Meet Ambre Rouge: Beginner Lyra Coach at Roustabout
For Ambre Rouge, being a great beginner aerial coach doesn’t mean aerial came easily to her. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Ambre teaches Beginner Lyra at Roustabout, bringing a performance background, a love of circus, and firsthand experience learning aerial without a dance or gymnastics background. That experience shapes how she coaches today, with specific cues, approachable progressions, and a whole lot of hype.
We sat down with Ambre to talk about how she found circus, why she loves teaching beginners, her own training and performance career, and what she tells students who are nervous to take their first aerial class.
Tell us a little about yourself and what you teach at Roustabout.
Hi, my name is Ambre Rouge, and I teach Beginner Lyra at Roustabout School of Circus & Performing Arts.
I got into performing when I was very young. My dad was a guitar player in various cover bands, and when I was a child, he would bring out his guitar and play Tom Petty or the Pretenders or the Eagles, and I loved all of those songs. I loved singing.
I was like two or three, and he would have me sing those songs in front of his friends. So I got the love of performance from that. I got bit by the performance bug.
Ever since then, I’ve been singing, I’ve been dancing. I actually don’t come from a dance background, but I think, as a Beginner Lyra teacher, that is actually in my favor because it took me so long to figure out body awareness and what muscles to use when I was training.
It was really hard for instructors at that time to teach me very specific body awareness because I didn’t come from any of those backgrounds, so I had to learn that.
Now that I’ve learned that, I feel like I have very specific cues geared especially toward beginner bodies that don’t really understand what it means when someone says, “Come down into your lat and squeeze your core, squeeze your glutes,” and you’re like, “What does that even mean?”
How did you get into circus arts?
I got into circus arts from my sister, who is actually a professional circus artist.
My sister was an aerialist for SeaWorld San Diego’s Cirque de la Mer, and she did that for a couple years. She got into circus while she was doing her master’s degree in California. She was getting her speech therapy degree, and she was really bored with it, so she was like, “I’m going to join the circus.”
Then when she came back to Jacksonville, she was like, “Hey, do you want to take a pole class with me?”
Now, to be fair, at that time I was an exotic dancer. I became an exotic dancer when I was 18 years old, so I always loved pole.
When she asked me to take a pole class, I was like, “I got this.”
And then I did not have it.
It humbled me really quick. I couldn’t do a lot of things. So that’s how I got into circus arts, definitely because of my sister, and here I am.
What made you want to become an aerial coach?
I think for me, what made me want to become a coach is because I had such a hard time when I took pole and aerial classes. I wanted to figure out better ways to cue people and cue myself.
I love teaching. I love sharing my passion for what I like to do with other people. It just makes me happy. It brings me joy. It brings me joy to bring them joy.
Being able to cue something correctly, showing them exactly what their limbs need to be doing in space, breaking it down, it’s just really enjoyable for me.
My coaching style is definitely very much fun and fun-loving. That’s why I love teaching beginner stuff, because I like to do the easier things and make it fun.
I’m bringing you into something new, and something that a lot of people feel like they can’t do. They come in here and they’re like, “I don’t have enough strength. I’m too heavy. I’m too whatever.” They always come up with these reasons why they can’t do it.
But then I’m like, “Come, let me show you.”
We do very simple things. We break it down very, very simply. When they see that they can do those things, the joy that they feel and the excitement for them to come back and try harder things, that’s my coaching style.
To just be the hype man.
What do you love about lyra?
My favorite skill and my favorite apparatus is definitely between lyra and pole.
Lyra, I just love being in the hoop, spinning around in the hoop and exploring all the different pathways.
You can be on the bottom. You can be on the top. You can be on the sides. You can do this really simple thing and it just looks so pretty, and people are like, “Wow!” and everyone’s like, “Yay!”
What’s one of your proudest coaching moments?
I had a student come in and they had zero strength. They had zero sports, dance, gymnastics background, none of it.
It was very close to my heart because I came from that same background where I had zero experience.
They came in, they couldn’t really jump, they couldn’t really hold themselves up. I showed them how to hook a leg, then just drop down and hang in that hooked leg, and showed them that they could make this really cool shape.
They made a really cool shape, and they were so excited.
They were so excited that they were like, “I want to try and climb up this lyra.”
