The first thing newcomers have to master at the Flying Colors Trapeze School in Scandia, Minnesota, is the climb.
It's 24 rungs of a fiberglass ladder from the front lawn of Sherri Mann's farm and school to the platform where one of her assistants awaits. The platform is the last thing students touch before they swing into the air. It's covered by a canopy. It's blue. It's the size of a gurney.
Standing there on a recent day a student would have seen far across Olinda Trail to a field of freshly rolled hay, or to their right the paddock where four horses idly grazed, heads down and unaware; or, below, a sturdy-looking net stretched tight, like it was ready for impact.
For many of the students who come to Mann and Flying Colors for a one-week camp of trapeze and circus lessons, climbing the ladder the first time is soon followed by climbing the ladder again, back down to the ground, after refusing to swing out into space.
"Almost everyone comes in and looks at it and says, 'I can't,'" said Mann, who first learned trapeze as an adult when she followed her own kids to circus classes in St. Paul.
That's right where Mann hopes to find them, nervous and unsure, a bit daunted by the sheer size of the professional trapeze that she and her husband installed on their Scandia property nearly 20 years ago. It was a birthday gift for Sherri from her husband, a bit of a pipe dream after she fell in love with the idea of hurtling through the air suspended by ropes and her belief that she could do this.
In a typical week, the "I can't" becomes an "I did!" as students take their first daring steps into circus life. Each summer camp ends with a Friday performance attended by parents and grandparents who watch, no doubt battling their own nerves, as kids go airborne.
Camper Athena Rynders, 8, said her own friends don't always believe her when she tells them what she did on her summer vacation.
"They're like, 'You didn't do that,'" she said. "And I say, 'Yes, I did!'"
For many students it's a summertime thrill, but some, like Quinn Trocke, 15, use Mann's school as a training ground. Trocke performs in Las Vegas with the Aerial Angels of Trapeze Las Vegas, booking three-week stays with her parents in tow. She's performed at the NFL Draft and at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
"It's an adrenaline rush," she said. For Mann, she works as a coach, helping the youngest campers learn how to do the trapeze or other circus arts, like hanging from silks, juggling, balancing on top of a ball and tumbling.
Trocke has been doing circus since she was 3, first in diapers and then at Circus Juventas in St. Paul.
She's short and powerful, with blonde curls and a megawatt smile. When she says that she doesn't fall all that often, it's believable. She's learning to do a layout, a back flip done in a plank position and not curled up. Timing is all-important.
The whole scene "scares my mom a little," she said.
Her mom, Cheryl Adams, said her daughter made it look so easy that she tried trapeze. Once. It didn't go well. She has confidence in her daughter, though.
"She's very confident up there, and because she's so comfortable it makes me feel a little bit better," said Adams. Quinn will head to Evansville, Ind., over Thanksgiving weekend to perform with the Jordan World Circus. "She's excited," said Adams, who said most of her other children did traditional sports like hockey and basketball.
Installing the trapeze is a day and a half of work each spring, said Mann's husband, Chuck. He bought the trapeze from a circus-industry veteran who drove it up from Florida. His sister-in-law, a retired Minneapolis firefighter, helps with the installation because of her extensive knowledge of ropes, a skill she learned for high-risk firefighting situations.
Four-foot steel spikes driven into the ground keep the safety net pulled tight and the steel supports standing tall. Despite the time it takes to raise it each spring, it takes only about three hours to take it down in the fall, Mann said.
The trapeze was just for Mann and a private club of trapeze enthusiasts at first. Then her daughter's friends came over for summer sessions. Then her daughters grew up and Mann wanted to keep teaching. She started the summer camps several years ago.
Her lessons are guided by a quote from the motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, one that's emblazoned on her camp T-shirts: "Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude."
It's that, and a belief that kids should get outside and play more. "It's amazing how many kids haven't hung by their knees!" said Mann, who makes that one of the basic maneuvers kids learn on the trapeze.
Even the novice students can end the week by hanging from their knees while swinging upside down and then, at just the right moment, reaching into the air to be caught by one of Mann's professional trapeze artists swinging on a second bar. If it's done right, their arms are gripped tightly by their "catcher," and they can release from their own bar. The catcher then swings once with them before dropping them to the net. Ropes and harnesses keep the student from falling too quickly.
Mann has expanded her camp in recent years, adding a wakeboarding class on Big Marine Lake, which her farm abuts.
This summer she had horse riding classes as well, taught by Veronica Painter. Painter grew up in Chicago but when her family attended a horse show in Lake Geneva, Wis., she was hooked.
"I kept begging to ride," Painter said, laughing. Today she tours the country with three horses and her mule, Pickles, teaching lessons and performing.
"The circus began with horses," she said. That's why circuses are in rings, because the horses would run in circles as the rider performed. In her performances, Painter can do Roman riding, vaulting, trick riding, hanging off the side of the horse, going under the horse while it's running and other tricks.
"You don't see this anywhere, and you don't find places where you can learn it," Painter said of her horse classes. "Kids in cities don't get time with live animals, especially big ones."
On a recent sunny morning, while the horses were grazing, campers practiced crabwalks on mats spread under a canopy. Another group took turns riding on the handlebars of a circus bike ridden by one of Mann's staff. Several other kids worked on their balance by standing on a balance beam, spinning a plastic plate on a stick, or hanging from silks.
On the trapeze, a student who was on her first week of lessons listened as the trapeze catcher told her how he would grab her arms while she was swinging from her knees, allowing her to let go of her own bar.
"Once you hear me say 'gotcha,' you can let go with your legs," he said.
She did it, and then did a double thumbs up when she landed.
Then she put her hand to her heart and let out an audible sigh of relief.
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