Discussioni che coinvolgono Dee

Cedric Lackpot - 12/2/2019 21:44 #

The Gandini Juggling Project seemed like artsy fartsy pretention when I first started out - not any more.

It only seemed that way because I never possessed Sean's vision and prescience, indeed never even knew that I didn't, and consequently lacked the ability to see where juggling might go, given enough belief, talent, and time.

But now that's all changed, the latest revival of Philip Glass's Akhnaten features a dozen top-drawer jugglers amongst its cast and is playing at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, and here's Sean and Kati in a feature article in The New Yorker. Yeah, that's right, juggling at the Met, in a show by Glass, being covered by the New Yorker. Not so artsy-fartsy now eh?

Look how far we have come. Thank you Gandini Juggling (as it styles itself nowadays) for having the confidence, the cojones, and the sheer stamina to achieve this.

LizzyPeat - 11/3/2019 20:30 #

Southampton Convention Saturday 2nd Nov 2019 – A Review, by Lizzy Peat

Following Jenni's excellent example with her Camvention review, I thought I'd better help 'share the load' and do a review of my own. An easy one, as this convention only lasted from Midday till 6pm...what could possibly happen in that time?

Morning dawned blustery and rainy. Jamie bribed me to get up by him making me tea and toast with chocolate spread. He then drove me to the venue in the 'yellow wind' as featured on the met office website. Jamie was upset to find we had left so late, so I worked out how to adjust the car clock using the manual until he felt better. Lots of branches down- we were particularly impressed with the edge of Southampton common where people park their cars. Some near misses of some seriously heavy oak branches. We tried to get in the wrong entrance first and Jamie made a heroic three point turn in an unfamiliar car. Eventually we followed some karate kids to the correct entrance and the nice lady at the reception desk pointed out the sports hall on her map.

We followed the inconspicuous laminated sign trail till we found Roy putting them up, and then the gang loitering by the hall door. As they already had sticker passes sorted out, I took our backup lego sticker book and helped make the signs more eye catching on the way back to the car. Jamie and I then put out his 'juggling' sandwich boards on the road to reduce confusion and we dragged our stuff into the hall. After a touch of snake-boarding we went to find some lunch.

We trogged to the hawthorns centre at the South end of the common (which is supposed to be an SSSI but looks like any other mown amenity parkland), good tea- nicely pouring metal tea pot, but no extra water. I ordered lasagne, however it was actually coldish tinned vegetable soup poured over something made out of sheets of solidified custard. EW EW EW EW Ew. Jamie tucked in and I ate Jamie's lunch of egg sandwiches instead while watching a young rat scampering in the rain, to the sound of some Italian woman singing about something very dramatic over the speakers. We then trailed back to the school in the driving rain. Not a great experience.

However back at the sports hall, things quickly cheered up- we met up with some fellow Newbury Juggling Clubbers and caught up with their news. Then we discussed how it felt slightly dark in the hall until you tried looking up into the bright overhead lights, so not sure what dark magic was stopping the light reaching the ground. Weird. Slytherin Jenni would know. The legendary Guy Heathcote then opened the convention with a speech and a ribbon cutting which we all enjoyed very much, the sound system worked very well. Much clapping was had.

Then I noticed Simon had brought his home-made bike with off centre wheels- my favourite thing! Thank goodness the hall wasn't too crowded so I could have a good go. I had to dodge a very exciting bouncy springboard inflatable rampy thing brought by Joel, constantly covered in children and people throwing themselves about. There was also an aerial hoop, not sure I saw this unused, and a tightrope too. We also did some passing, accompanied by Guy Heathcote who serenaded us all on his squeeze box, then we played marakesh with Jae (who completely beat us) until we were interrupted by the games. Jamie would have won me some biscuits in the 5 ball endurance if Freddie hadn't recognised him and poked him with a club. Alex did a great job of hosting the games, we especially liked Simon upholding Southampton Juggling Club's honour by winning the unicycle gladiators against a smaller person. I'd not seen the 'throw the hat onto your partner who is the furthest away' game, which Roy won with style. (Is there a better name for this? Anyway)

The day culminated in a 'glow jam' where the main lights were turned off and everyone spun coloured glow things in the dark- this was lovely to watch for a short while and a nice end to the day. Glad we had enough warning to get our hands on our stuff first, else leaving might have been harder.

