American Circus Educators Magazine Spring 2018 (Issue 1, Volume 12) | Page 32

P o i n t o f // C O N T O R T I O N
In recent years, circus has exploded in
pop culture and training has become more
accessible than ever. Social media has played a
big part in our ability to share skills, learn new
tricks and explore training techniques. However,
it can be difficult for students, performers, and
teachers to know who to trust, what to trust, and
how to realistically set goals.
View:
Catie Brier
My name is Catie Brier, and I’m a contortion
coach based in San Francisco, California. I’ve
used Instagram religiously for the past four
years, specifically as a means to promote and
share my work as a coach. In doing this, I have
developed strategies for navigating the world of
circus training through social media.
I started contortion training when I was 11 after
dancing from a young age. At 16, I moved to San
Francisco to pursue my dream of becoming a
real contortionist. This is when I began training
Mongolian contortion under world-renowned
contortionist Serchmaa Byamba. Luckily, with a
LOT of hard work, everything panned out, and
I did become the professional contortionist I
dreamed of! I performed for many years, but
retired that life 5 years ago to start a family and
shifted my focus to teaching.
When I was training, there were certain things
that were very unnatural for me, including
active leg flexibility, shoulder strength, and the
other usual suspects. The Mongolian contortion
style I trained under didn’t incorporate much
active flexibility, and since my training was
before the age of Instagram, I didn’t have
resources to learn different techniques to
strengthen my body and fill in the gaps in my
training. We did lots of repetitions (SO. MANY.
HANDSTANDS.) But I still had a hard time with
seemingly simple things like having a flat split
upside down.
There was always this thought that you had
to have certain strengths naturally to achieve
specific goals. I started coming up with my own
exercises without necessarily understanding
the science of what I was doing. I approached
my training with the idea: “I’m bad at this thing
so it must be weak. I’m going to strengthen it.”
It started to make a really big difference in my
own training, and since focusing my attention
on teaching, I’ve developed my own style
with active flexibility as a core foundation. My
teachings encompass all of the exercises and
PHOTO CREDIT: CATIE BRIER
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