My 2015 circus resumé!

Another year of circus has passed! I realized that I have not blogged as much as last year, but that is because I have been doing so much circus!

Here is a resume and some reflections on what I have been up to 2015.

Going back to juggling and visiting SJC in spring

In spring, a new member in the circus club had the patience to practice club passing with me. I already liked circus things that could be done in couples, and club passing in no exception. This also motivated me to practice juggling on my own.

Photo credits: Simon Dunder (who also filmed Evelinas and my partnerpoi choreography). Here we are doing a partners weave.

Together with my partnerpoi partner I visited the Swedish Juggling Convention in Linköping, which was very small compared to the BJC, but I got to now many nice people there. I performed my worst performance ever at the SCJ opening show, woth a poi flying off stage. It was awful when it happend because it was one a the few times where the audeince almost only consist of other circus people but now it is just a funny story to tell.

Phire doing a Phire performance for Luleå Jujtsu club 5th years anniversary

I performed quite much with Phire, and realized that I was going to miss them so much when I was moving to Göteborg.

Performing partner poi with Evelina

A summer of teaching circus

During the summer, I was teaching a lot of circus: one at a children's camp in Vänersnäs next to the biggest (and coldest) lake in Sweden and one at a family camp in Pieksämäki in Finland.

Me and my circus teacher companion at the childrens summer camp

Spending so much time teaching made me reflect both on how I did to learn things, how to teach circus and how to make an interest for circus.

Doing acrobatics at Balance Camp

Starting the gymnastics and finding new circus friends in Göteborg in autumn

In the end of summer I attended Balance Camp in Gagnef where I picked all the acrobatics workshops I could. That inspired me to sign up for a beginners class for adults in gymnastics at Göteborgs cheer och gymnastik to learn some basic gymnastics. I also got to know new friends in Göteborg from SJC, and from the open training that are held every Wednesday night in a gym in central Göteborg. I tried acro yoga for the first time.

Photo Credit: Stefan Lindkvist People attending my juggling workshop at Höstglöd camp

Winter - practising for the Christmas celebration opening fire show

I attended the Höstglöd alternativ art's camp outside Alingsås and spent one weekend doing a lot of different things. I met more poi spinners and got very inspired in their different workshops i stalls and expression with tools, as well as workshops in stage fighting, acro yoga, fire jam, massage and other things!

Together with Vindla eldkonst I made a duo fire show for the lightening of the Christmas tree in Vänersborg, and started to do some fire fans again and made a nice partnerpoi choreography.

I also got involved in creating a opening fire show for the Christmas celebration of Göteborg, which has been very interesting as a project. I did chorography planning in a small group, did choreography i parts together with the others, bought and built equipment, had late night fire trainings and a wonderful time. I learnt a lot about how to make a big project as a group and how to build equipment for the show. Too bad the show was cancelled because of the storm Helga, but we made a film of the show instead!

Circus performances I attended

• 7 fingers - Cuisine et Confessions
• Karavan circus festival: children's performances, Circo Eia, Cia el Crue and Jay Gillian
• Cirque Inextremiste - Extrêmités
• Cirque Alfonse - Timber
• Cirkus Cirkör - Limits
• SJC shows

Among these ones, I must say that Cuisine et Confession was my favourite because of the joy and big involvement of the audience! That is a tradition from "old" circus that really makes circus different from other art forms such as dance or theathre and I liked how Cuisine et Confessions involved and played with the audience.

I hope there will be as much circus in 2016!

Happy New Year!

Some theories why the monodisciplinar seems to increase in the circus world

I have noticed that lately I have read and heard quite a lot about monodisciplinary shows, and by that I mean specialized shows with only juggling or only acrobatics and so on. To explain my thoughts about this, I will start with the different disciplines of circus.

When I went to circus school, I learned that circus consisted of the following five disciplines:

• Juggling and object manipulation
• Aerial
• Acrobatics
• Equibrilistics and balance
• Clowning

Later, I found out that some people also include

• Partner acrobatics
• Ring master

These different disciplines are all very different and give different dimensions to the circus, as well as a great variety. They all had their place.

But lately and especially in new circus I have noticed that there are many shows with only one or maximum two of these disciplines. There are acrobatic shows, juggling shows and balance shows.
Here are some of my ideas of why:

Maybe this has come from small groups that want to explore their discipline deeper, and in order to do that it takes some acts to show the different possibilities within the discipline.

