Meet Cosmo Dudley: Handstand & Aerial Straps Coach at Roustabout
Meet Cosmo Dudley, one of Roustabout’s handstand and aerial straps coaches. Cosmo has been coaching for 17 years and performing for 10, with a movement background that started in parkour before expanding into circus and acrobatics. At Roustabout, you’ll find him coaching handstands and aerial straps, with hopes of adding Cyr wheel and floor acrobatics to the mix in the future.
We sat down with Cosmo to talk about how he found circus, his approach to coaching, why handstands became his favorite discipline, and, of course, coffee.
How did you first get into circus?
I got into circus after having trained parkour for a couple of years. I went and saw a small contemporary circus show from The 7 Fingers. I had a better understanding for all the skills that were being performed onstage, and I wanted to learn and grow further in that direction.
I found myself really inspired and motivated, enough so that I went to Montreal and checked out the circus schools up there, sought out new coaches, and really took all my training off in a new direction.
What made you want to get into coaching?
My mom was a high school teacher, and education was always a part of my life, education and learning. I had always considered myself a forever student, someone who, if I wanted to learn something, I would try to seek it out and grow and learn in that direction.
When I first got into parkour, I didn’t think I could do it. I saw it, and I didn’t think I could. I sought out beginner classes and was just amazed at how something seemingly so complex could be taught. It really inspired me to grow into the arena of physical training and athletic training, and that eventually grew and blossomed into circus.
I still follow that original learning methodology. If I am curious in a direction, I’m going to seek out a way to better understand it and try to test things on myself. Try new training methodologies. Seek out new coaches. Try to learn from those around me. Ask lots of questions, knowing that I don’t know all the answers, but seeking out people who know more than me.
As I grew initially in parkour, I quickly wanted to share anything that I had learned with those around me. I wanted to learn something hard and then help other people learn it.
Something I quickly realized when I was struggling with a skill, like it took me two years to learn to backflip, is that when I was teaching someone else to learn a backflip, my goal was to let them do it safely but in less time, so they wouldn’t make the same mistakes or get caught up on the same hang-ups that I struggled with.
I’ve always wanted to empower and share the knowledge that I learn, and I love working hard to learn new things.
What’s your favorite skill, apparatus, or discipline?
I love handstands, and originally it grew out of me being terrible at them.
I have a memory of traveling with one of my friends, and he challenged me that we could move on once I had completed a five-second freestanding handstand. It took me 30 minutes and a lot of three-second tries.
When I got back from that trip, I decided to take the skill that I struggled with the most, that I had been neglecting, and it quickly became my favorite. So handstands are my favorite discipline to train.
My favorite trick to do is probably coins on Cyr wheel because it’s such a rewarding physical sensation. It feels very acrobatic, but it feels really safe and low effort. It’s extremely low impact, as Cyr wheel is a rolling apparatus. I’m upside down like a handstand, but it feels acrobatic and tumbly while feeling low effort, smooth, and safe.
What is your approach when a student feels stuck, frustrated, or scared with a skill?
To me, if a student is stuck, frustrated, or scared, those are three different avenues that I would take when working with a student to help them overcome a challenge, especially a mental or psychological challenge.
There can be an emotional component to it. If they’re afraid of something, I want to walk through it with them to get down to the nitty-gritty of which part of the trick is scary and what would be the worst possible result if something were to happen.
Then we can start taking this unknown gap and shrinking it, either through technique or spotting or mats or all three.
As we take a big, scary technique and shrink that unknown gap where fear lives, there will always be some amount that we have to jump over, for lack of a better term. But I want to shrink that window so that their knowledge and their understanding grows, so the fear is something they learn to better work with and address, but in a safe and responsible way.
When someone is feeling stuck, I want to ask them tons of questions to really try to help them figure out where they’re stuck. Why are they stuck? Why do they feel that they’re stuck? Are they experiencing stress or stuckness outside of the gym, outside of classes?
I don’t have to dig into their personal lives, but I’m invested in helping them overcome this barrier and helping them recognize how multifaceted being stuck can be. It doesn’t just come down to missing one skill and one attempt in one moment.
I want to make sure that I feel safe, that they’re safe, and communicate how I’m setting them up to be safe so they can have more understanding as they work on difficult skills.
How would you describe your coaching style?
I would describe my coaching style as very empowering and positive. I always want my students to succeed at a variation of a drill and then move on to a harder variation.
I want them to understand the breadth of the harder variation that we’re trying to work towards, but I also want them to feel successful in their reps so that they have a platform to build their skills upon as they’re working towards that harder variation, which I will usually also demonstrate.
I frequently use supportive and positive language to connect with students and check in on them regularly to make sure that they’re doing well and that I understand how they’re feeling about their progress and their training.
Not every student is always looking for me to be exceptionally positive, so I try not to be gratuitous or over the top. But I want a class that frames a positive space, that’s welcoming, friendly, and supportive.
