People often say, "Safety First." They’re lying. (*1) If we truly prioritized safety above all else, we wouldn’t be exploring Mars. We wouldn’t be launching manned rockets, we wouldn’t drive cars, and we certainly wouldn’t participate in a sport as inherently dangerous as aerial silks...…
Apparently, an aerialist who wears gloves on the silks is a rare breed. Whether in studios in Tokyo or Los Angeles, the reaction was always the same: "I've never seen anyone do aerial silks in gloves before." Even veteran performers with 20 or 30 years in the industry told me it was a first for...…
I’m still in the dark about what the industry standard is for aerial silks, but I once heard from a high-level former figure skater that in their sport, it is common to have multiple coaches rather than just one. To be more precise, you don’t just run with a coach; you run alongside an entire...…
It’s been six months since I took my final bow on the aerial silks. To be clear, it’s not as if I’ve said a final, permanent farewell. As long as I possess a healthy body, I might still find myself reaching for the silks—not to present a completed work to the world, but as one might write in a...…
In 2022, as I cleared the JAXA (Japan's Space Agency) astronaut selection hurdles one by one, striving to meet the shifting demands of each subsequent stage, I reached the later phases where "Expressive Ability" was listed as one of the evaluation criteria. (For the record, I made it quite far in...…
For my first (and what I intended to be my last) performance on the aerial silks, I completed 100 full-run rehearsals in the 3 months leading up to the competition. Since the routine was strictly 4 minutes long, the time spent solely on these runs was 400 minutes—which is more than 6.5 hours of...…
Do you practice anything 8 times a week? It took 13 months from the moment I first touched aerial silks until I performed my final piece and retired. Fortunately, by the end, I managed to place second in the highest amateur category (the top of 4 divisions) at an international competition.…