A quick update about a good practice

Before I forget, I just want to make a note of how good backcrosses felt during my practice last night. I was getting four or five or six in a row that all felt relatively steady. It is excellent progress since last time. Shuffle is starting to feel more solid, and my machine/carry variations are just beginning to leave the stage of "very shaky." My four ball shower was feeling good too, as I had several runs in which I got a good half a dozen or so tosses before losing control of it. :)

A calm practice

It was calm, but I was feeling pretty tired by the end of it. Not many people came to the skill training practice today, and that might actually have something to do with it. Although I like to focus on my own stuff, having other people there can give me a small distraction when I need to take a little break. I was feeling mentally exhausted only halfway through my normal practice routine. Back-crosses are feeling better though, which is excellent. I wonder how long it will be until I can do them reliably. I am trying to get some variations on columns, carrying one, and machine/robot. If I can, I want to work some more hip-hop style movement into a few patterns, in preparation for the show. It was a good day outside of juggling too though: I got a bunch of organization work done on my thesis. Hopefully next practice I will have a bit more energy so that I can spend more time on the challenging tricks, like five balls and shoulder tosses.

MadFest 2010

MadFest was cool. I was introduced to some new tricks, such as a 441 in which the 1 is passed behind the back, and a variation on mill's mess in which the upper hand is clawing. I got to see some pretty cool performances in the evening, and I saw some really impressive skills being practiced in the gym. Possibly the best part was taking part in the juggling games on Sunday afternoon. Nolan and I competed together in a three legged race while partner juggling clubs, and we both competed separately in a quarter juggling contest. There were also 7 ball endurance and distance passing contests, but neither of us are that good (yet!). Sara bought herself some rings, and Jessie learned a few new tricks for three balls. Erica made progress on learning three balls as well. We all got to do some partner-acro too! Unexpectedly, we ran an impromptu mini-workshop on some tumbling skills after a small crowd gathered around Nolan and I practicing somersaulting on each other's backs. Both the show on Saturday night, and the renegade show that took place later at a local bar were excellent. We saw a fantastic juggler by the name of Thom Wall, whose tricks and attitude I really enjoyed, as well as a great comedy juggling duo called Smirk, and a hula-hooper with lots of courage and style who calls herself Dizzy Lizzy Delicious. A real treat of the show was to see a juggler who has been working with Cirque du Soliel for the past ten years do some excellent clowning, some creative contact juggling, solid toss juggling, and very impressive and smooth object manipulation with his suitcase, his cane and a ball.

Below is a show reel for Dizzy Lizzy Delicious, a perfomer from both the regular and the renegade show whom I enjoyed watching very much.

Juggling practice during december...

...has not been as productive as I had hoped. I was originally planning on practicing every day or every other day. SIP research kind of got in the way of that though, as I have been reading books and academic articles about ethnicity, education, and identity formation of ethnic minorities in China pretty much all day every day. However, two days ago I finally decided that I should take some time to juggle. I felt good to move again. Of course, lots of moves were a bit rusty due to not having been practiced in a few weeks, but of the three moves that are my biggest goals (crab catches, behind the backs, and five-ball cascade) the state of two of them still pleased me. Once I get a couple of my current moves out of the way I think I will start working on slams and shuffles. They look kind of interesting. I also did a little more with shoulder tosses and penguin catches, and I think that wouldn't be terribly difficult to get better either. I also downloaded some music from Armin van Buuren's A State of Trance, and it is really good for juggling to. A good beat, steady, repetitive... that is pretty much all it takes for a song to be good for juggling.

I saw a nice video of a couple of guys juggling mixing some smooth hip-hop dancing in with their very fluid juggling. It was a really nice display of the potentialities of mixing juggling with other physical disciplines, as well as throwing in a little bit of comedy. I think that the entire piece was very well choreographed too, making use a variety of different kinds of juggling moves, moving through the space, and playing with each other.

Airport Security

I'm not gonna go into extensive detail as my trip to California, other than the depressing fact that it is now more than a week since I have practiced juggling, and the hilarious fact of how my juggling balls are a potential breach of airport security. Seriously. While preparing to fly out of Minneapolis, just after I had placed my backpack into the x-ray machine, a security guard came over, asked me if this bag was mine, and called me over to a little side table where he started unpacking it, assumable looking for contraband. As he pulled out one, then another, and then several more of my small orange balls, he furrowed his eyebrows to wonder what on earth these could possibly be: explosives? Poisons? Advanced electronic devices? He turned to me and asked what I hope will become a standard security question at airports: "Are you a juggler?" I smiled, and told him I was. He put my juggling balls through the x-ray machine again, and sent me on my way.

I will be in Duluth tonight or tomorrow, so hopefully I will be able to start practicing regularly soon. I would really like to get some new tricks down well by January.