Every once in a while, if a student lets me know that they need a little bit more motivation or stronger coaching or cueing to help them stay motivated to do the hard work, I love to work with people one-on-one when they let me know how they want to be coached.
If there was a circus skill you could master instantly that you don’t already specialize in, what would it be?
I don’t think I would want to learn it, because it would take away the fun of the challenge of learning something hard and putting in the work and the effort.
With that being said, I guess back coins on Cyr wheel would be a nice thing to skip past the scary part of and just learn how to do it.
Everything else, handstands, aerial straps, I want to struggle in the process of learning so that I can appreciate the results of my efforts.
What advice would you give someone who’s nervous about taking their first class?
I would want them to know that this is a friendly and supportive space. Circus is inclusive and welcoming. The community at Roustabout is amazing. The teachers are great. The staff is fantastic. The facility is amazing. And you are going to have fun.
We’re going to take our time on any of our skills, so if something feels scary or hard or new, we’ll break it down.
We’re going to have a good time and learn cool things.
What makes the community at Roustabout special to you?
The people. The coaches, the students, the staff.
Everyone at Roustabout is extremely passionate about circus and providing a welcoming space. Whenever we get together, we’re having a good time. We’re playing fun and interesting music. We’re often laughing.
And importantly, in circus, we’re working hard towards learning interesting and new skills. Whether that skill might be something that seems simple and straightforward or really crazy and impossible, our goal is to have a good time doing it, stay safe, and support each other.
What’s your favorite kind of coffee?
Similar to training, instead of just having one favorite thing, there are so many different things that I appreciate about coffee. Different coffee for different days, different moods.
Overall, some of my notable favorites are the Huckleberry Blue Orchid espresso. I also love some of the interesting things that Black & White Coffee Roasters do. They do a lot of co-ferments, so they’ve had different guava and raspberry co-ferments. They’ve had a Grape Soda that tasted remarkably fruity and juicy for a cup of coffee, almost surreal.
Overall, I love a really well-done espresso that has a strong flavor and a little bit of fruity body to it.
What was your favorite circus act that you’ve ever performed?
One of my favorite performing-related experiences was doing Tour de Fat, traveling around the U.S.
I did a driving and acrobatic act on a portable stage with a comedian. While it was primarily his set, it was one of my favorites because it was really freeform and improv, and every crowd and every city made it completely different.
It would change how we utilized the music, sometimes skipping through songs more quickly because it was partially a crowd-work comedy set. He did a musical performance, but it was just so different every time, and I really appreciated that it was always changing.
Do you have a dream performance venue?
I guess it would be really fun to perform at La Tohu in Montreal.
It’s just a really incredible venue. That’s where Cirque du Soleil headquarters are, that’s where ENC is, and within those few blocks there’s Cirque du Soleil headquarters, the school itself, and then the performance venue La Tohu.
The performance venue brings the community of Montreal in, and I think it would be really amazing to perform in that space.
It’s a small, intimate venue, but it was built specifically as a performance space for circus, and I’ve seen so many great shows there. It would just be an honor to participate in that amazing space.
What is something surprising that people might not know about you outside of circus?
While learning has been a big central part of my life, I worked at an engineering firm and was originally pursuing mechanical engineering, and even before that, architecture.
At the end of high school and in my early college years, I was really focused and fast-tracking into mechanical engineering around commercial construction.
I did a lot of site surveys at the airport at DIA and have been underneath DIA.
I did, however, do a dive roll into a freight elevator under DIA when it was closing because I wasn’t allowed to be away from my security chaperone. The elevator was full and I felt rude getting on, and then someone was like, “You can’t be without that person,” and I did a dive roll into a closing freight elevator.
What is your most hated conditioning exercise?
Probably certain mountain climber variations where your forearms can be on a foam roller or an unstable surface like an upside-down BOSU ball, and you’re using carpet sliders to pull your legs in and out.
Years ago, I had abdominal surgery from a BMX crash, and that just makes me work so hard. It feels like it never gets better. It’s always hard.
I highly recommend it.
If you weren’t doing circus, what would you be doing?
I think it’s a two-part answer.
If I wasn’t coaching circus, I would be coaching some sort of other movement-related, bodyweight strength discipline that probably still involved handstands.
But if I wasn’t doing that, I really love food and coffee, so I could see myself doing something in the food industry, even food production or working for a company.
Or hopefully doing something around languages. I’m passionate about learning several different languages, and I’ve slowly accumulated some general, small proficiency in a variety of languages throughout my life.
I’m at least restaurant-dangerous levels of language speaking. I can order at restaurants in several different languages, but I always review before I go to make sure that I don’t mix things up.
Where can people find you, and do you have any big projects coming up?
My social media is @CosmoDudley on Instagram. My website is coachcosmo.me.
