How to do a Cirque Du Soleil aerial rope trick

Step 1: GO TO THE CIRCUS

If this is a long-cherished ambition, one could just sling a rope over a tree and make like a monkey. But it turns out that the sort of rope involved in the circus rope tricks is a little different from the stuff you tie up boats with. It's a thick, cloth-covered rope with a spongy consistency. The Spanish web - also known as the vertical rope - is a traditional circus trick first performed in Moscow in the 1960s. It's often a solo act, but at Cirque Du Soleil they have turned it into a group performance, a sort of daring aerial ballet on dangling ropes.

Step 2: ENLIST PROFESSIONAL HELP

Backstage at Cirque's Sydney base, I meet Jailton Carneiro, 28. He's a good-looking Brazilian with long arms and muscular shoulders, developed since he first began learning rope tricks as a 12-year-old in Sao Paolo. The shoes come off and the first thing he teaches me is how to climb up the rope by looping one ankle around the rope to form a step you can push against.

Then, raising your arms over your head, you pull yourself up the rope. Repeat until you get to the top. It's the sort of thing they teach you in school gym class. I suck. After three miserable ankle loops upward, I'm exhausted. My arms hurt. I fall off on to the padded mats and lie there, a tragic sweaty starfish.

But Jailton is determined to teach me the Spanish Web. First I must don some safety gear - a stunningly attractive neoprene tube over my clothes to protect my ribs, a neoprene ankle strap and a harness for when I'm up high.

Step 3: TIE YOURSELF UP

Now - and this is the weird bit - I have to lie on the ground while Jailton wraps the rope around me. Usually this is what audiences see the Cirque performers doing effortlessly in mid air. Jailton slips the rope around my waist, my arm and one leg. I move my limbs obediently, starting to feel like a trussed heifer. "When I say go, you move your leg like this," he instructs me, bending my knee back. He explains that extracting my leg from the knot like this will be like pulling on a bow; it is going to undo the body-knot I'm in and I will twirl gracefully to the ground. Maybe.

Step 4: GET SOME HEIGHT

Jailton hoists me off the ground. "Um, uh, that's probably high enough," I call out. "Can you stop now? Please?" He's a nice guy so he stops. And there I am, suspended about 8m above the Sydney terra firma, almost horizontal, wrapped in rope wearing a rubber corset and pointing my toes.

Step 5: TWIRL GRACEFULLY TO THE GROUND

During the Cirque show, the Spanish Web performers look like they are standing on air. They hold the ropes with only one hand, twist themselves into knots, then twirl gracefully. Wrapped in ropes, horizontal as I am now, they also do this trick - plummeting dramatically to the ground in unison. It's something of a highlight. And, yep, now it's my turn. I'm still suspended halfway between the tent roof and the ground. "Move your leg back," Jailton commands.

I take a deep breath. I move my leg. My knot comes undone. And I start rolling downwards - fast - as gravity causes the rope to unwrap. I'm falling toward the padded mats, spinning horizontally, desperately trying to keep my legs and arm straight as I was instructed. Faster and faster. I close my eyes.

And then - whomp! I stop, as the rope comes to an end and one final knot has stopped me from falling all the way. The pressure of the rope around my chest drives all the air out. I open my eyes. Jailton's laughing at me. I'm dangling a few feet above the ground, trembling, adrenalin pumping. I laugh hysterically as Jailton helps get my shaky carcass out of the harness.