Here’s a trailer for the Durham Juggling Convention DVD. An excerpt from producer, Nathan Rae states
Footage on this DVD includes mad skills and people juggling in the main
hall, the games, a sample of the workshops, the unicycle hall and more.
It also includes a full hours worth of the show selected from all 11 acts
plus some of the best (or worst) jokes from the compere!
It’s a huuuuge file at 150mb but if you’re looking forward to a recap of the convention, it’s worth the wait.
The Story Pirates are a non-profit organization that adapts stories written by children into short shows and musicals. Tickle Monsters Are Robots is written by a 6-year-old and is described as a sci-fi rock opera. It reminds me a lot of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and I’m very much amused by the quirkiness. Stunning performance and direction.
Best Catches is a sifter for the unplugged, the lazy, and the busy. It’s a weekly roundup of the freshest juggling videos, forum topics, and blog posts - in short, it does a lot of work so you don’t have to.
:: Komei Aoki juggles with style, skill, substance, and awareness in Pinball 1 and Pinball 2.
:: Luke Burrage reveals the Top 40 Jugglers Survey results in video format. Clocking in at about 20 minutes, the videos are packed with clips that Burrage went out of his way to gather. A great watch for those new to juggling. First half. Second half.
:: Juan Goma from Argentina gets a bit gawky at times, but has some great three-club tricks in this “Quality Attack” video.
:: Marco Paoletti put up two video versions of his new routine (each act is split between two clips = total of 4 new clips). It’s not a very interesting show, but here’s the first part of one version, and you can navigate onward if you like.
:: Michael Karas waxes poetic about juggling in 2008. His summary isn’t anything explosive, but with the “right” readers, it could encourage a nice conversation. Karas knows many jugglers and a lot about juggling, so his selections are often insightful. But you’ll also have to read about him too.
Here’s a good poi/dance video that’s been uploaded in hi-rez. It’s probably my lack of familiarity with pois; I’m quite impressed by the slo-mo revolutions that make the pois look like a staff. Not a big fan of the soundtrack though. Eck.
Because the 17th New Zealand Juggling Festival is set to take place from 19-22 March. While browsing the event website, I can’t help but notice one of the accomodation listing’s called “Jugglers Rest” which holds evening fire shows and poi and staff workshops. A good place to hang out any other time of the year if you missed the festival, I’m sure.
Cool stuff shown here including some behind-the-back juggling. Komei’s termed the tricks shown here ‘pinball-style’ and I’m guessing it refers to the liberal use of body rolls much like the bumpers in pinball machines.
The WJF took place over the 17th to 23rd of December. Among the anticipated events was the Battle for Presidency between Jason Garfield and Thomas Dietz. The results for the competitions are out here and I see Thomas’ and Vova’s names repeated a lot in the list.
Highlights of the show should be available real soon. For now, there’s only the Juniors competition that’s been uploaded. Stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated.
And for those of you who’re wondering, Thomas Dietz won the Battle.
As the year comes to a close and winter’s going to be over soon for everyone else not living near the equator, this can’t be more appropriate. While cleaning up my room some weeks back, I found an old diabolo (BEARD I believe) that’s been in my cupboard for the last 3 years. Look closely and you’ll notice that the diabolo’s not only broken apart by itself, some of it has also melted.
Best Catches is a sifter for the unplugged, the lazy, and the busy. It’s a weekly roundup of the freshest juggling videos, forum topics, and blog posts - in short, it does a lot of work so you don’t have to.
Two videos far outpaced all others for Web attention this week (and made the week in videos as potent as any since the “Russian deluge” a few weeks back).
1: Michael Karas got gushy on the forum about “Mobile” by Jorg Muller, now available on YouTube. It has, apparently, been discussed at length at jongle.net, which may hold a host of other videos that don’t make it to rec.juggling.
2: “Epic” is just one word used to describe a video of Le Mouvement Alerte, a duo throwing ridiculous club multiplexes and catching everything in sight. A singular style.
:: Benjamin Beckherrn entered video culture with simple cinematography in his first short film. Only two shots included visual trickery (I would have left those out), but otherwise a pretty watch with super sharp text credits at the end.
:: Not the most annoying music in an Ori Roth video, but still pretty annoying. The seventh “HOF” features Facundo Molina. (YouTube too) Roth’s videos are always fresh and full of skills, but the intro music and typography are beginning to wear…
Sharpes over at the diabolo.ca forums has just made diabolos more appealing to the closet statistician in us. His term project analyzes the effectiveness of various acceleration techniques used on different types of diabolos.