It could also be that people with one specialization meet other people with the same specialization and then decide to make a show together. I think it is much more likely to meet people in your own specialization than someone from a totally different field.

One other explanation could be that it might be easier to "break free" from "traditional circus" by doing it monodisciplinary as it even more underline the differences between traditional and new circus.

It could be easier to sell a show to a venue if it resembles more to other forms of performance that are usually monodisciplinar, like dance or theatre. Because then it is easier to label it as "juggling performance" in the program.

Do you have any ideas of why the monodisciplinar shows has seemed to have increased?

Tilde Björfors has written a lot of interesting things on this topic in her circus research on this link: 7 Dimesions and 7 disciplines (In Swedish).

In the club at uni we did a monodisciplinar show last winter as there where only object swinging, manipulation and juggling in the club at that time. We did a high light video:

Trying to overcome some fear of acrobatics at Balance Camp in Gagnef

In the middle of august I attended Balance Camp in Gagnef. Balance Camp is a camp that focused mainly on balance activities and unicycling, but when I registered for which workshops to attend I decided to pick acrobatic ones since I really want to learn some of that. The biggest obstacle is that I have some mental fear of doing acrobatics, but I decided to try to face that fear and learn some new things.

During the two days I did floor acrobatic, air track and trampoline. I also spend quite a lot of time trying to learn to do a back flip with some helpful spotters, and some lindy hop inspired back flip throws. I tried to jump with unicycle for the first time, and did some slack line walking. In the mornings we did SUP (stand up paddling board) on the river. During the air track class I almost learnt how to do a hand spring!

Since the weather was so nice everyone where out at the camp practising or watching others practise, and there was opportunities to practice the things learnt in the workshops or just using the equipment. There where trampolines, air track, crash mats, slack lines, SUPs, trial track for unicycling, juggling equipment, and indoor practise hall and a big grass field.

During the camp I tried to do things that I don't normally do and trying to overcome the fear of rotating with the head moving up or down. I must say that even though I am still quite afraid of doing acrobatics, I am a little less afraid now. I figure skating I learned the importance of trust in yourself when doing things, and this trust is definitely needed in acrobatics as well and I am slowly working on building that. 

Discussing how to improve our partner acrobatics back flip. Photo borrowed from Unitwins Facebook page

There where many unicyclist attending the camp and on Saturday evening there was an informal flatland competition that was nice to watch, both because it was the first unicycle competition I have watched and some of Sweden's best unicyclist where competing.

If you are considering going to Balance Camp an upcoming year I would recommend it. The camp was very organized with a lot of information on the website, mail and on the site, easy registration, home cooked food and nice sleeping rooms. The workshops were good and there was a lot of both equipment and space at the facility, which was a farm next to Dalälven river, as well as nice people that would share their skills.

Balance Camp website (In Swedish)

The process - what does it give to a work of art to see the process behind?

Lately I have been thinking about the process behind all the circus work I have done. Usually people just see the finished product and not the process behind.

Yesterday our friend came to take some photos of me and E when we did our partner poi performance, so make a school project in media. I have had a glimpse of some photos, and when I see them they look awesome. But we are actually in a classroom in school, and I had borrow my friends poi since mine where broken and I also borrowed E's dress at this photo.

A photo from yesterday

When we had a master class in Visby during the medieval week, one word of advice we got was that "you are really good, but people donät understand how good you are". I think this is a sign that most people don't know about the long process of learning tricks, practising them, putting them together and the performing them. Compared to other art forms, less people know about what happens before and after that glimpse of circus that they see.

At the festival of contemporary circus in Umeå I saw a show by the partner acrobats Henrik Agger and Louise Bjurholm, where they presented Louise's master thesis by having a show that basically showed how they prepared, warmed up, and did a performance, and what they did after. To me, I really liked to see how they practised and prepared, and their work together. I had already seen their performance in Cirkus Cirkör's "Wear it like a crown" and I actually enjoyed it even more when I saw the work behind.

We have been trying to be more known at uni by practising in corridors during lunch time. To me, this has been almost more difficult than performing on stage, because I am not used to showing the process behind. I don't know how I feel about people watching me practice, which means that they will sometimes see me fail, drop balls, get angry, get happy, stick things for the first time, and so on. I don't know if I would like to show this side or not.

