Cirque

disclaimer: this is not a guide on how to safely construct multicordes for yourself. this is the rationale for how i constructed mine based on my personal risk assessment. goal i’ve been intrigued with the chaotic aesthetic of multicordes since seeing photos of them, probably first via instagram posts from european aerialists. construction-wise i had very little to go on when i decided to start prototyping some for myself. i started with observing the hardware i’d seen on a few different examples: circle, rescue-8, and bar. ...

i’m usually underwhelmed by shots of aerialists from below, so when there happened to be an aerial point at this venue in santa cruz, i took some wide-angle video from below to scope out problems and possibilities from this angle. i tried a few things and settled on this split in s-wrap, which looks a lot more interesting from below than it does from the side; it adds visual interest other than unintentional-seeming foreshortening. other considerations were the positioning of the tail (if i’d had someone to pull it out of frame and show the foot, i think that would make this image perfect). ...

i wanted to experiment with mylar and reflections for this shoot. i also had a full narrative that i thought could make for a serial story made of images, but we didn’t have time to implement this (also the lightbars’ structure did not allow them to be in a proper portal like my design). ![]/(images/Untitled_Artwork-4-1024x768.png) i felt like the resulting shots lacked intention as a result, but it’s to be expected given that we rushed the whole thing due to mason’s availability. he showed up at the prepared set, and we then started shooting on the floor without much discussion about concept. we got a few visually striking shots. ...

was feeling wistful for dad rock when i did this flow after training. very happy with having found this single-arm handstand split with sable’s help: it is one of the few things i’ve discovered myself on the apparatus rather than seen someone else do and so feels very much “me”.

to celebrate myles getting his back flag. plus a croc just because.

Tito had contacted me to do an ambient act for the first Hellhole on both days (Sat and Sun, Halloween weekend). I had prepared a series of moves to slowly space out over 15 minutes. The first night was more improvised and experimental (and we had light rain, and it was outside! – I was very worried about my ability to grip in the rain), so it was a bit stressful, but by night two I had developed a full multicordes act that started with me crawling from behind the billboard above SF Oasis and climbing up the cordes, then having the rigger descend me as I thrashed around to Lingua Ignota. I then wrapped myself in the full length of my cordes and crawled up on the wall looking over the crowd to lots of enthusiasm. ...

[finally uploading this after finding it hard to post on streaming services due to music copyright] this was a duo act myles and i put together during the pandemic for a virtual show called “e-go”, which was one of pseuda’s projects during their curatorial residency at counterpulse and ultimately streamed as a special presentation by princess (a drag night at oasis). ...

slime photoshoot (because it seemed like a good idea at the time) for myles and i, shot in my home studio it was a lot more cold and uncomfortable than i thought it was going to be, and we only had the capacity to do one or two poses.

didn’t do a full writeup at the time, but i trained tito in aerial silk during the pandemic over a period of a few months so we could film this virtual aerial drag piece for the drag performer of the year competition. we knew in advance that this would be filmed, so focused on a few key moves to hit (split silk front split, into cross-back straddle, into belay, into neck hang) during the performance rather than a traditional connected aerial performance. tito’s technique at the end of this time wasn’t particularly clean, but 3 months is really too short a time to finesse transitions and clean climbing etc. ...