Looking to try something new while reaching new heights? We swung by an Urban Angels Circus & Circus Leeds class in Chapel Allerton.
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00:00 Yeah, nice, good, excellent.
00:04 My name's Deborah Sanderson, I'm the Artistic Director of Urban Angels.
00:08 I do teach a lot of aerial, we teach trapeze here and silks and aerial hoop.
00:14 We put performances into events and we do a lot of teaching for other spaces like Circus Leeds here in Hare Hills.
00:22 I've been teaching for about 25 years.
00:25 I've taught many things in the past, I've taught theatre, I've taught bits of dance, I've taught drama,
00:31 but I've found that aerial and other circus skills, it's a way of really improving people's confidence
00:38 and it's really noticeable that people improve in their general wellbeing as well and their fitness level.
00:46 I come here every week to practice my aerial skills in the adults classes
00:51 but I also help out as a volunteer in the children's classes to invest back the skills that I've learnt.
00:59 There's aerial hoop, there's aerial trapeze and aerial sling.
01:04 The passion that allows me to share my skills with the community is really just about movement
01:12 and also teaching children to learn confidence and move their bodies and develop physical agility
01:22 as well as follow instructions and develop their skills whilst they're growing in creativity, performing
01:31 and trying different bits of equipment in the air which is really fun.
01:36 For Urban Angels we've had a very exciting couple of years because we've started to develop a new skill.
01:42 We're now doing vertical dance which means that you're in a harness and suspended from a rope
01:47 and it's like abseiling but you get to a certain point either on a cliff face or a clock tower
01:52 or wherever we're performing it and you do dancing but you're doing it against a vertical wall
01:58 instead of a horizontal wall and that's something that's really exciting for us.
02:01 We believe that circus is for absolutely everybody so whether you've done gymnastics in the past
02:07 or ballet or other forms of dance or never done anything before in your life
02:12 we're really keen to get you along, get you up in the air and help you, support you and find your phenomenal circus side.
02:20 You don't have to have any experience before or have done any of the discipline, I'd just say come along.
02:27 Urban Angels are mainly a performance company and we're really excited that we're going to be appearing at Den of Delirium
02:35 and I've got a new act called Madame Langerstein so I'm looking forward to doing some cabaret.
02:40 It's a sense of achievement that people will look at the equipment, they'll see how high it's suspended
02:45 and they think there's no way I can even get on there and then when you break it down into technique
02:50 and give them the right sort of emotional and sometimes physical support and they find out that they can do it
02:55 I think the results are great with this and other circus activities.
03:00 [Background chatter]