Flux 2008

the well

Psychic numbing
Reinventing Ed's Coed
Bass driven
One year, one pair, zero washes
Running from crocodiles
The big idea
Faith in recovery
I am Duck
Unfinished battles
Learning to lose

multimedia

Nuclear acrobat
The Pendulum Flyers

The science of suspension

story Kate Griesmann | photo Ashley Baer

documentary Wen Lee, Rebecca Purice & Steven Wilsey  

Just before ten o’clock on an unusually sunny Saturday morning in March 2008, Tanya Burka is busy hanging hoops and trapezes in the gym of the French American International School. In a few minutes the Pendulum Flyers, Portland’s youth aerial dance troupe, will start their four-hour rehearsal. Amy Winehouse blares from the iPod speakers in the corner, signaling the start of practice and Burka, the twenty-six-year-old head coach of Pedulum’s education programs, joins the singing teenagers in a series of stretches. Burka has worked with the Pendulum Aerial Dance Theatre as a coach and performer for just over a year, beginning shortly after graduating from L’Ecole Nationale De Cirque in Montreal.

Becoming an aerialist was, relatively speaking, a late-in-life decision for Burka. As a child she dreamed of working for NASA, an ambition she pursued wholeheartedly for twenty-two years. Her love for science led her to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she received a degree in nuclear engineering before abruptly changing career paths.

Dressed in the same unofficial uniform as the middle and high school girls in the troupe — a leotard concealed by a t-shirt and black leggings — it’s sometimes difficult to tell the coach from her students. Burka’s dark hair is cut short and asymmetrically, calling attention to her prominent bone structure. “I’m Ukrainian on both sides,” she says with a laugh, gesturing to her face. As the group finishes stretching, Burka walks to a set of blue aerial silks: long, wide pieces of two-way stretch nylon that hang from the ceiling. Burka climbs one of the silks the way young children climb the fireman’s pole on the playground by pulling herself up with her arms, wrapping her legs into the fabric, and stepping up. The stretchy nylon gives a little each time she pulls on it, but soon Burka is 30 feet in the air.

Aerial dance is still only vaguely known in the United States, but is gaining a reputation, thanks in part to Cirque du Soleil. It combines elements of ballet and modern dance with gymnastics and elevates them using the trapeze, hoops, ropes, and aerial silks.

Once in the air, Burka wraps the blue fabric around her body several times, preparing for a trick called the “star drop” — a complicated move starting with layers of material wrapped around dancers’ torsos and legs. With a nod of the head they flip forward, simultaneously rotating horizontally and vertically. They spin and twist with arms and legs outstretched, creating a star-like shape tumbling through space. The Flyers have been practicing this trick for months, and while they’re good at it, it still makes several students nervous. “We’re going to play a game, which is the ‘let’s get you guys over thinking this is scary’ game,” Burka calls from above, swinging gently from side to side in the fabric. Today, she explains, they will practice the star drop in two parts with a distinct break in the middle that leaves the dancer suspended in mid-air. The silks unravel from Burka’s lean frame as she demonstrates, evoking an Emeril-esque “Bam!” in the pause between the two parts. The teenagers on the ground laugh — they’re accustomed to Burka’s relaxed approach. The first pair of students climb the silks, get into position, and are suddenly wracked with fear. The game has backfired — for some students, slowing the trick down has only made it more terrifying. On the ground, unendingly patient, Burka calls out words of encouragement until the dancers find the confidence they need to take the risk.

From a young age Burka was armed with the self-determination she now imparts to the Flyers. She recalls a family story of deciding to be potty-trained at the same time as her brother, Adrian. Although he is fifteen months older than her, age did not deter Burka from getting out of diapers. By the time she entered kindergarten at the Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, Burka could read and do basic math, including addition and subtraction, which made it difficult for teachers to keep her occupied. “For a lot of kindergarten and first grade I think they sent me to the library,” she says. Burka excelled in every academic pursuit she came across, searching out extra credit and earning good grades. As a senior at MIT, she was a member of the 2003 National Collegiate Gymnastics Association’s All-Americans in Academics, which required a G.P.A. above 3.0. The previous year, she received the Irving Kaplan award for outstanding academic achievement in nuclear engineering. With her natural smarts and dedication, plus a degree with the MIT seal beside her name, it seemed like there was little that would stop Burka from achieving her childhood dream.

So, why is she hanging from the rafters of a Portland gymnasium instead?

Burka’s love of aerial dance began when she was older than most of the teenagers she works with at Pendulum. Germantown Academy required high school seniors to do month-long internships before graduation. On a whim, Burka called the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. “I sort of figured that was my last hurrah before I went off to work for NASA,” she says. The school found a spot for Burka. In return for taking out the trash, fixing the fax machine, and performing other general office tasks, she was allowed to take classes for free.

Burka doesn’t hail from a circus family (her mother is a project manager for a pharmaceutical company and her father owns an auto-body shop), but a childhood of gymnastics lessons piqued her interest in the circus. Eye surgery to correct strabismus (cross-eyed vision) left her with poor depth perception, something she has grown accustomed to, though she admits shiny doorknobs still occasionally get the best of her. As a result of the surgery, she shied away from sports with moving objects because it was hard for her to tell whether they were coming or going. Gymnastics, Burka found, was perfect because the athlete controls the movements. But despite years of training, Burka describes herself as a “horrible” gymnast. She is strong and flexible, but at 5’10” her height makes it difficult to rotate fast enough to perform many of the tricks. During her internship Burka discovered a way that her gymnastics background could benefit from her height: aerial dance. In the air, Burka’s long limbs create an ethereal quality while her gymnastics training gives her the strength to complete the tricks and make every move appear effortless.

