WESTMINSTER, Colo.—Every rung up the skinny, metal ladder is one step further from reality.
Up. Six more inches away from the economy. Up. Away from your boss. Up. Farewell to chores, the mortgage and the new ding in your car. Up, up, up. Every peg erases another worry.
Until you’re balanced on a thin plank, 30 feet in the sky. The first thing you’ll notice: It’s much higher than you thought it would be. And now you have to get down.
When you’re standing up here, ready to leap, you can physically feel a different compartment of your brain click on: part survival instinct (no matter how many times you’ve done it), part superhero. It feels like pure adrenaline.
Now: Jump.
That is how it started for Longmont’s Benny Coleman about 60 years ago, when he was at the YMCA in Denver for wrestling practice. He says he “saw a bunch of old guys up in the ceiling flying around.” So he tried it.
Some people scream when they first jump. Some cry. Some get white-knuckled and refuse to let go of the trapeze bar.
Others, like Coleman, feel like they might touch the sky. They realize, at that moment, they will never be the same. Flying trapeze imprints itself onto their DNA.
That passion is what led a group of trapeze flyers—then professors at the University of Denver—to start in 1916 a nonprofit club called the Imperial Flyers, today one of the oldest trapeze groups in existence. You can trace the majority of trapeze schools in the world back to this group.
That passion is also what led current members of the Imperial Flyers to build a massive outdoor, double-bar trapeze rig on a stretch of land in Westminster. Many of the club’s current 25 members, such as 80-year-old Coleman, live in Boulder and Broomfield counties.
Yes, 80 years old.
Coleman leaps off the plank with the ease and grace of a teenager; his body knows these movements as naturally as walking. He hangs by his muscular arms, his legs pumping the air, before he floats to the net below. A nearby train and cars driving past 77th and Stewart streets in Westminster can see this senior citizen playing in the curious metal rig above the treetops. It is the only high-flying trapeze rig in the state, and one of only a handful in the country.
Imperial Flyers is not a school. It is a nonprofit, open to the public, and is looking for more enthusiasts who want to join the forever family. Members drop in to practice whenever the weather allows, and don’t perform, except at a limited number of parties and an annual summer circus that is “ridiculous and free and fun,” as one member describes it. This year, the circus is Aug. 23.
Members say the interest in flying trapeze and the number of new rigs has been increasing since the ’80s and continues to climb as athletes seek new extreme sports and adrenaline rushes. Over time, the serious flyers learn to leap, flip and twist from one swinging trapeze bar to a “catcher,” hanging by his or her knees from a second swinging bar on the other side of the rig.
This rig is a magnet for people with stories.
Coleman is a former Denver counselor and teacher of experimental psychology, gymnastics, swimming and diving. He also traveled around Europe with the touring figure-skating ensemble Holiday on Ice, performing an act with his wife and three girls. (We’re talking balancing his handstanding daughter over his head while ice skating.) In fact, he just returned from a Holiday on Ice reunion in Vegas.
Another member is an ex-performer in a traveling circus, today a financial consultant. There are engineers, a CEO, a zookeeper, a radiologist and a stay-at-home mom, as well as a fire hula-hooper, an aerial fabric performer and an acroyogi. The rig has fused at least three marriages and countless friendships.
“That’s a big part of this: the relationships and friendships,” Coleman says. “I think it helps your mental health, doing things with people, sharing ideas. Some of us have been friends for years. It’s just like people who play bridge together.”
Except you’re 30 feet in the Air, upside down.
Oh yeah, that.
The Imperial Flyers is the only flying group that’s ever been the subject of a master’s thesis. In the 1984 report, one respondent described the group as a “tribe,” and suggested that perhaps they should wear feathers.
They don’t. They just wear comfortable clothes, and safety belts hooked to ropes if they’re trying a new trick. But they do shoot tequila after flying, says Tony Carpenter, of Wheat Ridge, with a laugh.
Carpenter, 54, has been a member since 1965, after his yearlong stint with the Hamid-Morton Circus, contracted by the famous international Shriners. There, he flew trapeze and was an assistant chimpanzee trainer.
The trapeze rig itself also has quite a story.
The first home of the Imperial Flyers’ trapeze was at the University of Denver. In 1930, it moved to the Denver Central YMCA, where it was highly popular and the skeleton of more than 30 circus shows to raise money for YMCAs around the world.
But in 1995, a visiting professional trapeze artist fell from the net and broke his hip, according to the Imperial Flyers’ Web site. He admitted it was his fault, but the YMCA booted the rig, pointing to their insurance carrier.
Trapeze injuries are rare, according to the group. In the rig’s 60-plus years at the YMCA, there had been no other serious injuries. Even comparing minor injuries, such as sprains, bruises and cuts, the trapeze garnered far less than basketball, weightlifting and other sports. Trapeze is not perfectly safe, but when properly done, it’s not dangerous, the Web site says.
Bulging blisters on the palms, or bloody “rips,” are the most common injury. And over time, trapeze takes a toll on your shoulders. Once Kyla Duffey, of Boulder, says she was doing a double back flip and accidentally slammed her head into the catcher’s chest, knocking the wind out of him. The more complex the trick, the riskier, she says; but you practice connected to safety lines until you know it well. And the massive white net that catches fliers is softer than bouncing on a trampoline.
Duffey says the most difficult aspect of trapeze is in your head. The rig sees about 200 visitors per year, she says, for a drop-in cost of $10 per person, to maintain the rig. Yet few of those visitors return and join the club, Duffey says.
That’s, in part, because there is something different about flyers than non-flyers, according to the thesis written about Imperial Flyers.
Flyers dislike feeling dizzy or disoriented, the thesis concluded. Flyers are able to see and appreciate something aesthetically beautiful about trapeze that non-flyers can’t. “The beauty of the moment,” one flyer called it.
The first time Duffey tried trapeze on vacation in California, she says she fell in love with it. She says it gives her a fun outlet for exercise, and it’s strengthened her on a deeper level.
“While everyone has a healthy dose of fear all the time, you come to a place where you can overcome that, and you know yourself,” she says. “You know your heart.”
For Carpenter, the former circus performer, trapeze has taught him how to make quick decisions when things go wrong, because they inevitably do—in life and on the bar. Human nature clicks into a fight or flight mode. But Carpenter says he feels a spatial awareness that keeps him calm, focused and able to clearly see the next step.
“There is a certain personality that gravitates toward trapeze,” he says. “Some like the extreme experience. Some do it for artistic reasons, or exercise. Everybody has their reasons. In my case, it happened so young in my life that it became a part of my DNA.”
That’s why Coleman, the 80-year-old former teacher, hopes to some day help establish a trapeze program for youth.
“It has changed my life and made my life exciting and dynamic, and I’d like to give the same opportunity to other young people,” he says.
As for Coleman, he chuckles at the thought of stopping any time soon. He says he has less power as he gets older, but it is no less fun.
Maybe more.
“I will do this as long as I can,” he says.
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