Since it is interesting to see the process, when is the best time to show it? I think I want to see the finished art product before I see the process. It is not fun to see the directors cur before you have seen the movie without it.

What do you think about seeing the process behind work that you see?

How do you feel about showing the process of your own work to others?

Unexpected expressional acrobatics - Knee Deep review

At Umeå contemporary circus festival Knee Deep was completely sold out, so I was so happy that it was possible to see them in Piteå yesterday. In Piteå, I was surprised that it was not so many people in the audience, but I really liked the scale of the scene: It was a small theater hall and I was on the first row.

Knee Deep starts with the acrobat Emma Serjant walking on eggs, setting the egg and wine bottle theme that runs loosely through the show. Just like eggs, the human body can be both fragile but strong when many of them are put together. When they drop the egg from at three man high, it also reminds us how easily it breaks and that circus always involves some form of risk.

Knee Deep is a four person acrobatic show performed by Circus Casus from Brisbane, Australia. The show has a decorticated set with almost nothing on stage except the performers. The show starts with a routine of group acrobatics that shows amazing skills from the acrobats. The acrobatic numbers are mixed up with mostly aerial, but also some other acts.

Image source

The group acrobatic number where the one I liked the most. More towards the end there were one performed to more upbeat music that I preferred to the first one, but I really like how they moved in different way and did some very unexpected moves. It was refreshing to see that even if the group consist of one woman and three men, the all base and fly equally through the routine. Sometimes I really wished that there where more elements borrowed from dance to fill in the spaces between the acrobatic moves. I liked the part in the end where one of them did some arm movements like he was controlling the others with a force to do some moves.

The aerial parts seemed a little unpolished in this performance. I could see some mistakes in the silks, but they where well covered up. The straps started up by some moves that looked like they where from rope to me, which I have not seen much. In the end, there was a nice four person group trapeze. In this trapeze act they switched a lot between the moves and who would do them, but they where never all four in the trapeze. The aerial contributed with some change to the acrobatic acts.

There was no manipulation in the show expect from a hula hoop act. Men are not often seen on stage doing hula hoop, so it was nice to see. It started of with three of them on stage, and I thought about how we did hula hoop on the school yard. Then the two in the background "grow up" and stops hooping, while the one in the middle continue and does a nice little routine. Some other review I have read though this didn't fit into the show, but I liked the unexpected variation in the pace of the show.

Image source

My favorite act in the show was actually not the last act, but the later group acrobatics because I could see the joy in their eyes while doing all their acrobatic tricks.

To sum this up, I enjoyed some of the unconventional parts of the show, as well as the intense expressions of the performers. There are some details to be improved, but to sum it up Knee Deep is an unpolished diamond.

Link to Casus Circus homepage

Having a great time at the contemporary circus festival in Umeå

The contemporary circus festival in Umeå is amazing!

Beeing a volonteer at this festival has been nice since we often ca see the shows we are working at, and if there are tickets left over we can attend all other shows for free! So far I have attended or worked at La Soiree, Flown and GLITCH, and they were all good and very different. I will write some more in dept reviews when I am back home.

Also, I have attended two very interesting seminars: one called Circus i norr (circus in the north) and one called Nycirkusens historia (The history of new circus).

I feel so inspired by this festival!

Umeå contemporary circus festival

This weekend is the Umeå contemporary circus festival, and since I love watching circus I am definitely going! It started the 29th of August but I will join this weekend.

I will attend the circus festival as a volunteer because I think it is important to work for projects like this one, but also to get the opportunity to get behind the scenes.

The Umeå contemporary circus festival is the first international contemporary circus festival in Sweden ever, with many different seminars, street shows and acts. There will be seven productions and over 30 shows!

I am especially looking forward to the show "Glitch" by the juggler Johan Wellton, since I both like juggling and the idea of a glitch between how you are and what society expects and thinks of you (because that how I interpret the trailer). I like the picture of all the swinging lamps in the patterns because it looks a little like poi spinning patterns.

Here you can watch the trailer for the show Glitch:

I am so happy to go there!

The program for Umeå contemporary circus festival can be found here
The program as PDF
Homepage for the festival

Circus update

It has been a while since I last wrote on the blog, so here is an update of what has happened in terms of circus lately.

Since I came back from Greentop this spring, I spent a lot of time writing evaluations of the course and studying for a reexam. During the summer I went back to my previous summer work, and on my spare time I did some poi spinning and took up unicycling again.

