Trapeze School NYC!

Hello everyone! A few weeks ago I went to a Trapeze Camp in Brooklyn. It was really awesome and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

I was really excited because I was going to be staying with my best friend and we were going to be taking the subway to Brooklyn everyday alone from his apartment!

When we arrived at Trapeze Camp, we immediately knew that this was going to be a fun week even thought it was super hot! The instructors were super cool and made us feel really excited about the week! We started off learning some special stretches and then played a little game while the instructor set up the trapeze. If you doesn't know what the trapeze is I'll tell you. You climb a rope/ladder onto a high platform, about two stories up. There is a bar like swing attached to a rope and you grab the bar with both hands firmly and jump off the platform. The bar swings forward and backwards and the idea is for you to hold on and do tricks! The easiest one is the knee hang; you put the bottom of your knees on the bar and let go, hanging upside down suspended by your knees (Like the

picture on the right). After the knee hang, you dismount by swinging forward and backwards, doing a back flip and puff you are ready to go falling onto the net below!

In camp, we did more than just trapeze, there is a trampoline, some silks, props, and a static trapeze (trapeze that doesn't swing). Each day starts with warm-ups and then we break down into smaller groups and rotate though each of the four stations above. The trampoline was fun and I learnt some basics like seat drop, tuck, pike, and straddle.

The silks were SO hard! If you are not sure what the silks are they are pretty much what you see in Cirque Du

Soleil, the people climbing these long silk like ropes and spinning around! It takes a lot of upper body strength; I only was able to figure out how to climb on the second to last day! My instructor made it look so easy and we loved watching her! Next we moved onto props, I loved the stilts and by the end of the week I was pretty good at it, passing a ball around and doing semi-jumps.

My favorite of all the stations was the static trapeze. The static trapeze is similar to the trapeze, only it doesn't swing. I learned some different tricks on the static that you don’t do on the regular trapeze.

On the final day we put on a show for our parents. The show started out with all of us showing off the different props we had learned, I was on stilts but some people were doing the hula hoop or juggling. After that we moved onto the trampoline and I did my routine really well! Next was static trapeze, which I did ok on, had a little hiccup with my foot placement. The silks came next and I climbed to the top, spun around and the slid down, I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to climb on my on!

Finally the finale was the trapeze! I was so scared I would miss my release and mess up the catch because I never

correctly got the catch before! For the show we were working in pairs, one person would swing upside down and then the second person would swing, flip and grab of their partners hands swinging now together! It has to be perfectly timed or you miss each other! When it was my turn, I hung upside down, my knees on the bar, I flew threw the air, arms out and latched onto my partners hands! I had done the catch! I couldn't be happier.

At the end of the show we all took our bows and I said goodbye to our instructors, promising to come back next year.

This camp was amazing! I rate it a 10/10! I was so sad when we had to say goodbye, I wanted to do more and I can’t wait to return next year!