Learn Trapeze: Fulfill That Childhood Dream

How would I describe my desire to leap off a platform 23 feet up in the air and swing from a bar?

Early midlife crisis? Maybe.

Still, I had some concerns.

"It's like hanging on the monkey bars," a friend assured me after I announced my intention to take a trapeze class.

The flying trapeze is both more and less physically demanding than one might expect. You have to climb, grab, lean, hop, swing, stretch, arch, curl, hang on, let go, kick, drop, roll, flip and crawl -- all of which add up to a serious workout. The non-gym-goer in me was anxious, but my far-from-firm physique turned out to be pretty much a nonissue.

"The way our hands are set up, if you just curve your fingers, you can easily hold all of your weight" as you hang from the bar, an ability most people have, explained Jonathon Conant, president of Trapeze School New York, which he co-founded in 2002 with Dave and Anne Brown.

Indeed, the buff and brawny might even be at a disadvantage when it comes to flying because their movements may be too controlled.

	Trapeze at Sunset

"The activity is so much like waltzing," Conant said, "you just want to go with the flow and the rhythm of it" rather than muscle through the motions.

The greater hurdle to going with the flow, however, is fear -- of heights, of falling, of failing, of trusting strangers, of the unknown and, really, of giving up control. But it's a key component of the experience and the root of the exhilaration that follows. Face down your inner chicken, trapeze proponents say, and you could send your self-esteem soaring with every swing on the bar.

Trapeze is "a great tool for teaching people that they're actually capable of doing a lot more than they currently believe," Conant said.

During the past decade, trapeze schools have been popping up all over the United States amid increased interest in the high-flying sport. The trend can be traced to Club Med, which began running trapeze programs for its vacationers in the early 1980s and now offers the activity at two dozen or so of its resorts; it's where many novices first try the trapeze, and where TSNY's Conant got hooked.

Since opening, TSNY has logged more than 24,000 fliers and tens of thousands of visits, Conant estimates. The school also operates in Baltimore and near Boston; another location is set to open on the pier in Santa Monica, Calif., this spring.

In Manhattan, TSNY has two locations: one outdoors, on a Hudson River pier (the season starts in mid-May), and one indoors, in a big white bubble on far-west W. 30th St., where I have my lesson. I am one of five first-timers; the three other fliers sharing the two-hour session are intermediates, and two of them are tweens.

Safety is first on the agenda. I'm fitted into a safety belt cinched tightly, and we beginners learn how to attach our safety ropes at the base of the ladder, as well as how to fall to the net.

	Trapeze in the City