We then drove home to fish and chips and looking up Aquaponics (at Martin's recommendation) on u-tube. ooOOOoooo.

A good value day out for £10, and I understand they had 57 people, not bad for a half dayer. See you next year?

Jellaby Postlethwaite - 10/8/2019 09:48 #

Camvention 2019 – A Review, by Jen Peat

No, that’s not spelled wrong, it’s supposed to be an E. Different vowel, different gender, different side of the bed. Same colour eyes though, and same marriage certificate.

So Jon has recently started a degree course and isn’t going to have time to review as many conventions, which is sad for a number of reasons, but mainly because how will the juggling world survive without knowing what he ate for breakfast? So I thought I’d step up from my occasional cameo appearances in Jon’s reviews and take on the vital responsibility of cataloguing his culinary preferences myself.

We had a long drive from Leeds to Cambridge, so we split up the journey and stayed at Peat HQ on Friday night. Jon’s parents are in the middle of redecorating, and have temporarily relocated their living room to the opposite side of the house. Walking into the temporary living room, I felt like I was in a weird parallel universe – everything was familiar, but wrong. It was disconcerting.

Breakfast the following morning, for me, was Frosties. Jon was disappointed by the breakfast choices; it seems that Lizzy and Jamie took all the muesli home with them the last time they were at Peat HQ, so he was left with a choice between the Frosties or Weetabix. He chose Weetabix, and ate it warm, crumbled up and floating in milk, with two teaspoons of sugar sprinkled on top. He also had orange juice, which was stored in the parallel universe fridge.

The drive to Cambridge was spent flitting between Radio 1 and Radio 2, and marvelling about how we’re not quite the target audience for either of them. Radio 2 had a lot of yabber-yabbering, possibly with someone from the Kaiser Cheifs, if the live version of I Predict a Riot was any indication. Radio 1 was playing “anthems”, which all sounded very similar and flowed seamlessly into one another. We misheard a lot of lyrics. Apparently there isn’t a song called “I’m your sun burn” after all. Oh well, it was certainly better than “Friday Night is Rave Night”, which had been playing on the drive to HQ the night before.

We arrived at the convention to find the parking nicely signposted. It was quite a way away from the building where the convention is usually held, so much so that we wondered if it might be in a different building this time. Unfortunately there were no more helpful signs to clear this up for us. We decided to make our way to the usual building, as we’d not heard any different. This turned out to be a good decision: we were greeted with a big “Camvention” sign just outside the sports hall, and we went inside to get our passes.

The passes were strips of “seed paper”, with the Camvention logo printed on them. I thought this was a nice idea, as usually any paper convention passes just go in the bin, but this is much more environmentally friendly – just plant the pass in soil, and flowers will grow. Ed wasn’t quite as excited as me, and was worried that flowers might start growing out of his pocket if he became too warm. Cat decided she probably shouldn’t keep her pass in the same place as all her other ones.

I spent some time practicing my hoop routine, as I was booked to be in the show later. Jon warmed up and then juggled his eclectically coloured new loop clubs. I made a new friend, Kalen, who liked circuses, elephants and the Phantom of the Opera. After chatting for a while, we said goodbye and I went to a club juggling workshop. I thought the workshop leader was very handsome, and the workshop went at a nice pace. There was a wide variety of tricks, and not too much time spent on each trick, so I didn’t get bored lingering on tricks I wasn’t that interested in. I didn’t like the kick ups, as my clubs are too pretty to stamp on, but I liked dips, head rolls and shoulder rolls.

After the workshop I waited for Jon to finish chatting with his adoring fans (no autographs requested this time), then we left site to pick up lunch and check into our B&B.

Lunch was sandwiches from Sainsbury’s, which we ate on a bench outside. Strangely enough, Jon got cold in his t shirt and shorts in October. I was fine in my winter coat. Jon had a pasta pot with chorizo and some weird healthy-but-not-very-tasty-sounding ingredients. I had a chicken, mayo and spider sandwich.

After lunch we drove to the B&B. Outside it was “resident only disc zone” parking, so Jon went inside to check us in while I was the getaway driver in case a traffic cop came. It was all very dramatic. Lots of people cycled past me. We swapped over briefly while I did a quick bag drop and the proprietress told me all about her fostered cats. Our room had a weird door that wouldn’t close unless you knew the secret handshake. The pressure was too much, and I leapt back into the getaway car.

