Project 3: Story Telling

This project we're focusing on story telling to create a pre-vis in maya of our 1 minute cartoon. Given 3 random words, a character, place, and prop, to create our ideas from.
I was given:

Trapeze Artist

Skateboard

Circus

I was a little disappointing at first, as a Trapeze artist would feature at a circus most likely if I had not been given this character title, but, I will have to use this to push my self to think of something exciting.

Trapeze artists always perform high up in the air, moving like majestically, with grace and passion. It's the idea of becoming high up which interested me, and how the movements seem so natural and beautiful, like nature.

This gave me my first idea of a bear character who is part of an act at the circus, the story I had in mind broken down:

Bear getting ready for performance
Gazes upon Trapeze Artists with awe and wonder
Flash back to him as a cub watching his family climb up the trees in nature and collecting fruits
His owner slaps his face with powdered clown makeup, returning him to reality
Owner makes him practice performance, but the bear keeps messing up as he is watching the trapeze artists practice.
Owner gets fed up, tries to take him back into his cage
Cage reminds him of his capture as a cub, which frightens him and causes him to panic
People stop to try and calm him, frightens him more, and causes him to collide into a lot of equipment
Lands on a skateboard, with costumes covering his head, unable to see where he's going but still panicking, moves blindly around the circus, and eventually breaks though the fabric walls, and is lead down a hill, no one being able to stop him
He is too scared to jump of the board, the board takes him down a steep hill, and off a truck with a board ready to load goods onto.
He becomes air born, scared at first but begins to put his arms out and embrace the moment
Lands face first on the floor in a park, surrounded by pigeons.
Pigeons laugh and clap, the bear sits up dazed, and is then pretty happy about what just happened.

The problem with this story is that it lacks something, I'm not too sure what. It's a bit cliche, but I very much enjoy the idea of a bear character.

I was suggested to look at what skateboards are related to, what sort of "type" of people are related to them,
I thought of "emos", this sort of young person who dresses quite dark, the opposite of a show girl.
I also thought of the american skating community, the sort of almost beach wear with a hoody, sort of community.

I was then suggested the idea of a girl who is having her dreams of being a show girl repressed by the people she's friends with, who are all "emo" and shun the idea of such a flamboyant life style, which is secretly her life dream. I want to create a story with the idea of the skateboard being the means of becoming air born to allow her to act out her dreams, but I have yet to come up with anything I think is satisfying as a story yet.
Exciting project!