The best circus thing during this summer was the visit to the Medieval Week at Visby at the Gotland Island. It is like a medieval themed city festival, and during that week I saw more street and fire shows than I did in total the last five years. It was so inspirational to see them all, and see their different styles.

We also spent a lot of time doing fire at the beach, talking to other people who also liked the flow arts.

As a circus artist I think we spend more time developing and practicing our own material than watching others, as opposed to other art forms where relatively more time are spent at looking at others work. In Luleå where I live at the moment, the scene for circus is very small so it is not very accessible to get to see it. I actually think the student jester group which I am a part of stands for a lot of the circus activity in Luleå.

This Wendsday we tried to do some fire outside the students night club, as it was the first day of the introduction period for the new students and therefore a lot of people waiting outside the club. But after just an hour we couldn't stand the rainstorm so we had to give up.

The final show of the course on Greentops homepage

There is still a lot to write about an dpictures to show from the final graduation show!
Until I have written a nice entry covering it all, there is an article from Greentops homepage that can be read here.

The quote that "It seemed more like a professional show than a student showcase" made me really proud of all of us.

I still miss going to Greentop every day, but on Tuesday I was back at the poi spinning club here. It was nice to see everyone again, and we tried out some exercises and games I learned at Greentop.

I will eventually write more about the final show and the way there.

Back in Sweden

I have had a lot to do this last week of the circus course, which was fun but sad as I knew that soon there would be no Greentop every day anymore.

My family came to watch the final show, and then we looked around Sheffield and spent some time with my landlady and lodger.

After that, I had one more week in England until our flight left from London, so we went through Stratford-upon-Aven, Warwick and Oxford before we reached Heathrow to fly back to Sweden.

Now I am in Tyresö outside Stockholm and then we will fly back to Luleå late in the night tonight.

Soon there will be a boom of final show pictures and pictures from England.

Happy Easter and World Circus Day!

Today it is Easter and we had a day of from rehearsals. It is now less than a week until the show! I feel much better from the cold now and look forward to next week. Today I spent some time in town trying to sort out the last pieces of my costumes, but I bet I will find something else that is missing during the week.

Since it is Easter I bought some chocolate Easter eggs that I have seen almost everywhere since I arrived in Sheffield. I got two different types: one with chocolate mousse and one with some sweet milky white thing inside. They were both good and very sweet!

I also found out that the World Circus Day is celebrated the third Saturday of April every year. I didn't do anything special to celebrate it, but I had some energy to do some more five ball practicing.

Happy Easter everyone!

YouTube clips from BJC Simon Says game and Fight Night

I have not been feeling well and have caught a cold since I came home from BJC, The British Juggling Convention. I guess juggling to much and sleeping in a quite cold tent was not a good combination. Today I was not at the course but spent the day lying in bed sleeping and surfing the Internet for juggling things, and found two YouTube clips from BJC that I wanted to share.

Simon Says Game at Juggling Olympics
The first one is the Simon Says Game from the Juggling Olympics where you can see me juggle in white shirt and black pants in the front. I made it all the way to 3:12 when I dropped one ball trying to do a one ball pirouette...


Fight Night Finals
The other video is from the final of the Fight Night. I still think this is so entertaining to watch. It reminds me in some ways of sumo wrestling that I liked to watch on Japanese TV even though I didn't understand much. Sumo and Fight Night both shares this quick rounds and attacks.

Edit: It seems like the videos didn't work for some reason so I will try to fix it and update this post. Meanwhile search for: BJC 2014 Fight Night and Simon Says (Game) at the BJC 2014

Full time rehersals and performance tips

This week we are having full time rehearsals for the final show. It is quite different from the other parts of the course because the focus has shifted from learning to presenting. During every day of this week there is a "presenting time" when the teachers from each subject come in and "hand over" the different acts to the director. So far we have been doing aerial, clowning and juggling (and acrobatics for those who chose that).

This is the first time for me to be directed in this way, but I like it. Sometimes it is like the director is pointing out the obvious, like "remember to look at the audience", but it is so easy to get lost in your own performance that you actually forget to do that. It is also nice to have the director as the eye of the audience, and to me it also feels safer do be directed rather than trying to find out if things work or not by yourself.