Back to the convention, I ran through my routine some more, whilst trying to avoid some small children. I think they might have been trying to jump through my hoops while I was using them, as they kept following me when I moved away from them, and running at me whenever a hoop was spinning vertically. I hoped if I ignored them they’d go away and eventually they did.

I took a break and chatted to Cat, a fellow Slytherin, and Evanna, a fellow performer. Then we watched / participated in the Games. There were a lot of classics, which is always nice, and the prizes were pretty cool – origami cranes, also made out of seed paper. Birds made of seeds. Creepy? Jon won the Five Ball Endurance and claimed a seedy crane for his very own, and I took part in my first ever Handstand Endurance. I’m still in the beginner “abject fear of not stopping at the top and falling onto my back” phase, so Jon stood next to me with his arm out to stabilise me in case I did go too far over on the ascent. I didn’t consider it cheating, mostly because there was literally zero chance of me winning. In the end I stayed up for barely a second, but I was still very proud of myself for taking part.

Juggling Limbo was truly spectacular. It was very entertaining that the last couple of contestants had to odge the bar up slightly with their noses as they slid under it on their backs. I thought for a second that Mark had cheated, because he was continuing to compete after I could have sworn I’d seen him drop. It turns out I was mistaken.

Confession time: until fairly recently, I had trouble following part of the plot of Lord of the Rings, because I could never tell the difference between Boromir and Faramir (despite them being played by actors who look completely different. It’s been easier since Game of Thrones came out and I was able to identify one of them as Sean Bean). I’m embarrassed to admit that I sometimes have the same problem with Mark and Cameron, especially since they performed together wearing identical clothing. Mostly I just refer to them as “the twins”, which simultaneously amuses Jon and makes him despair. It’s been easier for me since Cameron stopped tying his hair back, and I’ve not mixed them up for a long time, but what can I say? In all the excitement I had a relapse, which caused Jon to facepalm.

After the games Jon took part in the combat tournament, and came second to Cameron (or was it Mark?). Afterwards was the tech run for the show. I met Ian, who was casually folding his fisherman’s wheel, and we chatted about how nice Leeds is. I was amused to hear that Jon would be headlining. I ran through my routine a couple more times, until I realised my fringe was too long, and I went to sort it out. Jon told downright lies to Cat about where I was and what I might be doing.

The show appeared to start bang on 7.30, however I later realised the wall mounted clock was two minutes fast, which was sad. I stood backstage with Cameron and Mark until it was time for Cameron open the show with his colour changing ring act. It was easy to tell them apart this time, because when the compere announced Cameron’s name, one of them went out onto the stage. I deduced that I must therefore be standing backstage with Mark.

I didn’t see Cameron’s routine, but I could see his shadow through the curtain. It seemed to be throwing things around and catching them again, so I assumed things were going to plan. The audience certainly seemed to like him and made a lot of appreciative noises, which further confirmed my theory that it was a success.

When Cameron’s applause died down I listened for my own introduction. The compere, Pat O’Matic, had sent all the acts a questionnaire to complete prior to the convention, which had a variety of interesting questions. Having not had any interaction with him at all before the show, I assumed he had enough fun facts about me from my answers, and I wondered which one he would tell the audience. I was a little disappointed when he told them nothing except my name.

The lights came on and I started my routine, for real this time. It seemed to be going well. It was going so well, in fact, that I decided it might be fun to mix things up a bit and play “fetch” with Danny. He was somewhat surprised, but after his initial hesitation he seemed up for it. I had so much fun the first time that I decided we should play again. Danny wasn’t so sure this time, but the audience were definitely game, and they gave us a massive cheer for round two. Wiebke later told me she had enjoyed our interaction, which made me smile a lot.

After my performance I snuck in around the back of the bleachers to watch the rest of the show. My act was followed by Evanna, who did a very graceful, bendy hat routine. It was gorgeous. Her movements fitted really well to the music and her moves were really original. She seemed to tie her limbs in knots while she moved the hats between them – I can only assume some kind of witchcraft was involved – and then just as easily untie herself. It was mind boggling. I loved it.

During the interval I received a lot of really lovely comments and nice feedback about my performance, which I was surprised but very pleased by. Who knew that miming most of the two-hoop section would go down so well? I chatted with Steve, who was wearing his orange t shirt. He told me he’d recently made it to the quarter finals of the National Punning Championships, and I told him how Jon and I had met.

