When Your Creative Outlet Disappears ...
A conversation with Cirque du Soleil aerialist Stéphanie Ortega
“I was feeling very lost—who was I without performing on stage? I decided to learn new things.” —Stéphanie Ortega
Preview: Episode 60 How We Go On When Our Creative Practice Is Gone with Aerialist Stéphanie Ortega
Aerialist Stéphanie Ortega trained hard to become one of the best aerialists in the world. So when COVID hit Europe, Cirque du Soleil was forced to stop touring and Stéphanie was forced to stop her creative practice almost entirely. What happens when we lose our creative practice? We speak with Stéphanie about some of the emotions you might expect—anger, loss, fear, purposelessness—and about what she did to help get herself back on track creatively, emotionally and spiritually. Plus, Rosemerry talks about what it is like to return to performing after the death of her son—and what it has taught her about trust and creative practice.
Originally from France, Stéphanie Ortega studied ballet at the Roland Petit School in Marseille and started dancing professionally in a cabaret in Paris. She discovered the circus community when she was performing in the United States and began training as an aerialist, acquiring skill after skill including trapeze, aerial silk, Spanish rope, and eventually mastering the “suspended Pole,” a moveable pole that does not touch the ground, emulating a flying effect. She worked for Disneyland Paris, Franco Dragone and Cirque du Soleil. Prior to the Pandemic, Ortega was working on the show “Corteo” performing as the sole suspended pole artist. Currently living in Colorado, Ortega is preparing to rejoin the iconic circus troupe for an international tour. She recently had a chance to perform again for the first time since the pandemic began.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
I love Voices of the Heart, a small, beautiful book by illustrator Ed Young that looks at 26 Chinese symbols that describe feelings and emotions related to the heart. Part art, part Chinese etymology, intensely personal and gloriously beautiful.
Playful, poetic and wise, The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace is a book of short stories of “Keen, strange and ardent women” written by poet Steven Nightingale, deeply informed by Sufism and Jataka stories. I read it years ago and just picked it up again and I am delighted with the quirky, unpredictable tales, fabulous lexicon and goodness in this book.
Christie:
In our last newsletter, I wrote about Miriam Toews’s captivating essay, “The Way She Closed the Door.” It just so happened that I’d already ordered her latest novel, Fight Night, which I soon devoured. At first, I found the nine-year-old narrator’s precociousness distracting, but eventually I fell into loving her and the novel grew on me as I read. I found many echoes of the essay in the novel and lots of food for thought.
One of my most beloved editors was also a poet, and when his widow sent me a book of his poems, Midflight, published posthumously, it felt like he had returned for a visit. The book is wonderfully comforting and beautiful, and a touching reminder that he was here and is so very missed.
The Poet Reads for the First Time Since Her Son Dies
with a line from Charles Simic, “The Prodigal”
Glade of light on the empty stage.
She steps into it, eyes blinded.
Someone in the audience
clears a throat. Someone
scuffs a sole. Many invisible
someones make no sound at all.
She has faith they are there.
She is holding a stack of papers.
Her chest contracts, rises.
So much that happens goes unseen,
a secret cinema.
She opens her mouth
and the words fall out like leaves
releasing themselves from a tree.
With each sentence she is more bare
until only her trunk remains.
She is an aspen arriving in January,
skeleton exposed.
What no one can see
are the roots. What no one can see
is she is standing on trust.
It has taken her fifty-two years
of bursting into color and
wildly waving her branches
to finally learn how
to stand still.
The other trees stand with her,
and though it is winter,
their roots grow wider, deeper.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
A Note About Paid Subscriptions:
First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Starting this month, only our paid subscribers will receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support.
This week, we speak with Stéphanie about overcoming her fears when performing dangerous acts high above the ground in inclement weather, and also overcoming the debilitating fear that most artists experience at some time: Am I good enough?
If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
If you stepped away from your creative practice for a long time, how did you get back in?
How do you deal with the inner voice that says, “You’re not good enough?”