Learning to navigate my meat suit

Athletic training at Madison Circus Space as an unathletic adult.

One year ago, if someone had shown me a photo of myself nearly upside-down in a giant wheel wearing a horse costume in front of an audience, the horse costume would have been the least confusing component. 

On November 18, I performed in a group German wheel act inspired by Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, in the Madison Circus Space‘s (MCS) “New Performers Showcase.” In case you’re still confused about the horse, in the movie Ken essentially becomes a horse girl, with images and videos of the graceful creatures plastering the Mojo Dojo Casa House, and prompting one of my favorite lines: “Once I realized the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest.” In the MCS show, we had a Ken, Allan, Barbie, Mermaid Barbie, Weird Barbie, and me, the horse, rolling around and acting out an edited down combination of the songs “I’m Just Ken” and “Dance The Night” by Dua Lipa (the song featured in the dance scene where Barbie asks “Do you guys ever think about death?” Which we had in the act).

I only started doing German wheel on January 1, so performing in front of an audience by mid-November is pretty quick. But I’m a sucker for peer pressure. Also, in my experience, there’s nothing quite like getting together with your fellow eccentrics and putting on a show. 

I was a theater kid in high school and the first few years of college. The road from theater kid to circus adult is short and well-paved, as long as you have access to a circus space and coaches (which, for a city as small as Madison, we are very lucky to have). One reason I was drawn to theater was that I saw it as an opportunity to let loose, to unleash my inner chaos muppet. So, a horse costume? (In a year with a running theme of horse puns?) That tracks.

What is surprising and new is the German wheel itself. I’ve never trained for anything athletic in my life. For most of my youth, I felt like a brain plodding around in a meat suit. In college, I started doing yoga and pilates, which helped build some connections between my brain and, you know, the rest of me. But it wasn’t habitual. I didn’t set goals or build on previously-learned skills. I barely understood how the meat suit worked, much less how to optimize it.

Not that I’ve never been athletic. I went through a phase where I started running at the gym but pushed myself too hard and ignored the warning signs until I gave myself shin splints that had me limping for months. Pro tip: if your bones hurt, stop doing what you’re doing before your roommate’s brother says, “She should stop doing that now.” During the six years I lived in Beijing I biked all around that massive city, almost daily. But there wasn’t any training involved. I’d bike someplace and then needed to get the bike back home. Easiest way was to just keep pedaling until my legs felt like jelly.

But then a friend who’s a German wheeler held a New Year’s Day gathering at her house where people then went on to Madison Circus Space to toodle around. Some people juggled, unicycled, or hung from an aerial apparatus. I signed a waiver (they don’t let you touch one without it, for good reason) and hopped on a German wheel for an ad-hoc lesson. 

Unlike running or biking, you can’t just do German wheel. At least I can’t. Or more accurately, I don’t want to. While I love doing it, I’m also very aware of how dangerous it is. It also doesn’t help that I am doing athletic training for the first time in my life at age 39. I need coaching. I need someone to break down new tricks for me: the momentum, the timing, where to push or pull. 

Even with the patience and support of my coaches, for me the outcome of any given trick on any given day is unpredictable. Sometimes I nail a trick on the first try. Sometimes I’ll practice and practice and it still feels like a roll of the dice. Sometimes I’ll know all the steps I’m supposed to do but get so focused on one part (the most anxiety-inducing) that my mind will go blank once that’s done. All while getting decorated with strange bruises. Did you know that just putting your weight on a metal bar for long enough, often enough, can cause a bruise? Now I do. 

I’ve gone through phases where it felt like I was nailing everything being thrown at me, and then phases where it felt like I’d stalled, all in less than a year. But there are just enough instances where I’ll work on something over and over, and one day it just clicks into place. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s no way to explain the euphoria, the high. The first time I felt it, I said to my fellow wheelers, “This is why sports people like it so much.”

All that wasn’t even the most exhausting part of the performance. The same friend who introduced me to and enabled my German wheeling also produced the show and flattered me into emceeing as well (“If you’re just your charming self, you’ll be great”). Which, of course, worked. I’m a sucker for flattery and I don’t pretend otherwise. But do you know how much energy it takes for an introvert to stay “on” for an entire show and keep the crowd hyped for all the performers? Over 150 tickets were sold and I wanted to make sure everyone was excited and cheering as loudly as they could for every performance. I wanted everyone in Madison to know we were having a helluva good time. 

I needed a good day and a half to fully recover from the adrenaline alone. 

It was all worth it. The show featured performers who had landed in Madison from all walks of life; people 11 to 75 years old who had all latched onto something that made them feel a little more alive, from hula hooping, aerials, contortion, or just telling a dad joke before doing a handstand. They all deserved a world of applause just for stepping onto the stage. And now I too know the work, time, and guts it takes to show the world the strange little thing you love doing.