What's a toe hang?
A toe hang is an intermediate-level aerial trick performed on the static trapeze or lyra* in which the aerialist grips the trapeze (or hoop), pikes their legs up over the bar, and then lowers their pelvis, pulling their calves down past the metal support until eventually the tops of their feet come to rest on the bar. Then they let go with their hands and, using a great deal of core strength, extend their upper body toward the ground and ... hang.
It is a physiologically ridiculous, excruciating, and near-impossible maneuver. The tops of the feet -- specifically, the area just past the ankle, which my coach calls the "fankle," or "front ankle" -- are not designed to bear weight. Further, most beginners can't even get the damn bar to land on their stupid fankle, winding up instead with just the tops of their toes making contact with the bar. As the tops of your toes are perhaps the least stable, most painful body part from which to attempt to dangle your body weight, my coach has dubbed this variant the "danger hang."
I have been taking aerial classes for four years and I have little hope of ever executing this trick. And yet, I persist. Why?
Because it's pointless, perhaps? Because even the most incremental progress is a miracle to be celebrated? Because in this awkward, hopeless position you learn to rely on and listen to your body like your life depends on it, because it actually does?
I put out a jokey Twitter poll over the holidays asking if I should start a TinyLetter and if so, what it should cover. Here are the results:
But the joke's on you, reader, because I'm doing it.
It is my hope (Or plan, to use the language of intent!) that this TinyLetter will feature not just circus, soup, and 19% Puerto Rican ruin porn, but function as a space in which I can try to do something else I don't do so well, which is be honest. About bodies and aging and fear and hope and effort and the pleasures of pursuits with no possibility of proficiency. So you know, about life. I also may from time to time update you on the things I am doing professionally.
I can't promise regularly scheduled missives -- or, really, I just would rather not. But I can say that for the next eight weeks I'm gonna be training to for my first ever public performance, so ... there may be no shortage of material.
In the meantime, here's something from a few years back, written when I'd first started studying circus. It hits on similar themes.
*Lyra, pr. "leer-ah," is the term of art for an aerial hoop, which hangs from either a single or double point and can be spun or raised and lowered during an act, and for which the most critical skill to master is to not get so dizzy you vomit.