Corde Lisse
The art of climbing ropes. Generally held in polite and intelligent company to be the finest and bravest of the aerial disciplines, corde lisse appeals often to purists: against the relative complexity of trapeze or the accidental effects and built-in prettiness of tissu, its aesthetic is subdued, minimalist. The suspended rope is an axis by which the aerialist describes angles – a vertical plane – and in this sense corde lisse has a close relative in Chinese Pole, though the Pole is a rigid surface to be kicked off and lends itself to much heavier aerial styles than the rope.
In recent years much of the innovation in rope has centred on increasing the acrobatic vocabulary associated with the discipline – the release moves – though there have been smaller, subtler advances in complex, neutral, transitional movements – the connections between the standard positions and the ways in which drops are wrapped. The artform has also seen technique imported from Mallakhamb, an Indian gymnastic art that uses a thinner rope and goes heavy on toe drops and holds. (Mallakhamb favours quick, snapping movement and much of it appears to be technically possible because the practitioners are pre-pubescent girls and weigh about 90 pounds; nonetheless, dedicated aerialists have found a way to adapt and translate.)
Corde lisse literally means 'smooth rope', and is a discipline distinct from Web/Spanish Web (where the aerialist climbs to a small loop and threads through a wrist, ankle or neck ready to be spun extremely fast by a partner whipping round the rope at the bottom). Ropes are generally cotton, not as soft as you might think/hope/like, and divide for the most part into two types: a loose, flexible three-ply knit; and a denser, stiffer braided style.
Perhaps unusually given the depth of circus activity, there's not very much corde lisse practice in France, and there's actually far more going on in the discipline in the UK, the Scandinavian countries, and the pockets of America that have dedicated aerial communities. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that French artists are trained as generalists, with a great breadth of skills, when rope particularly welcomes those with no previous training background by permitting great deviance in technique and movement (in other words: style).
Compared to silks, corde lisse doesn't have such commercial/corporate value, but rope artists don't care.
a.k.a: Rope / Vertical Rope / Cuerda / Vertikalseil.
