05.05.08
“Olive, have you ever shat yourself?”
Some of us went to yet another juggly event this weekend. This time the Birmingham Circus Convention - number 13. Potentially unlucky.
Easy drive and no ridiculous starting time as it’s not too far from here. And sensibly we went via Sainsbury at this end rather than have to walk to Tescos there as we usually have done.
Once there we realised that there weren’t too many folk around. Meh it was still earlyish.
The gym space at Ladywood isn’t the nicest but as ever you go for the craic.
Mini and Emily were there and chatty. Tom turned up with huge amounts of mental Japanese music. Fak and Void showed up to chat a whiles as well. Jon and Lizzah also arrived and demonstrated their utter appallingness at direction taking.
Jugglewise me and Clurb did rather well. Hard patterns got less hard. What more can you ask?
After Mamph showed up we wanted to impress her with our ultimates. Pfft. She was having none of it. But then she had a go at passing with Clurb and was RUBBISH! I mean honestly.
The afternoon passed in some passing, chatting, eating and sitting on a field of daisies. Pleasant.
Me, D, P&C and Mamph headed out for a curry then and drove for a bit before finding a row of shops amongst which was a curry house. But then we also had the choice of eating at “New Johnny Wongs” or some Iranian place. Oh and the curry house was shut.
As we’d never tried Iranian before, we headed there.
As ever the menus are a mine of racist comedy - there was a starter called “Maste Kisse” which I reckon should just about give you an appetite for the main course if you know what I mean nudge nudge wink wink.
Food was lovely, really very good (apart from the over-limeyness of Mamph’s limey thing).
Back for the show.
Actually we were back in time for the Renegade - acts of note - only one - Freddy Sheed showing off whilst a very good beatboxer kicked off in the background. He was awfy good at doing didgeridoos that lad, well done.
Long break then the main show (ta again to Clurb for the running order):
If you’ve been reading rec.juggling you’ll have seen some comments re the comperes (Vicki and Kate). Points for effort re their costumes but they managed to break every one of Luke’s rules starting with the obvious “Don’t do a double act” - there were times when one would talk over the other then a pause while they both stopped to let the other speak. They or a stagehand didn’t clear the stage for the acts properly, they tried to entertain too much rather than get on with it.
The one saving grace for them was a long bit they did after the intermission which they probably did to give us crowd time to get back to our seats but then they screwed it up because it relied on “hearing the words they were saying” and they either shouted into the mikes so it was too loud or squealed and it was too high pitched or (mostly) both. I had no clue what was going on but my ears didn’t like it. And that has to be bad as my ears are rather partial to some horrific noise.
Anyway first proper act - Jon Peat. Now for someone who’s been commented on a lot and is apparently the inspiration for one of the BYJOTY participants he’s not been on stage much at all. Tonight was his 3rd ever show (after 2 BYJOTYs). You can tell. He sort of bounded on and started before his music, dropped, picked up, dropped, looked annoyed, picked up, dropped. Then after a while he settled down from his over-hyper start and showed off some of the snazziest 3 ball stuff seen on stage in ages. You know the “contortionist” where you have one arm behind your back reaching around and you do a cascade? How about a contortionist but with a shower, on penguin catches? And many more ludicrous tricks. Very hard, pretty droppy. He told me later that he couldn’t hear his music on stage. I wonder if the comperes were shouting as they couldn’t hear themselves as well. Praps.
MattDS up next with his devilsticks. Lots of stallings with one, nice balances and stuff. Then some swanky 2 stick stuff. Definitely too slow to start with especially after Jon’s hyper start. But there’s plenty there for devilstickers.
Will “Hexagonic” Streatfield did a globall routine - not sure why it needed to be a globall act. He’s a good juggler but the room wasn’t dark enough, the stage wasn’t high enough and the comperes don’t need to wander on before he’s finished.
John Booth - showing off some whizzy diabolo moves. Enjoyed it a lot; I have no clue what he did but it was fun.
Huge annoying break.
Norbi - doing rings you say? Why yes. He’d reverted to normal rings this time and the familiarity showed - far fewer drops and good timing, dancing, choreography whatever. Not quite as energetic as he was at that Leeds performance way back when but still Norbi on good form.
Dan Cooper - calm 3 balls. A nice contrast to Jon and loads of contact stuff in his tricks. Very nice and very well choreographed too. Another instance of the comperes screwing up. He came on and then left. Then the comperes rushed on and cleared Norbi’s props away then rushed off and on he came again. Very poor.
Jon Udry - I must mention this as a high point. As the comperes were wittering about Norbi, Jon came on set up whilst ignoring them and then assumedly told them to get off (or at least that he was ready). They rushed off before hanging around a second longer and Jon started. Well done that man. Into club stuff of some skill but a bit droppy again. A shame, I really like Jon’s stuff in the main and he was good but just droppy.
Then to home. With 2 loud female voices still reverberating through my head.
A strangely quiet day otherwise, a few people I expected to see were absent. Ah well