To tips for performances

• Make things clear - everything you do has to be clear to the audience to avoid confusion.
• Do it more - this is connected with the previous tip to make it clear. If you are jumping - jump more. If you are happy - be happier. Sometimes it feels like you are doing it a lot but from the audience point of view it may not be completely clear.
• Look at the audience - Try to look at the audience at unexpected moments to invite them to share whatever you are doing

BJC British Juggling Convention

This weekend I visited the British Juggling Convention, BJC, to spend a whole weekend of juggling and juggling related activities. It was my first juggling convent ever and it was really fun.
Then convent is open until Thursday so if you want more information visit www.bjc2014.co.uk.

The BJC 2014 took place at Darton college in Barnsley. To me this was a nice venue (even though I have nothing to compare with) because the school felt modern and there was a lot of good spaces. There was a 24 hour-open juggling hall, and main space, an auditorium, lots of space outdoors and classrooms for workshops. The visitors could either come for the day, or camp around the football pitches next to the building.

The camping area.

I was busy juggling and doing other things most of the time but at least I managed to take some photos:

From inside the juggling hall on Friday

 The main juggling hall was full of jugglers most of the time. It was fun to practice with so many jugglers around us, but i could also just sit and watch what everyone else was doing. All the jugglers where really nice and happy to pick up and throw back your juggling equipment when you lost it somewhere in the hall. Jugglers are nice people.

At BJC with friends

Here I am with some friends. Behind us there is the area where there where some workshops and shows and things. I participated in workshops of three ball multiplex throws, genocide diabolo and lasso spinning and they where all very good and inspiring. The multiplex one was quite easy speaking of technique, but gave me some nice ideas about three ball juggling that i hadn't thought about before. The diabolo workshop was fun because I hadn't done this type of trick where you let go of the sticks in this way. it was quite hard and I never managed to do the trick, but I got a good start with an encouraging workshop leader. The lasso workshop was unexpectedly fun, and I was glad I did it because I don't think I would have tried lasso or figured out how to spin it myself.

At the same time as BJC there was also some other mini conventions like The Balloon Modeling Convention, which was a room full with baloons! We entered a competition where thay drew what the participants would try to make and how many minutes they got. We had 17 minuets to make a Mignion. I have never really done balloon modeling so here is my result, and I am quite happy with it.

Just a picture of people hanging around.

 There was also a traders room of which I didn't take any pictures, but it was like being a child in a toy store there! I have never seen so many props at the same time and it was so fun and nice to actually be able to touch, throw and feel everything! It was a thousand time better than just looking at things on the Internet, which is often the case for jugglers. It is also so hard to find out what you like just by looking at pictures and reading descriptions, compared to actually hold the equipment in your hands.  I got some juggling balls after trying almost all of the balls in the traders area. I realized that I like quite firm balls that are not like beanbags but with a softer surface, so I bought that kind.

From the fire show

 I saw a lot of performances and shows too.
The first one was the Youth Circus Five Rings Circus cabaret. They had made some research of the circus history in the Newcastle area and then done a show inspired by this. I liked it because it was a quite unusual approach to creating acts. My favourit act from they show was a unicycling act about a video game galled "unicycling wars".

I also saw a fire show that gave me a lot of inspiration for fire spinning. They had all the fire equipment including fakit fire, poi, staffs, fans, whips and clubs! The final was great with "fire work" staffs.

Late in the night there was a renegade show which was a little bit random but fun to watch too.

Giant baloon made my the audience waiting for the Gala show to start.

The best show was the Gala Show that took place in Sheffield city hall. The show was fantastic and all the acts was awesome! There was two Swedes performing; Gustav Rosell who did some funny clothes and ball juggling and Emil Dahl who did arty juggling with white clubs. My favorite was the MHD Crew who did a very nice group diabolo routine.

Five ball challenges

There where also "Olympics" which was some funny games for everyone. I couldn't take photos of the one I participated in. The best things with these was that everyone could participate. There was one "Throw the diabolo in the box" competition, "coin juggling", "unicycle gladiator", "club balancing" and many other funny games. It was also possible to take impressive photos with so many jugglers doing the same thing.

Unicycle gladiator

Club balancing game

 The most entertaining game to watch was the "Fight Night" game. The rules where like this: Try to make the other person stop juggling while you continue and you win one point. First to three wins. The equipent used is clubs and the two participants are juggling three clubs each. Then they make a high throw, and while the club is in the air, they had the time to try to use the other clubs to hit the patters of the the other juggler. If they both lost their clubs after an attack, noone won a point and they had to restart. The audience was very engaged in the fights and it was fun to watch because it was quick, dramatic and dynamic. I am up for recognizing this as a sport!