Before leaving San Francisco, a staff member told Burka that she had the potential to be a professional aerialist. “It had just never occurred to me to pursue an alternative career like that, and I was like, ‘That’s a really cool idea.’ But if I’d told my parents,” she says, trailing off into laughter. “They would have just killed me and buried the body where no one would have found it.” She also realized that, at age eighteen, she was not ready to abandon the NASA dreams of her youth. So, putting off the idea of aerial dance for a few years, she attended MIT.

Having been a shy, glasses-and-suspenders-wearing kid whose elementary school report cards encouraged her to speak more in class, performing didn’t come naturally to Burka. In San Francisco she started the long process of overcoming some of that shyness. “Having gone to the same school for my entire childhood, it was the first time I got to step outside of that and meet people on my own terms,” she says. The confidence she gained through that experience followed her back to the East Coast where her mother, Lesia Pryor, remembers noticing a marked difference in her daughter. “It was like some of that quiet and introverted person changed,” she says.

At MIT, Burka competed on the gymnastics team and worked at the nuclear reactor on campus. During shifts at the reactor, the reality of her chosen career path started to make itself plain. “It was boring, it really was,” she says. “The training is awesome: there are pneumatic tubes, and there’s radioactive material — but the reality is that you sit there.” With aerial dance still on her mind, Burka decided that the opportunity to take a risk was more important than a successful disappointment. “Even if I go into it and fail miserably; if I get injured; if I just can’t hack it; I’d much rather say I tried than look back and wonder,” she says. During her senior year, while completing her thesis, she applied to circus school.

Pryor attended Burka’s last gymnastics competition at MIT and it was there that she found out that her daughter’s career horizons had changed. Under the fluorescent lights and curved ceiling of duPont Gymnasium, a renovated airplane hangar, the coach announced that one of the seniors had prepared a special performance. This student, he explained, planned to do something very different after graduation. She had been applying to circus schools and was going to perform the piece she choreographed for her auditions. The anonymous “she” was Tanya Burka.

Though Burka had mentioned circus school to her parents several years before, Pryor was nonetheless shocked when her daughter took the floor. “I guess I never thought she was serious,” she recalls. Rather than perform a tumbling routine for judges, Burka claimed the blue-matted floor as her own with a combination of gymnastics and contortion paired with a vamping, overly gawky style. The audience was enraptured. When it was over, her mother knew Burka was on her way to becoming a professional performer. The home video from that day recorded her reaction: “Oh shit, I know she made it.”

That fall Burka enrolled at L’Ecole Nationale De Cirque, which is a trade school of sorts. The students who study there do not usually go on to a university: they become circus performers. Courses of study include aerial dance, clowning, juggling, and acrobatic technique. Although the focus isn’t as academically rigorous as, say, MIT, the experience of studying performance arts is no less intense. Students spend a minimum of forty-one hours a week in class or practicing their skills. “It’s a really difficult thing to put all of yourself up for evaluation,” Burka says. “Everyone leaves there a little scarred.”

While living in Montreal, Burka met and fell in love with Jon Tanaka. After she graduated they moved to Portland where jobs awaited them — Tanaka with a residential treatment facility for adolescents, and Burka with Pendulum. Tanaka’s job did not work out, however, and after a few months he moved back to Canada. Burka remained in Portland with Pendulum, and also works part time at Ryan Artists, a Portland-based talent agency. She holds two jobs because, as she says, “Even if you are a success as a circus performer you’re still not a success financially.” Burka’s financial security seems to be more of a concern for her mother than for herself. “My whole goal is to do this as a living. I don’t expect to get rich or famous,” Burka says with a shrug. But for Pryor, a “reluctantly supportive” parent, knowing that Burka sidestepped a financially viable career for one that is less so has been difficult to accept. “I worry about her never being able to retire,” says Pryor. She adds that Burka has always been conscientious when it comes to money; she saved up enough in college to pay for her own LASIK eye surgery.

In January 2008 Burka and Tanaka married, but have yet to live in the same country as husband and wife. “It’s really rough because the whole point of coming out here and taking this particular contract was to try and be together and have a home life and everything since I wouldn’t be on tour,” she says with a wistful smile. “But, you know, it happens to hundreds and thousands of people that they happen to fall in love with someone who was born somewhere else.” Despite their separate living situations, Tanaka admires Burka’s career. While for some people, watching their spouse twist, flip, and twirl from the ceiling of a gymnasium may cause heart palpitations or sweaty palms, fear for her safety doesn’t enter Tanaka’s mind. “I love watching her because there’s nothing more beautiful than seeing her do what she loves,” he says.

Today, the level-headed Burka knows that being a performer, especially a circus performer, is a career with a relatively short shelf life, and certainly doesn’t always lend itself to a stable lifestyle. The rebirth of circus as an art form has created a higher demand for performers like Burka, but many jobs require extensive travel. As her contract with Pendulum ends, she is preparing for a three-month stint in Turkey, performing several nights a week at an upscale hotel. When she returns in August, the search for a new contract will be waiting for her. Despite the uncertainty of the future, Burka doesn’t spend much time worrying about the next step: perhaps, like the star drop, slowing down long enough to realize the intricacies of the motion is scarier than just following its course. “Just knowing that I’ve managed to do what it is I dreamed of doing as part of my career — that’s really all I was looking for,” she says. “I want to look back when I’m eighty and say, ‘Look at the insane crap I did.’”