Jon materialised just in time for the raffle. It seemed his “raffle radar” was fully calibrated, and he proceeded to win a Rubik’s Pear Drop. Then he disappeared again to be mysterious backstage as the second half of the show began.

Pat O’Matic mixed up the running order and accidentally introduced the next-but-one act, but he was so casual and laid-back about it that I thought he was joking at first. It turns out he wasn’t, which was awkward, but also quite impressive, considering the massive aerial rig smack bang in the middle of the stage which should have made it obvious which act was next. I was also disappointed by his failure to pick up limes – not by the pun (which I was very amused by, good work!), but by the fact that they were still on the stage as the aerial performer was announced and he left the stage. Luckily a member of the audience was much better at pick up limes, and she quickly leapt into action and cleared them away as the lights went down.

I’ve seen aerial acts before, but never aerial chains. I had been a little dubious when I first saw the chains hanging from the rig, as they looked pretty heavy duty and put me in mind of pain and enslavement – pretty much the opposite of pretty aerial silks. But the act blew away all of my misconceptions, and was actually amazing. Rachel Arkle delivered a really highly skilled routine which demonstrated an impressive amount of physical strength and flexibility. She was dressed like a rock star in jeans and amazing sparkly trainers, which I thought went really well with the chains, and she had attitude.

Next up was Aine, who performed a very flowy routine with clubs. I loved her smile – it was slightly mysterious, as if she was letting the audience into a secret, and it really added to the performance. I enjoyed the way she used her body and balancing skills to move the clubs around and line them up in different and interesting combinations, and she had a really pleasing way of picking up the two clubs she’d previously discarded. I was surprised to see her performing barefoot, as during the tech run she had been wearing socks, and the bottom (soles?) of the socks had been the same colour as the clubs she was using. I’d assumed this was intentional and a dress rehearsal, but I guess not. I concluded that I must have found a kindred spirit who also accidentally matches the colour of her clothes to her props.

The penultimate act was Ian Marchant, performing gentleman (and fisherman) juggling. It was obvious from watching Ian’s routine that he does this professionally. Everything was so neatly and tightly choreographed, and his changing facial expressions were so subtle yet highly expressive. I laughed out loud a few times – I particularly enjoyed the massive fuss that was made of being about to throw his rolled up coat to an audience member and making sure they were ready to catch it, only to have Ian fling it away from himself but hang onto it so that it unravelled in a hilarious anti-climax. I enjoyed the variety of different skills and sections in this routine, and his energy throughout.

Jon was supposed to headline the show with his “Fireflies” routine, but unfortunately it went wrong again. This keeps happening, and Jon really needs to work on hiding his disdain. Still, he managed to pull himself together and had no choice but to continue and make the best of it. He managed to pull off some classic “Jon Peat” tricks, which went down very well with the audience. Some people stood to applaud at the end.

After the show we ate his-and-hers chicken burgers with fries and a lot of people complimented Jon on his performance. I should mention at this point that this was dinner number 2 for Jon, who had already eaten a masaman curry from the Thai van prior to the show. I should also mention that my stance on black pudding is unclear. I’ve eaten it, and I seem to remember liking it, but then I learned what it was and I was less happy about it. I then promptly forgot what it was (or maybe blanked it out because I found the truth too traumatising), and now I’m not sure how I feel about it. It definitely should never go in a sandwich though.

We chatted for a while, and then said our goodbyes / see-you-tomorrows to people, and left for our B&B. I did 10 press ups and then changed into my pyjamas – maroon Hogwarts bottoms, and a grey top with a quote from Musical Lord Voldemort (also a fellow Slytherin) – to watch trash TV before bed. Unfortunately the Cop Channel was really glitchy, so we settled for “World War Weird” instead. After learning all about UFOs in Canada during WW1 and reminding ourselves why we don’t have a TV at home, we decided to call it a night.

We both really enjoyed Camvention 2019. Thank you to the organisers for hosting a really good convention. We’ll see you again next year ?

Mike Moore - 7/1/2019 17:22 #

Polyrhythmic Siteswaps

I thought I remembered the Gandinis having some kind of document about polyrhythmic siteswaps. Does anyone know where that's gone, or if it ever existed?

el_grimley - 6/18/2019 00:53 #

Juggling in journals...

