Exhibit A, Exhibit B

I've talked a lot about how my student at the Lido has a rather unique German wheel. My first reaction, of course, is to say that it's not a real German wheel (it's not). But that seems insensitive and snooty, so instead I got into the habit of saying that it's not a traditional German wheel.

And, because part of me is a kind of a jerk, I took pictures to post on this blog.

Here we have Exhibit A, my German wheel.

Real German wheel.

Here, we have Exhibit B.

Non-traditional wheel.

While at first glance, they may appear similar, there are some very key differences. For example, my plates are much closer together than hers are, and the placement of her straps make it impossible to have her toes on the rims. That's not a good thing for spirals.



Also, though it's hard to tell from the photo, the distance between the two hoops of the wheel is far greater with the non-traditional wheel than with the real German wheel. This has it's advantages (shoulders pass through easily), but also it's disadvantages. I'm pretty sure the greater distance makes things a bit trickier for spirals, especially with with placement of the straps in the middle of the plates.

Then, there are the handles.

Obviously, the shapes of the handles aren't even remotely comparable. Nor is the size. Also, my wheel has four and the non-traditional wheel has two. Then there's the fact that two of my handles also come with bars.

And that's where things get interesting. While I would never change wheels, I've got to say, some of the moves that this girl came up with using that enormous space around the handles are wicked awesome. Of course, they also come close to smacking her in the face every time she does a prise d'elan... so... yeah.

I'm not going to lie. When I walked into the studio the first day and saw the wonky handles, the duct tape, the rubber strip spiraled around the rims though not actually covering the entire surface of the wheel... I was thrown off my guard. My time at ENC and my employment by this circus has been a huge blessing and has left me incredibly spoiled.

But seriously, did you click on that last picture?