> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://defying-gravity.synaps.media/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # One Wish, Then Everything Else (How to Build an Aerial Silks Routine #1) - URL: https://defying-gravity.synaps.media/en/how-to-build-a-routine-1/ - Published: 2026-08-20T17:03:58.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T17:04:13.000Z - Description: Thinking through and building an aerial silks routine of your own is genuinely fun. It is a kind of creative play open only to those whose repertoire of tricks and expression has grown, and at the same time - Author: Tatz - Tags: #en Thinking through and building an aerial silks routine of your own is genuinely fun. It is a kind of creative play open only to those whose repertoire of tricks and expression has grown, and at the same time, it is a chance to take inventory of what you have seen, what has wounded you, and what you have come to find beautiful, and draw all of it out into a single performance. (For reference, in my case, I created my first routine around [month 9 or 10 after starting aerial](https://defying-gravity.synaps.media/en/one-year-record/).) Every modern aerialist knows the ritual: scrolling endlessly through a camera roll full of screen recordings and lesson videos, sorting through tricks for the next routine. This drop has to go in. That spin too. And this wrap is too cool not to use. But if you begin there, the routine can very easily become a shapeless collection of parts with no direction. Building a routine is not arranging tricks in a row. It is making every trick obey one single wish. In this article, I want to leave behind a note on the very personal method I used when creating my own routine. As I wrote it, I realized that although this is a theory of aerial composition, its basic structure may also hold up as a fairly universal theory of stage composition. The next time I build a routine, whether for myself or for someone else, and whether in aerial or in some other form of performance, I suspect I will approach it in much the same way. To state the conclusion first, in my case I generally build a routine in the following order. The higher the item is on the list, the more important it is. 1. Decide on [one single wish](https://defying-gravity.synaps.media/en/one-wish-is-all/). 2. Decide what emotion you want to deliver through the whole routine. 3. Decide the order of changes you want to show as the routine develops. 4. Place the tricks while considering whether there is enough variation and difficulty. 5. Check whether your own individuality has been included. 6. If possible, include something that works as a strong opening hook. After that, you actually run the routine through and adjust it while checking fatigue, musical counts, and timing. Of these steps from 1 to 6, the smaller the number, the higher the priority. In other words, if any 2 of them collide or contradict each other, the earlier step takes priority. In this article, I will write about steps 1 to 3, which I consider the most important. In a later second half, if I feel like writing it, I will write about steps 4 to 6. — # 1\. Decide on one single wish The first thing to decide is the one single wish you will place inside this routine. It does not have to be something you tell anyone. It can remain your own private secret. For what, and why, am I, or are you, creating this routine in the first place? [As I have written before](https://defying-gravity.synaps.media/en/one-wish-is-all/), I think the core of artistic expression lies here before anything else. The wish you would pay any price, sacrifice anything and everything, to make real. And then all you have to decide is where in the routine, and how, that wish will be expressed. It can be just one passage, only about 5 to 10 seconds long. If you were to cut out only one passage from the whole routine, which would it be? Why that passage? What is the expression you absolutely want to perform at this exact timing in this exact piece of music? What single thing would have to happen onstage for all of it to have been worth it? If you cannot find that wish immediately, it can also help to ask whom you are performing this routine for. If only a single instant of the routine were to remain in that person’s mind, what would you want to deliver in that instant? Raising the quality of that one passage to the absolute limit is the beginning of everything, and it becomes the central strategy you must not forget until the end. In other words, you first mark the center point that allows the whole routine to hold together. As if placing, on a dark stage, one light that will not go out. Close your eyes, play the music, and search for that fire inside this routine, the one flame you cannot allow to go out. When you find that single instant, the composition finally begins. # 2\. Decide what emotion you want to deliver through the routine Next, decide what emotion you want to deliver through the whole routine. For example: awe, surprise, strength, fragility, freedom, joy, challenge, solitude. Ideally, there should be only one theme, one main key. It may be a