the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

"UNTIL RECENTLY, THERE ~~ WAS NOWHERE TO TRY TRAPEZE UNLESStOU HAD BEEN BORN INTO A CIRCUS fAMILY ... " The wait on the minuscule board 22 feet in the air is worse than the actual fall. It's colder above, and I hear the wind whistle through my ears as the instructors prepare me for flight. One instructor hands me the bar as the other holds me at what seems like a 45-degree angle over the edge of the board. "Hep," he says-the word in trapeze language that signals change in position. He releases me. I jump. Falling through space, caught in a graceful curve as the pendulum swing of the bar brings me up and back down feels strangely natural. When I let my body relax and go with the swoop, I'm suddenly completely at ease. All my fears- will I hold on, will I fall, will I die?-dissipate once my feet leave the board. With the exhilaration of flight comes a feeling of trust. The basic swing is all about letting go of fears. My fascination with the flying trapeze began last spring when a friend invited me to spend a day at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. The first full-time circus school open to the public in the United States, School of Circus Arts is housed in a 225,000 cubic foot loft space in downtown San Francisco. At first I laughed at the idea : "Circus school?!" Elephants in pink tights and high-wire antics came to mind, but I decided to give it a try. The class began with basic stretches on the ground, while long-time students flew through the air above in a series of more advanced moves: knee hangs, mid-air twists and upside- down launches from bar to swinging bar. As I watched, my stomach churned in a blender-speed milk shake of fear, amazement and envy. The concept of the trapeze is daunting: you climb up a narrow wobbly ladder to a frightening height. At this point, you haven't yet strapped into anything to break a fall. The crowning moment? Jumping off this platform, grasping a bar that swings you out over a net, in order to hang by your knees, flip and perform other assorted aerial acrobatic feats. The idea is terrifying. Instructors at the School of Circus Arts make it their business to stomp out that fear. The school was originally founded in 1985 as the Pickle Family Circus School by Judy Finelli and Wendy Parkman. Their dream was to give aspiring professional performers from the United States an alternative to studying in Europe or Canada. Stephan Gaudreau, a professional flyer from Montreal, developed the school's Flying Trapeze program in 1992 making the trapeze accessible to the general publ ic on a wide scale for the first time. "Club Med really started the trapeze craze, but unless you could afford a vacation there, you couldn't really do it," says Lili Gaudreau, Stephan's wife and partner at his current school, Trapeze Arts, located in Sonoma, CA. The Gaudreaus opened Trapeze Arts a year after Stephan began the program at the School of Circus Arts. This initial program made trapeze accessible to anyone who wanted to try. "Until recently, there was nowhere to try trapeze unless you had been born into a circus family," says Lili. "But it's thrilling. On your first day, you can swing by the knees and do a catch 25 feet in the air!" The joy of flight is why I'm here at the Trapeze School in New Paltz, NY, one year later. It's the embodiment of the dream of flying I had as a kid watching "Circus of the Stars" on television. On a brilliant spring afternoon, I drive through a dense growth of trees two hours north of the city. It suddenly looms ahead, 22 feet up in the air-the tiny platform from which our afternoon of flying will take off, with all sorts of nets and cables and swings that complete the trapeze rig. Today, my fear is mostly camouflaged by excitement. Director Jonathon Conant leads us through a series of warm-ups, along with David Pakenham, who is the school's expert flyer and main teacher. To get accustomed to holds, grip, momentum and swing technique, we do low bar work on a practice swing anchored eight feet above the ground. I jump up-hep-and grab the bar, swinging up to throw my legs over the bar in a knee hang. With each position change, the instructor calls "hep" to signal timing for a new action. I release my grip to the tune of "hands off," and find myself dangling upside down.

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