Great Juggling, part 2: Jay and friends
After the previous mellow entry, I thought it might be nice to include something a little bit more high-energy. Now, the first few times I saw Jay Gilligan perform, back in the late nineties when I moved to the Midwest for college and started attending juggling festivals out there, his work was often very slow, very experimental. He could spend ten minutes manipulating a pair of juggling rings through a series of awkward body poses without making a single toss. His juggling in those shows was very unique, and I appreciated the creativity, but it was not exciting for me. (As a small aside, I do not think the upcoming contrast represents a change in Jay’s performance style; I probably had just missed his higher energy performances until this time.)
Then came Kuka:
A collaboration between Jay Gilligan and Manu Laude, Kuka’s subtitle is Pop Juggling, calling to mind, for me at least, pop music. Kuka is exuberant and energetic. There is no talking, no attempt at straightforward jokes with the audience or clowning buffoonery, but I smiled through the whole show. These two captured a feeling of spontaneous joy in playing around with each other and with the juggling props. As the review in Juggle magazine, (which I have since lost, and am therefore forced to paraphrase instead of quote,) said, the Kuka show walks a line between choreography so jazzy and fun it looks like improvisation, and improvisation between people so in tune with each other, it looks choreographed. At the time that I saw this show, I had relatively recently stopped juggling with my main juggling partner of five years. After the performance, I found myself actually feeling lonely, and wishing I had someone with whom to enter into that juggling space, where you’re so in step with your partner that juggling patterns just click together, and you’re both breaking ground into exciting new tricks and patterns, and laughing together the whole way. These were feelings I had encountered assorted times, sometimes at conventions with certain jugglers, learning new crazy passing patterns, sometimes with a particular partner when everything came together. I was sad, but I was also thankful that Kuka had taken me there again, at least for a while.
I’d like to add a bonus video that I came across recently, while looking for clips for this series of posts. This is another trailer, this time for a video that Wes Peden put together with Jay Gilligan, focusing entirely on three ball body throws (behind the back, for instance, being a common example.) This showcases some of the technical chops and creativity these guys have.
Tune in next time as we slow it down again….
Great Juggling, Part 1
I thought about doing this a while back, when I first wrote about the whole Chris Bliss thing. I let the idea go, but recently decided to go back and give it a shot. (Thank you, Dolores.)
This is the first in what I hope will be a fun series of posts about jugglers and juggling routines that I think are amazing: a showcase of personal favorites. I plan to stick to routines or jugglers that I have seen live, and left the show thinking, “Wow, that was incredible!” Some may lean towards innovation in technique and juggling. Some may lean towards artistry and expression. All, I think, include elements of both, and all expanded my own idea of what juggling performance could be. And, of course, I would love to see all of them gain greater recognition.
So for the first entry, I present Steven Ragatz!
I have seen this routine live at least twice, and would gladly see it again, many times over. Clean, polished, smooth, and almost contemplative, every aspect from the set and prop design through the music and outfit reflect the businessman character that Steven has created. This is juggling as Theater, bringing the audience to a place where, Mary Poppins-like, moments of magic intrude into the ordinary with nary a hiccup. He becomes playful as normal objects magically transform into movement, but, refined gentleman that he is, he never loses his composure. And when it is all over, he returns everything to its proper place, and leaves to go about his business. This is one of the most cohesive juggling routines I have ever seen.
Stay tuned for future posts in this series…balls, clubs, pop juggling, diabolo, we’ll have it all! With gushing, semi-articulate praise from me padding things out!
Joy
Four years ago, I seem to remember some incompetent blowhard blathering on about a right wing mandate. As this past Tuesday night progressed, the thought kept popping into my mind, Crocodile Dundee style, that “that’s not a mandate. Now THIS is a mandate.”
I got off of work at 11:00PM, listened to McCain’s speech in the car on the way home, and managed to walk to the Empire bar to join Erica and some friends before Obama started his speech. It was incredibly heartening to see the crowd of people in the bar, already celebrating as they waited for the acceptance speech. We listened, applauded, cheered, and, when it was over, went out into the street in hopes of finding other happy people. We wandered through the old port area, stopping by a couple of bars and clubs, calling and texting random people, and I spent a good half hour on the phone with my mother in Austin. It was shortly thereafter that we heard cars honking and momentary sounds of chanting from up in Monument Square. We made our way there to find a couple dozen people, clapping out a simple rhythm, dancing, and yelling. The group grew over the next hours, with people bringing pots and pans to beat, cars stopping to honk and high five the revelers, and many improvised chants and even a couple of speeches. We finally went home at around 2:30 or 3:00 (I had a team meeting at work scheduled for 8:30 the next morning,) still full of energy.
