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And so, aerial artists, this kind of goes back to that last question, have an emergency
plan. Now I have never had need of my emergency plan, but if something went wrong where, you
know, you, you're on a motor, and you are on a lyra and you are going up, and then it,
the power goes out, how are you going to get down? You've got to have a plan for what happens
in the worst case scenario. And you've got to share that plan with somebody that is in
the tech crew, either your stage hand or somebody has got to know what to do in case of emergency.
So that when it does happen, and I'm not saying it would happen to anybody, but if it does
happen, somebody knows what to do.
There's just a bunch of things that I could say about aerial fabrics and those kind of
things. Start things on the floor. Start it with a Barbie and a rope. What I do, is I
take a little bit, a couple of ribbons, like, everybody knows what a ribbon is, I take a
ribbon and I attach it to a chair, and I take a Barbie doll and I'll wrap it up into the
drop that I'm thinking of doing, and then I'll drop her through it so I know what happens.
Then I'll do it on the ground with my fabric, I'll literally roll on the ground to get out
of the fabric. And then I'll do it at a height that I know I won't fall on the ground, and
then I'll do it a little higher, so it's progressive. I know by the time I take it to the fabric,
I'm not going to fall on my face. Because there is just a lot of risk involved in fabric.
There is a lot of risk to be paralyzed, to break a leg, to die on this. So you've got
to be very careful about what you are doing. And especially with your rigging. Your rigging
is usually the reason that you are going to fall if something is going to happen. I could
go on forever about your rigging, but that's another thing.
So for rigging, you want to have at least a five to one ratio so, you might think, oh,
I'm only a hundred pounds on the fabric, but when you are adding the kinetic energy of
your drops, you weigh a thousand pounds at least. From the top of your drop to the bottom
of it. So the structure you have has to not just hold a thousand pounds, because if it
reaches that, it's just going to fail. But you want to have a couple steps away from
the edge of that. So five to one ratio is great for that, which means you need something
around five thousand pounds to be able to hold you. So, the weakest part of your rigging,
is what the whole thing is rated for. So the weakest link of your rigging is obviously
what you need to worry about the most. So like, my span set, I know that that is rated
for like five thousand pounds so that is probably one of the weakest parts.
And you want to rig ideally to an I beam. I think all aerialists know that, a beam clamp
or a span set over it, it's just really hard to go into a venue and say, okay, I've got
a rig.
This is very important too. In your tech rider, make sure that, you know, you've got your
escape plan and that somebody is going to be there to talk about that escape plan with
you. Make sure that you've got a safe access to your rigging point. Make sure you've talked
about your rigging point. If they need to, they can have a structural engineer come in
and say yes, you can hang from that and yes you can hang from that with that and that
is not going to fail on you.
Make sure you've got safe access to the beginning of your routine. You don't want to, if you
start up in the rafters and you come down, you want to make sure you're not going to
be hanging upside down from your fabric for forty-five minutes waiting for your routine,
because that is just not going to happen. Or if it does happen, you'll be really, really
exhausted and the chances of danger are just really, you just don't want to go there.
Unless I go into real specifics about rigging, which I, I feel like if you have those kind
of questions about rigging, go to somebody that is a professional. Don't be afraid to
ask questions. Most people are going to help you out in answering your questions, for free,
for no charge, especially when it comes to your safety.