EDUCATING CHILDREN, Learning Through Play in Aerial Circus

I LOVE TEACHING CHILDREN AERIAL CIRCUS!

Play is one of the main ways that children learn. It helps build self worth by giving a child a sense of his or her own abilities. They develop the ability to concentrate by becoming very absorbed in what they're doing. Play is what pulls together the logical and creative parts of the brain. When I teach Aerial Circus, I always teach through play.

Children are now spending less time playing physically and less time creating imaginary games. They are becoming socially isolated because of their leisure time on screens. I believe they are losing the ability to empathise, to communicate and read emotional language and signals. I think dramatic play is essential to a childs social and emotional developement. Children make sense of the world in which they live by acting it out. Physical play is obviously important. Jumping, dancing, climbing, rolling, pull ups, all foster muscle developement and fine tune motor skills. In Aerial Circus I help my students discover all of this. Plus they are playing outside, in nature.

I NEVER KNEW I WOULD BE A TEACHER

I thought I was going to be an actress and tour the world changing peoples lives with theatre and dance. I never knew that what would give me the most satisfaction was to, in some way, recreate for others for what I had learnt, myself, as a child. To pass on my knowledge to the next generation. To become a teacher.

As a child I took classes in Gymnastics, Theatre and Dance. They all taught me a lot in different ways and without a doubt informed the way I teach today.

The Gymnastics class was very traditional and taught me how to rock into splits and bend my back to breaking point. I enjoyed it, though , because I learnt a lot of self motivation. I enjoyed repeating an athletic task over and over until I mastered it. I found it very satisfactory. Gymnastics is about patience, dedication, perseverence and planning. It helps people work for objectives that can sometimes take years to achieve. In a world of quick fixes this is very important. I still use methods I learnt back then to acieve strength and flexibility on Aerial equipment. It didn't involve much playing, though and the rigidity of it as a sport was not appealing to me. I needed to play more.

My theatre classes were amazing and brought me out of my introverted shell. I was lucky enough to have teachers who were all interested in devised and physicalised theatre. I learnt many games and simple ways of physically devising and forming stories that I can transfer to any performance based art form. You might not realise you need theatre skills to create circus, but for me it is integral. Circus is performance. It is a SHOW. Even if you're more interested in circus skills than in circus/theatre hybrids, you still need to know how to engage your audience. Theatre is fundamentally about play. It is where I learnt the most about myself.

I learnt an enormous amount from my dance classes. I had the good fortune of going to a school where all the teachers had trained at a school in London, LABAN, where they taught a methodology based on Rudolph Laban. From the age of eight I learnt dance that drew from the relationship of anatomy, kinesiology and physcology. It was about body, effort, shape and space. I was taught authentic, natural movement at a time when my contemporaries in other schools were being taught how to stretch muscles and tendons to their absolute limit. I was taught how to create and devise and improvise and I never once practised doing the splits there!

I went on to study elsewhere as an adult, but what I learnt as a child stuck with me. Authentic, natural movement and choreography from my playful dance classes. Emotion, story and character from Theatre classes and hard work, repetition and the thrill of tricks from Gymnastics. All of these skills I use in teaching Aerial.

SO MY METHODS IN TEACHING COME DIRECTLY FROM MY LOVE OF PLAYING.

I encourage my students to explore the equipment and their bodies. We start off warming up on the trampolene and move on to dance based, rotational exercises. Then we play some games on the equipment before the hard work of climbing and strength conditioning begins. We do as much time inventing moves and devising one off performances as we do learning technical moves. My younger students, under seven often spend the entire session rolling around in the fabric of the silks. They learn to enjoy the feel of the equipment and the strength needed to move on it. They learn to stretch their limbs and point and flex. They learn to listen to the music playing and the rhythm needed to move. They play.

AND THEY LEARN SO MUCH.

I finish every session smiling, having watched their achievements taking place. They make me laugh so much. They teach me how to enjoy that simple state of play and creativity.

thankyou for reading. All images are my own.