Trapeze School New York plans Santa Monica location
SM PIER Santa Monicans might soon be flying high.
Building on the success of his trapeze schools in New York City, Boston and Baltimore, Jonathon Conant is planning to offer lessons in the acrobatic art on the Santa Monica Pier.
The Trapeze School New York is slated to open a fourth location at the heart of the pier, on a 9,000 square-foot vacant lot between Pacific Park and the Playland Arcade. An opening date has not yet been announced but Conant estimates it could happen as soon as next month. It will take about a week to install the 32-foot tall rigs.
The addition of the trapeze school is a welcomed addition, complementing the unique array of services and activities already offered on the pier, said Ben Franz-Knight, the executive director of the Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corporation (PRC).
“A lot of guests that come to the pier are really going to enjoy the process and watching the classes,” Knight said. “Our hope is to have a lot of members of the public involved in the classes as well.”
The open-air school, clearly visible to visitors of the pier, will be situated on a site that has been vacant for the past 12 years, occasionally used for special events. The trapeze school will be awarded a one-year lease with the option to renew.
The school opened in Lower Manhattan on Pier 40 in 2001 and locations in the Boston suburb of Reading and Baltimore soon followed. Conant was a music composer for film and television when he went on a Club Med vacation in 1998 and took several flying trapeze lessons.
“It was a tremendous experience going up in great fear and going down feeling triumphant,” Conant said.
The native Californian went back to New England hoping to find a trapeze school. When Conant discovered one did-n’t exist, he decided to open a school in upstate New York. A few years later, Conant partnered with friends Dave and Anne Brown and founded the Trapeze School New York.
The three business partners had been mulling their options the past few years of a fourth location and saw an opportunity in California, feeling residents would respond well to an unusual activity. When the PRC sent out a notice last year seeking a short-term tenant for a vacant spot on the pier, Brown decided to throw in the company’s name.
“We really like it when our business makes other businesses work better when the business relationship is built on the community and trying to bring something good,” Conant said. “Working with the pier here, these guys all want to do great stuff for the city.”
The trapeze school isn’t just for people with aspirations for the circus. One of the benefits of the trapeze arts is that it helps people realize their potential,” Conant said.
“In additional to being a phenomenal workout, it’s a tremendous bodybuilding experience,” Conant said. “It helps people reevaluate what they believe they are capable of.”
Though the school will primarily offer lessons to students that have booked a reservation, walk-in visitors might also be accepted. Classes in the other three schools range from $45 during off-peak hours to $75 during peak hours for a two-hour class.
Roughly 25,000 people have taken part in classes at the company’s three schools since 2001.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 16, 2008. Read the original PDF.