kind of strength that presses hard against the audience’s chest. It may be a fragility that makes the breath stop. It may be a freedom that seems to loosen the body from within the fabric. But once that emotion and the face it will wear have been decided, the speed of the movement, its contrasts, and the way you express it begin to come into view, and each trick starts to become a vehicle for carrying that emotion. The central emotion is not a color painted onto the tricks afterward. It is more like a gravitational field that fills the entire routine before any trick enters it. Often, I think this will be decided together with the theme of the music you use. In my case, for example, I decided that I wanted to make courage the central theme of the routine, so I will use that as the example below. # 3\. Decide the order of changes you want to show as the routine develops After step 2, decide how that emotion will change in accordance with the development of the music. For example, the routine may begin quietly, build with energetic movement, and leave an afterglow at the end. Or it may show strength from the beginning, add emotional depth midway through, and finally release itself into freedom. You decide this kind of flow before choosing the specific tricks or the way the body will move. An aerial routine is not something that shows emotion as a single still image. It is something in motion, something that shows how that emotion changes over time. And this, too, will generally begin to decide itself once steps 1 and 2 are fixed. In my case, since I had decided to make courage the central theme of the whole routine, I naturally thought that what I should express through aerial silks was not simple strength, but the feeling of moving forward through anxiety and difficulty. To do that, it seemed best to express, in order, hesitation turning into resolve, the moment of finding the courage to leap in, and movements that release the self toward freedom. From there, I could shape the routine into a story that followed the development of the music: 1. First, delicately express hesitation and introspection. (opening) 2. Suggest resolve through powerful power moves. (first half) 3. Show the courage to challenge through drops. (second half) 4. Let it open into a feeling of release through spin and smooth flow. (ending) (If I had decided to make surprise, rather than courage, the central theme, I think I would have shaped it into a story built from unexpected developments, sudden changes in speed, and surprising ways of connecting tricks. That would have become a different development and a different composition.) Before digging through your inventory of tricks, if you decide first on the emotional changes and the expressive arc of the routine, it becomes much clearer where each trick should be placed and what kind of transitions should connect them. No trick carries meaning by itself. It begins to speak to you with meaning only when you know whether it belongs at the beginning, in the middle, or near the end; after what silence it should appear, at what speed it should pass, and what afterglow it should carry the audience toward. Should you begin quietly near the floor? Should you climb high from the start and pull the audience’s gaze upward? Should you begin already onstage and in position before the music starts, or should the music begin first, before you enter the stage? Once the emotion you want to deliver and the development you want to show have been fixed, I think the right answer for you begins to appear, as if the fog were clearing. — Once these 3 premises have been decided, the first wish, the emotion to deliver, and the development to show, then together with fixed conditions such as the venue and the amount of usable time, the remaining steps from 4 to 6 will begin to decide themselves to a reasonable degree. Conversely, if you try to build the concrete arrangement of tricks while steps 1 to 3 remain vague, every element will become endlessly unstable. The steps from 4 to 6, which I will summarize another time, are the process of taking the skeleton of the routine decided up to this point and turning it into a concrete sequence. This, too, is genuinely fun. I’ll be writing more stories for aerial lovers! Subscribe to get notified when a new post is published. Subscribe **Check your inbox!** A confirmation link is on its way. Please click it to finish signing up. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Sending... --- [The Failure That I Had to MakeI wrote before about setting myself a quota not of successes or prize finishes, but of failures and eliminations. In reality, though, challenging something and being defeated hurts in a way that is no joke, and immediately afterward you may regret it enough to curse yourself for ever having![](https://cdn.synaps.media/defying-gravity/content/images/icon/Screenshot-2025-12-29-at-17.43.42-2-414bcd12-8b54-4fa6-9675-a5598f1fefa7.png)Defying GravityTatz![](https://cdn.synaps.media/defying-gravity/content/images/thumbnail/ogp3-2-7ea13c27-9090-4225-8d0b-988036b5b7b2.png)](https://defying-gravity.synaps.media/en/failure-i-had-to-make/)