Acro again

I have found a new acro partner. Nadia starting coming to the Beijing juggling club about a month ago, and over the past few weeks I have learned that she used to do a lot of martial arts, she seems to be vaguely interested in dance, and she is helping Fede out at the shop. We had a couple hours of practice last night in which Fede showed is a few basic moves and ran us through a warm up, and it went pretty well. She has never done partner acro before, so there are gonna be a lot of things to teach her, but as long as I lead her through things slowly to build trust I think it should work pretty well. Physically, she is quite flexible with her splits, and although not as strong in the arms as I would like, she seems to be fine in terms of general fitness. Anyway, I have never had an acro partner who's upper body strength met my hopes. She is also taller and heavier than the girls that I have done acro with previously. She is pretty slim and athletic and pry somewhere around 50kg, but since her body is so different from that of Michelle, Colleen and Erica (each of whom was somewhere around 40kg) it will be interesting for me to work with her.

I also found an incredible resource that I am sure did not exist when I started doing acro: An acro balance wiki. I am definitely gonna try and use this to teach Nadia some moves. Fede is actually leaving Beijing to be in Italy for Christmas, and then to spend some time with his girlfriend who is working in the Central African Republic. He won't be back until February, so after he leaves next week it will basically be up to me to train Nadia in partner acro. I am a little nervous about it: I know a number of moves, but I don't know much about flying. I also will have to remind myself to move slowly enough to built trust, rather than just jumping into more fun, exciting and complicated moves.

Dance Heroes

Although not strictly juggling, this post is about movement. I have just recently discovered the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, and as I watched a few episodes I found them more and more enjoyable. First some very cool breakdancing, then some tricking and parkour-like moves, and then some excellent robot movements. It was especially for me to draw connections. For instance, in the first episode, The Tale of Trevor Drift, I recognized some of the movements from the break-dance class that I take on the weekends. In the second episode, Antigravity Heroes, I recognized a lot of the movements as tricking and parkour-like moves, and I got an especially a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that I have done some of those moves, or similar things, in the past. The third episode, Robot Lovestory, seemed to me to have great movement similarities with Genki Sudo's World Order, and I was very impressed with the motions of the performers. They have performed at TED, and
all in all I like the group a lot so far. A mixture of Heroes and dance. I plan to continue watching LXD.

Check out the trailer here:

Post-juggling, or maybe meta-juggling

The things that some people, such as Wes, do are so amazing and creative that I am always dumbfounded by them. These people take ideas of juggling, and the apply them to the body and to other objects, making a performance that is so much more than just the tossing of balls or clubs in complicated patterns. I have just had the pleasure and honor of seeing a brief preview of one of these performances.

Getting back in the swing

Just a quick note before I head out to work.

I biked from my home to YuGongYiShan last night for the juggling club, and it took about 50 minutes. With a bike ride that long I am glad that I have my iPod, because I can listen to university lectures or podcasts or audiobooks or music on my way there and back. I got a bit of juggling practice in, did a few cartwheels, and even tried a couple of headsprings. Gus continued to help me and talk me through a "Machine w/ hand switch" (I really have no idea how to describe that move). It was nice to chat with Lao Zhou, and I taught him how to begin learning the Machine. It was a fairly small turn-out, with a high of six people at one point. This week there was a Canadian, three U.S. citizens (including me), Lao Zhou (who is Chinese) and a German-Chinese girl who is studying at Beijing Normal University.

I am continuing to use the childrens' juggling balls at the preschool at which I work when there is downtime. Sometimes when the kids are drinking water, or in the morning before many kids show up I will practice some moves with the beanbag-like balls. They are very easy to grip, so it is nice to practice with those.

Time, Practice, and Advancement

...or lack thereof. Here is a bunch of things which I dislike: I only practice juggling on Mondays. I haven't learned any new tricks in the past few months. I haven't even spent time looking at cool juggling videos online.

Since I haven't been practicing, rather than improving, my skills have been stagnating, and I fear that if I don't get back into the groove of things soon they will begin degrading. 20 minutes a day should not be that difficult for me to find.