I'm currently trying to put together a thing which includes some of the benefits of juggling and would like to be sure what I am saying is accurate and backed up by science. Trouble is, most of the journals I am coming across are paywalled which goes against the openness of the thing I am trying to put together (I want to be transparent). Are there any good journal articles that anyone knows about that are worth a read that aren't paywalled. I also want to make sure I am not caught in some kind of Google search bubble.

Thanks

rosiejane - 6/5/2019 14:09 #

hello everyone,

Here I am back again to remind you all that EJC is fast approaching - too quickly for me now with mountains of work to still do! so I will be very quick.

I hope that all who want to come, can and have already purchased their tickets - but if you haven't you can still buy them online (ejc2019.org/tickets) and you will be able to buy on the door. (day tickets on the door not online)

My purpose today is tell you:

1- As you know EJC is run as a huge skill sharing event, so to that end we need people to share their skills by volunteering to run workshops - if you would like to run one or two or more please can you send Ben an email on workshops.ejc2019@gmail.com

2- The International juggling Associations Regional Competition (IRC) is holding its first European event at EJC this year and we need performers who would like to take part. The rules and all the information can be found over at ejc2019.org/irc there is prize money to be had and there is no age restriction. Acts will need to send an application in by the 6th July.

3- Just a little reminder that if you want some luxury at EJC this year we do have some additional extras available to order - lockers and electric hook up. They do cost I am afraid and hook up will only be available to order in advance.(cut off will be a couple of weeks before the start EJC) Again go to ejc2019.org/shop

4- We are looking at shuttle bus times for arrivals and departures from Newark rail stations so Dee will be running a survey soon on rail arrival times - more info soon on this.

5- If you have any questions please email me - I tend to post and run on here - Jane.ejc2019@gmail.com

Thanks for reading and look forward to seeing you in Newark in 58 days.... eeeeeekkkkkk

5balls - 2/23/2019 16:43 #

Hi jugglers!

Thought I should probably introduce myself shortly as I've been lurking around for a while and now I've added some event. I'm a juggler living in the small university town of Tübingen, which is close to Stuttgart in Germany. I've learned basic juggling as a child - probably after the EJC 1994 in Hagen, which is not far from my hometown, where we have been visitors and got interested in juggling (I have been 14 years old at that point and we were four children in the house which all started juggling after that). Also learned to ride a unicycle back then but then for quite some years I did not do much juggling.

Picked up juggling again some years ago to relax when working at a university and have been getting more serious going to my first EJC as participant in Bruneck 2015. After that I went to EJC's in Almere and Lublin but not last year when I visited some german juggling conventions and the last two years I have also helped in organizing the juggling convention in Tübingen (which will take place this year as well, see #tuebingencon - if this works :)). I'm working on 5 balls which I'm trying to get stable, some boring "standard tricks" with less balls and do some social passing with clubs (also practice some standard ball tricks with clubs). I would love to do more creative stuff but my level is just not there yet. Right now I unfortunately can't juggle

On the internet I enjoy watching a lot of juggling videos (I'm particularly fond of the interviews Daniel Simu does in Juggle Jabber (if you are reading this: Thanks a lot for those!) and the juggler of the week video of the IJA). I enjoy watching technical juggling like Anthony Gatto, Vova Galchenko or Jonglissimo but also more creative stuff like from Lauge Benjaminsen, Mike Moore (If you are reading: Hope you give workshops on inverted boxes and dots on the next EJC ;)), Taylor Glenn, Leif Pettersen and Stephen Birmingham and a lot of others.

Oh that's already a lot of text, so let's stop here.

Cheers,
Florian

P.S.: If you are close to Tübingen please say hi, our juggling club meets each week one to two times (I'm trying to update the club listing on the juggling edge - we lost the old URL jonglaria.de when our founder died, but the club is still meeting and we are on the internet at www.jonglaria.org (I plan to translate the page to english some time in the future but google translate will probably do a good enough job to get the gist)). Also this years juggling convention #tuebingencon will take place from 13th to 15th of september and as in the previous years there will be passing between the typical traditional punting boats ("Stocherkahn") on the Neckar river - lots of fun!

Orinoco - 12/9/2018 20:53 #

UK, BBC4 9pm to 10pm Daredevils And Divas: A Night At The Circus

This is your er... 7 minute warning.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2018/50/daredevils-and-divas?fbclid=IwAR1Hya2pA6R4o4SkcpRn9uOl16h0TWYfRql8FLkCTINRyWA2O4eUo_N4n-o