There were many cameras, and at least two people were recording audio. One person, looking suspiciously like a Salt student, came by to ask people, including Erica and myself, about the experience. One video made it to YouTube shows some of the growth of the celebration, and also features Yours Truly a little past the one minute mark:
My only complaint about the night, and unfortunately it is featured in the video, concerns the speechifying. This amounts to a minor quibble, but I do not think that now, or that night, was the time to mutate “Yes we can” into “Yes we did.” I feel that the point of Yes We Can is to encourage people to actively engage in the current situation, in government, and in society. It is a call to empowerment of the individual, and an attempt to end people’s disenfranchisement with government. I was not there to celebrate the end of the race, or even just the liberal victory of its outcome, but rather to hope for, and celebrate the beginning of, a fundamental change in the direction of my country. Tuesday ensured that change will come to the highest levels of our government, and that is wonderful, but I feel that the momentum of local and individual activity connected to this race and campaign can bring important change on a much more intimate scale.
Mainly, though, I’m just glad that I can have confidence that my country will not invade another country unprovoked within the next four years. It is such a relief.
New Environs
We are, by this point, mostly settled in to our new place in Portland, Maine. The town seems great. Its tiny size relative to Chicago is already coming through, as we run into people we’ve already met far too often when wandering around downtown. In a similar, but small world, remarkable coincidence, one of the landlords whose apartment we toured at first is dating an old friend of one of my close friends from college. And then we ran into them at the local pizza restaurant.
Today it snowed, but it feels like winter is letting go.. It has been warmer for the past week and none of the snow is sticking. I think it cracked the fifty degree mark a couple of days ago!
The job hunt continues…and once that is done, everything should be settled into place for a while. I think there will also be a lot of opportunities to juggle around here too.
Too..Something
I enjoy reading about the creation/evolution debate. I like seeing science and reason defeat lunacy. Lately, the blogs have been a-roaring over the Expelled brouhaha with PZ Myers and his mystery guest. Tonight served up some more delicious drama when PZ crashed their promotional conference call.
This is all, of course, tangential to the truly important thing I discovered tonight, buried in the comments of that thread.
At first glance, I thought this was creationist-made, in support of that Expelled movie. After several more delightful viewings, I have come to the following conclusion. This video required far too much talent, too great of rap skillz, and to much genuine humor to have possibly been made by a religious fundamentalist or creationist. It just has that certain…je ne sais quois. I cannot stop laughing at the Daniel Dennet..and the Sam Harris..and the Darwin…
And I love it.
Summer shows
Yesterday was the first of my shows for this season with Newton Learning, the education-y company I juggled for in the fall. They run after school programs, funded by No Child Left Behind, at schools that perform low enough on whatever standardized testing is the current..um..standard. Where last year all of the shows took place at school events around the start of the academic year, this time the company is reaching out early. I juggled yesterday at the Newton Learning booth at the Chicago Puerto Rican Children’s Parade. The actual folks running the booth were friendly, which was nice. It’s been a little awkward for me showing up at these things and meeting the people who are actually involved in the tutoring process, when I’m just the attention-getter hired to bring the kids and (hopefully) their parents to the booth. The people are never rude, so maybe it’s just me feeling awkward.
When I do these shows, Erica always teases me about how I’m an example of the way that funding for this huge educational drive gets funneled away from actual education. I suppose it’s true, and may be a tiny example of how the right wing Everything-Free-Market model can be counterproductive to what you’re actually trying to do: money goes to glitz and promotion and bright flashy colors instead of substance. On the flip side, of course, I’ve never seen the actual tutoring programs in action, and maybe they are really great. I certainly hope so. Heck, sometimes I even hope that the promotional funding must come from the company itself, and the government money is mandated to go directly to the tutoring programs. And, while this system is in place, I don’t mind doing these shows and hoping that my flashiness actually does help steer some kid towards tutoring and, I hope, an improved education who might not otherwise have signed up. At least, that’s how I’m justifying doing these shows. Besides, they’re fun.
