Everyone experiences twists and turns in life, but Christie Shipp has managed a complete double-back-tuck somersault. A mechanical engineering major with two master's degrees from mit, she started her career as a full-time management consultant. Today, she's a corporate dropout flying high as a trapeze artist. "It's scary, but I like going over the edge," says the 35-year-old who once played mellophone in the Band.
Growing up in Bellevue, Wash., Shipp was the kind of kid who always hung out on the monkey bars. She got hooked on trapeze five years ago at a Club Med in Mexico, which had a rig set up near the beach. Shipp found it so thrilling -- "like a giant swing" -- that she went on to take lessons at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. Within a year, what started as a lark turned into a "very, very serious hobby" -- so serious that she took a leave from work to focus on training and performing, then quit the 9-to-5 life altogether.
As her callused hands attest, becoming a trapeze artist isn't a piece of cotton candy. While Shipp has never been injured seriously, she's suffered a lot of pulled muscles and bruises. "I'm still not nearly as flexible as I should be. I work on stretching and upper-body strength almost every day," she says. "The idea is to create something that looks easy, even though it's not."
Shipp, who lives alone in Menlo Park, trains twice a week at the circus school. On Saturdays, she heads up to Sonoma to practice on a friend's outdoor rig. She also performs. Last summer, dressed in a gleaming leotard, the 5-foot-5 aerialist sparkled at the Santa Clara County Fair and at Cyberfest, a youth festival in Santa Clara.
"Not only is she an intense athlete, but she has the mental framework to support her physical abilities. And she would swing until her hands bled, if you let her," says her instructor, Graham Day. "She could walk into any professional troupe."
But Shipp doesn't aspire to go on the road. "I don't want to spend my life sleeping on the circus train," she explains. "I like the idea of being able to live and perform in the Bay Area." She currently supports her passion with a "mishmash" of part-time projects, including a photography business and some consulting for her former employer. Recently she joined with Day and other circus-school performers to start a company called Trapeze World, which offers shows and workshops at parties, fairs and corporate events. She's in no rush, however, to re-enter the business rat race. That lifestyle, she says, "was a circus in itself."
-- Theresa Johnston, '83
