burn or has been done so often the body no longer displays the damage. But you feel it.

My initial in-studio lessons gave me rows of blisters on my palms, which eventually gave way to callouses. My knee pits turned deep, rich shades of burgundy, purple and blue.

Although the blisters never returned, even a week away from aerial hoop today will mean sore hands and a bruised body when I return.

Aerial hoop is the closest workout to dancing that doesn’t require fancy footwork or special shoes. Even at less than five feet off the ground, sitting on a hoop is as near as I will ever get to flying.

While aerial does take some strength and endurance, I appreciate and benefit from the fact aerial hoop makes ample use of optical illusions.

For example, I can do four kinds of “splits” on the hoop that aren’t even close to the actual splits on the ground. But when you’re suspended upside down in a hoop? You’re practically a gymnast.

At an aerial class, I (usually) stop worrying about the news, about work, about a nebulous and terrifying future, and throw myself into the move or routine we’re learning.

At the gym, I listen to angry music and process my rage by pumping iron and stomping on the elliptical.

At aerial, I find grace and occasionally inner peace.

At the end of both, I feel like I’ve accomplished something, even if it is just a new bruise in a new place.

Never the fittest, but that’s not the point

Nearly eight years on from my backyard beginnings, I’m still not where I want to be as an aerialist.

I’ve spent five years in level two lessons, levels three and four remaining beyond my skillset. The people I started with surpassed me; some even teach me now.

Starting, quitting and restarting weightlifting has held me back, as well as a fear of falling backwards that I have yet to shake. One day I would like to perform in a student showcase, but for now aerial is just for me and my personal social media channels.

But the other lesson I’ve learned from aerial is not comparing myself to others. There are countless tiny, young and strong people in these classes who lift their own body weight with ease.

I am not and may never be them; learning to accept that is a journey.

Earlier this year, I turned 40. It feels particularly old to me, though I appreciate it’s still young to many Tyee readers.

But more importantly, it’s also young for some practicing aerialists, including people in their 40s and 50s who I take classes with and from.

Aerial hoop has shown me many things in addition to the routines that I’m working on in the studio. It’s shown me that I’m capable of more than the stereotypes about my age and fitness level have previously led me to believe.

I’ve learned the pleasure in pursuing something I love, something that doesn’t need to become marketable or optimized, something that’s just for me.

In the studio and on the hoop, I’m learning what I’m truly capable of.