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February 25, 2005|Volume 33, Number 19


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Emily Appelbaum -- as her taller persona.



Student enjoys the high life

Emily Appelbaum '08 loves to tower a few heads -- well, make that up to five or six heads -- above the rest of the world.

The Yale freshman achieves such a tall stature on four-and-a-half-foot high stilts. She says that being a sort of human skyscraper gives her the license to do things she wouldn't ordinarily do when standing at her usual height of 5 feet, 6 inches.

She takes particular pleasure in doing mischievous things, like stealing the hat off an unsuspecting person's head and placing it on a tree limb, or sneakily following an unwitting passerby as an amused audience looks on. And she enjoys the reaction she gets when everyone around her, including the victim of her prank, breaks out into laughter.

Appelbaum -- who hails from the Cleveland, Ohio, suburb of Waite Hill -- has been stilt walking since the age of 13, and has become a popular spectacle at festivals, parades, parties and other celebrations in her home state.

Her hobby (and profession, since she is a paid performer at many of her engagements) is an amalgamation of her various passions, the Yale student says.

"I love visual art, and theater and dance," explains Appelbaum. "I like clowning, performing in front of crowds and making people laugh. Stilt walking allows me to combine all of that at once."

Appelbaum wanted to try out stilt walking after watching a performance by a Canadian stilt-walking ensemble at Cleveland's annual cultural festival, called Parade the Circle. She and her older sister, Rachel, crafted some homemade wooden leg extensions and began practicing together. They soon became agile enough to participate in community parades, eventually graduating from short walks to skips to pivots to actual pirouettes. In a recent demonstration of her skills, Appelbaum, who can now dance on stilts, balanced high above the ground on one leg, gracefully raising and spinning her arms in the air.

The sisters, who also make their own costumes, gained a reputation for their showmanship before long, and they began getting invitations to perform in numerous celebrations and events, including gigs at local malls. They were also an attraction at a variety of charity or benefit events, lending their support by performing for free.

Becoming an accomplished stilt walker, the Yale student notes, takes a fair amount of practice, and the activity demands agility, physical strength and concentration. Appelbaum prefers not to be on stilts for much more than two hours at a time. "Anything beyond that can be very difficult and tiring," she says. "After two hours, your calves can really start to hurt."

One must also be prepared for some risks while on stilts, the freshman points out. These include maneuvering on surfaces such as gravel or mud, which can be a challenge to walk on, as are gummy surfaces (a frequent problem at carnivals and birthday parties where dropped candy is ubiquitous) or areas where there is a lot of debris.

But some of her scariest moments on stilts have come when someone, most often an enthusiastic child, pushes or pulls on her stilts.

"So far I have never fallen, but I have had times when I have come close," Appelbaum says. "One time I did the most fantastic re-enactment of the typical 'step on a banana peel' gag. I managed to save myself, though, after going from this kind of flying mode, to hopping about with wildly flailing arms, to finally collecting myself." Most stilt walkers, she adds, practice falling to avoid injuries.

Appelbaum says that she has also realized, over time, that certain events are not conducive to stilt walking.

"My sister and I performed at a wine festival called Vintage Ohio, which would have been a lot of fun, except that some of the people were really drunk, and would come up to us and joke around, pretending to knock us over. The problem was, the revelers were so drunk they had no depth perception, and could have easily done it for real!"

Appelbaum's favorite audiences are children, who are always astounded when they see her giant self.

"Little kids always want to know how you got up there, or they'll try to figure you out," Appelbaum says. "I like to play dumb with them, pretend to be perplexed by their astonishment. What is really great about kids is that they have an amazingly low threshold for joy that adults don't have, which is utterly refreshing."

The experience of that joy, the Yale student says, is what she most loves about stilt walking.

"On stilts, you're not a person," she says. "It's like you're some kind of funny creature, like an insect which can twist and turn and contort itself. You know you look absurd, but it's fun to be absurd and see how people react."

Sometimes while on stilts, Appelbaum purposely turns her attention to the audience members who are the most oblivious to her presence.

"I once zoomed in on this woman who was talking loudly on her cell phone, gesticulating wildly as she spoke," recalls Appelbaum. "So I sort of snuck over to her and started imitating her. While everyone around us started laughing, it took about 10 minutes for the woman to notice what was happening. Luckily, she was good-humored about it, and everyone else had fun."

Appelbaum has made several trips home to Ohio for stilt-walking engagements since coming to Yale in the fall, and she has occasionally entertained her friends on campus -- once eliciting the curiosity and laughter of fellow dormitory residents in Lawrance Hall by walking back and forth in front of their windows on stilts, sometimes knocking to get their attention.

Still undecided on a major, the Yale freshman says that one of the biggest challenges in adjusting to life at the University has been realizing that she is fascinated by "most everything" here, making it difficult for her to choose between all of the activities she is interested in pursuing.

"If there was more time, I think I'd love to do just about everything," says Appelbaum, who admits to a fascination with science and a love of art, as well as interest in English and theater. She has participated in several theatrical shows on campus, both as an actor and in set design and construction, and most recently appeared in an undergraduate production of "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds." She is a member of the Yale Student Swing Society, tap dances, and is taking jazz and ballet classes at the Payne Whitney Gym. In addition to art and dance, Appelbaum's hobbies include riding horses.

While she has not yet done much public stilt walking in New Haven, Appelbaum says she is interested in exploring that possibility.

"Did you ever notice how when you walk down the street and smile at someone, you may or may not get a smile back?" she asks. "Well, on stilts, people react to you differently. If I smile, they smile.

"Or, you may walk down the street and see someone who, for example, has on a beautiful coat," she continues, "but if that person is a stranger, you are unlikely to tell him or her that they have a beautiful coat. On stilts, I think nothing of saying that. On stilts, I can even get very somber-looking people to smile, and that's really what it is all about for me. On stilts, it is my job to have fun, to interact with other people. There aren't many jobs as awesome as that!"

-- By Susan Gonzalez


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