my circus community by chloe

my circus community by chloe - December 2019 Scholarship Essay

I’m a circus artist, I work a circus studio, train, and essentially live here. At first, I started taking classes here recreationally because I was always told from my dance instructors that I needed more upper body strength, but one coach advised that I needed it from doing aerial. I had no idea at the time that I would start referring to myself as a circus artist 5 years later. Not only have I had the luxury of being surrounded by professional aerialists enough to inspire me, I’ve had the opportunity to have the support, encouragement, and community to guide me towards being a circus artist as well. Only between 2017 until 2018, I was dancing and training aerial. I was devastated to find out I was going to have to take around 6 months off to have two hip surgeries, back to back. Little did I know at the time, just when I thought I could start walking without crutches, I had developed avascular necrosis in my foot from a time when I broke it a year before I found out I needed to have hip surgeries. Fortunately, my foot surgery wasn’t as invasive as my last two surgeries and since aerial does not require much from my feet, I was able to train a week after the procedure. I was so tired of being told to ‘take it easy’ from doctors that I had to mainly focus on hand balancing and vertical apparatuses (rope and silks) because those were the only disciplines that my boot would not get in the way of. Luckily, all of my coaches were willing to work around the limitations I had and helped remind me that it was just going to be a temporary challenge. After several weeks of training with an extra weight on my other foot to counterbalance the weight of my healing foot, I was finally able to do so many things I was never able to do previously. Without the support and encouragement of the community I had at the Circus Project I probably would not have used that opportunity to cautiously challenge myself. The community I've built with circus artists has proved that I can make anything happen.