Of course, I’m helping them. I’m spotting them. I’m giving them a little push to get up the lyra.
They were able to climb up and they got in, and they cried because they were like, “I didn’t think that I could come and do something like this.”
It’s just very heartwarming. It just makes me feel good.
They came back and they loved it, and they kept coming, and they got really good. That just makes my heart happy.
What do you do when a student feels stuck or scared?
My approach when a student feels stuck or scared is to take a moment, take a breath, and figure out where they’re having the resistance.
Sometimes that looks like maybe just lowering the lyra. Maybe they just need to lower it because the lyra is too high. Maybe they feel like their strength is going to give out. Maybe they feel like they can’t bend that way.
I just kind of take it slow.
I try to find where their resistance is, and I try to find a different path that’s a little bit more attainable for them.
I also let them know, if your body is not wanting to do this today, that’s okay. It doesn’t have to. This doesn’t have to be a move that we have to do today. We can try again next time.
So just finding an easier pathway.
What’s something people might be surprised to learn about you?
I am part of a completely other performance scene, and I’m also an artist.
I went to art school, high school for visual arts, drawing, and painting. That was actually the first creative outlet that I had.
So I’m essentially a professional artist, drawer, painter. I don’t do it too much anymore, but when I do, people are like, “Wow, you do that?”
And I’m like, “Yeah, I do that. But I don’t do it a lot anymore.”
If you could instantly master any circus skill, what would it be?
I think it would be straight-arm inversions. Those are not my jam.
Or splits. If I could master a circus skill, splits.
Oh, also handstands.
There are so many.
You know what? I do circus, and I don’t do those things. You don’t have to do those things, but you’re much better off if you do.
What advice would you give someone nervous about taking their first aerial class?
There ain’t nothing to it but to do it.
You just gotta come and you just gotta try it out.
There’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of fear in your head. There are a lot of reasons that you tell yourself not to.
But when you come, even if it’s just to try it out, even if you feel like you can’t even do the full class, you tried it.
I promise you that you will surprise yourself, and you’ll be like, “Oh wow, I thought it was going to be way harder than it actually was.”
Definitely push past those fears. Try it out. You will be so excited that you did.
What makes the community at Roustabout special to you?
What makes the community at Roustabout special to me is how much heart and soul the owner, Mark, has really put into this space, and you can really see it in every corner.
We have four different spots where you can take different types of classes, whether that be aerial classes, dance classes, workout classes, theater classes, or performance classes.
I think that is so cool that he really tried to provide the entire gamut to be a performer, if that’s what you want to be.
He brought in these artists that did this really cool mural on this wall over here. And when you open up the garage door, you can see the mountains as you’re training in the background.
I mean, how Denver is that?
It’s such a special vibe, and it is very community oriented. I feel like everybody loves everybody here.
Vibes are great.
What’s your preferred pre-workout?
My preferred pre-workout before I come train here?
Bedrotting.
What is a pre-workout?
Okay, hold on.
My preferred pre-workout before I come and train at Roustabout is I like to go to Gold’s Gym and do a couple of circuits.
One day I’ll do arm and back circuits. I’ll do some wide-arm pulldowns. I do bench pressing. I’ve gotten into bench pressing. I’ll do some incline presses. Rows. I’ve been doing really good at rows. I do 40-pound rows now. Very excited about that.
Cable rows. Skull crushers. I do dips.
Do not forget your dips.
I think a lot of times in circus we’re always pulling down, and so we need to train all the other pulls. We need to pull away.
Dip, dip, baby, dip.
Okay. My pre-workout is to bedrot.
What’s your dream performance venue?
Honestly, I think it’s Red Rocks.
Yeah, I think it’s Red Rocks.
If I ever get to perform at Red Rocks and write my name on the wall in the back, I’ve made it.
That’s it.
What’s your least favorite conditioning exercise?
Probably squats.
Anything squat related. I hate it, but I do it.
And lunges.
Squats and lunges.
If you weren’t doing circus, what would you be doing?
I would probably be doing music more full time because I’m a professional singer.
You know what? I lied.
If I wasn’t doing circus, I would be going hard at building my esthetician business.
Where can people find you?
If you want to find me, you can find me on Instagram at @ambrerouge.thepolewitch and on Facebook as Ambre Rouge.
You can also find me at Circa Vita Entertainment.