Estrogen Fest happened a couple of weeks ago. I think our two nights went quite well, although I felt slightly better about my performance on the second night. There was videotaping going on, and my understanding is that we will get a copy once everything is put together.. Stay tuned.
The Secret Crapola
I finally got around to watching The Secret this week, with Erica and Kate. I first learned about it through a coworker, and then some months later read up on it as Oprah started endorsing the damn thing. Now, there are many, many, critiques out there already, and I don’t really plan on attacking the whole thing. It is rich with material for fisking. Leave us say that I think The Secret is at best irresponsible, and, much more likely, a cynical attempt to make money off of people when they are at their most desperate. Oprah’s endorsement lends it an undeserved air of credibility, and has helped push it up the bestseller lists.
What stood out as I watched, and I think deserves some comment, is one particular testimony from one of the “medical” talking heads on the program. He had just finished suggesting that people use the Secret to improve their health, delicately attempting to prevent future lawsuits by encouraging people to, of course, rely on traditional medical help for serious illness, but to turn their minds to exploring other paths at the same time. He then went on to describe how sometimes, doctors have given patients a sugar pill, telling them it was medication. Lo and behold, these patients healed just as quickly as those on actual medication, if not quicker! And this, he tells us, is the Secret.
Now, disregarding his likely skewing of any actual data on such studies, this man has just come out and all but stated that the Secret is nothing more than a placebo effect. A placebo effect! The Secret is just a sugar pill you can take, and tell yourself that you feel better. I’m surprised they included that, for I would have thought it a bit of a giveaway that this snake oil they’re hawking might not actually do much.
So then I realized this blog needs more metal.
I have been listening to almost nothing but metal lately, (with a little Bangles and Roy Zimmerman thrown in), and I’m pretty excited about it. Since I’ve finally figured out embedding in this thing (I just turned off the Rich Text Formatting stuff) it seems like a celebratory YouTube dump is in order!
First up, super speedy cheese with Dragon Force. Check out the dueling solos! Burn!
Next up, Nightwish! Finnish symphonic metal. I was puttering around iTunes and YouTube when I discovered them, and immediately sent this video to all my friends. For some strange reason, no one else was nearly as excited as I was. Still, Hiromi bought me a cd for my birthday. Long intro, but stick around for the operatic vocals, and the keyboard solo!
Finally, we have Arch Enemy! Swedish melodic death metal with a supremely badass German vocalist, Angela Gossow.
On a side note, I suspect that metal has developed such intricately differentiated sub-genres just so that fanboys can fight over which one is best, and over which bands epitomize each one, and which bands don’t belong in their sacred chosen sub-genre.
Lame and Cool at the same time..
So I still haven’t figured out embedding video in this WordPress thing… Lame. Erica and I put up a couple of videos of ourselves on YouTube, though, which I think is pretty cool. Still lame that I don’t have the videos sitting nicely in the middle of this post.
So here is the bit Erica and I did for Girlie Q in August. We’re planning to keep developing it and performing it elsewhere.
And here is Bruce and me passing eleven balls. I’ve had it for a while and been meaning to put it up.. Bruce does a fancy kick after we mess up!
That’ll be all the videos for now.
Oh..I’m also lame because I didn’t log on here for so long and thus missed moderating Mark’s comment on the last entry.. Sorry Mark!
Ten Years of Winter
I always very much enjoy the start of winter in the midwest. Back at the end of high school, whenever I told anyone that I was considering attending college in Iowa, the first word out of their mouth would always be either “Why?” or “Cold!” It became pretty hyped up in my mind, and I had some trepidation that first year…would I be able to handle the Iowa winter?
Well it worked out fine. I loved the snow, the cold did not bother me, and I grew to like it more over time. It also became somewhat symbolic each year, as the weather turned from the familiar to something I had never encountered back in Austin, of moving away from home or even growing up. The temperature drops and I am reminded that I’m kind of an adult now, on my own in a new, or at least after these years different, place, and it’s in a way reassuring.
And I still have to go outside to see the first snowfall of the season, each year.
