Flying with Ease on the Trapeze!
Prepping for takeoff! (Picture: Thinkstock)
Whenever friends from out of town ask me what to do in New York, I invite them to fly with me.
It’s a hometown thing for me—I’ve been a regular at Trapeze School New York for a couple years—but more and more out-of-towners are showing up in my classes. They’ve read about it somewhere, tried flying long ago at Club Med, or just remember that Sex in the City episode.
The combination of ambition and daring is the essence of New York, though trapeze isn’t an only-in-New York experience: TSNY operates rigs in Los Angeles, Boston, DC, Chicago, and San Juan. (New York has a number of other schools, but TSNY is the one you want, for its safety consciousness, terrifically encouraging instructors, amateur-friendly environment, outdoor locations, and gorgeous city views.)
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But it’s very much a vacation experience: shaking up your usual routine, getting a new view on a city, stepping outside your comfort zone. It costs less than other tourist treats like Broadway tickets and those silly bus tours. And you come home with a heck of a story about what you did on your trip. (I still kick myself for not booking a class on the Santa Monica Pier the last time I was in LA.)
TSNY director Jonathon Conant told The Ordinary Acrobat writer Duncan Wall that he thinks of trapeze as “a machine for helping people re-evaluate what they are capable of.” He said, “Before a flight, people are invariably uncomfortable. They’re pissed off, they’re scared, they’re sad…[trapeze is] magical. It’s unattainable. It’s hugely difficult. It’s completely out of the realm of possibility for most people’s minds. They’re standing on the edge of the platform going ‘yes or no.’”
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But everything changes when they jump—most students learn to hang by their knees and get caught by the catcher on their first class, though I’ve seen plenty just feel happy and proud to hang from the swinging bar—and realize they can actually do it. “People like to say the trapeze is a metaphor for overcoming your fears,” said Conant. “But this is wrong. A metaphor is just a symbol. The trapeze actually works.”
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