 After visiting BJC as my first juggling convention I really liked it and could recommend a visit.

Busy and BJC

It has been a very busy week since this is the last week of spezialisation before the full time work on the show starts.

Last weekend I had some time to be touristic and went to Kelham Island Industrial Museum, and it was the best museum in Sheffield so far. I will make a post where I show some pictures and tell you more about it.

I am almost done with my tightwire piece and have been working on the same idea for weeks. In aerial, we restarted this week since we due to time restriction in the show needed to do aerial in groups. Our group has changed theme some times but now I think this will be fine.

I have spent the evening packing and preparing for the British Juggling Convention! It is gonna be so much fun!

Four person juggling routine creation and thoughts about cooperative acts

The day before yesterday our schedule said supervised acrobatics practice, but none of the jugglers nor me are taking specializing in acrobatics. Instead, we managed to create a four person juggling act! I am very proud of it and I liked how we could cooperate in such a good way. It definitely needs some more practice to make it smooth but as we practiced yesterday and today we have already become a lot better. I hope it will fit into the show, but our juggling teacher seemed like he liked it, so as long as the director likes it. I hope he will be positive because he has asked the teachers to make some bigger group performances this year.

When I spoke to a friend who did the same course last year, he said "I wanted to do doubles trapeze, but there was no flyer who wanted to work with me. They all wanted to be by themselves". I think cooperative acts are underestimated, because in group acts there is more than "just" a skill: It is the cooperative work and connection in the group. I think that in a cooperative act there is more about the relation between the performers, while in a solo acts it is more about the relation to the object. And human relations almost always win over objects.

Another reason that I like cooperative acts are that I can easily see and understand that there is a lot of determination, work and cooperation between the performers, and that is a skill I value highly. To me it is more impressive to see a group of people doing something of medium difficulty together, than to see one person doing something more difficult alone. Of course I understand that it takes a lot of time to master object manipulation or aerial, especially since I am interested in circus, but everyone has some personal experience how hard but wonderful it can be to work together with someone else.

Creating things and acts together can sometimes be hard, and sometimes it is a lot easier than doing it alone. I think we created our juggling routine very time efficiently and surprisingly smooth. We are all very different in skill level and how we usually perform juggling, but in this case our differences helped us. To me, I was happy to see how my juggling friends were especially good at finding transitions between the tricks that I hadn't though about. It is a lot harder to come up with new ideas alone simply because noone force you to do it and there is only your own limits, but as a group we had to find solutions that worked for everyone. Sometimes it means compromising and sometimes it means exploring new areas.

From my own experience, it can be scary to put so much time and effort in creating something together with someone because it also means trusting the other person a lot and spending a lot of time with them. But during shows it feels so nice to share the excitement, preparation, performance and joy with someone else.

The act I am most proud of is a cooperative act with poi together with my friend and poi partner.
And I feel so alone doing poi without the other poi spinners in Luleå.

I am so proud of a partner poi routine Evelina and I did together. It also happens to be Evelina's birthday today, so Happy Birthday Eve!

Newton's architecture - A documentary about Swedish juggling

When I was surfing the internet looking for juggling things I stumbled upon this documentary about the Swedish style juggling:

Newtons Architecure - En film om nutida jonglering i Sverige (A film about contemporary Swedishi Juggling) with subtitles in English

It is a 30 minutes documentary about the Swedsih Juggling. Appearantly there is a special Swedish juggling style that both tries to be high skilled and artistic. The documentary contains interviews with some Swedish Jugglers at DOCH (University of Dance and Circus) and some nice juggling clips.

Quote from Jay Gillian:

And for me, it is also about how the juggling looks, that’s what I like about it, it is not the skill.

I like this idea of artistic juggling. In the documentary that also say that there were really no discussion in Sweden whether juggling is a sport or an art, and most think that it can be both. I like to see juggling as an art or way to express something, almost like dance. Jay Gillian also talked about to be conscious about what type of juggler you want to be and what expression you want to have. 

Om jag gör ett vissts visuellt mönster med min jonglering, att objekten bildar någonting, eller jag håller objekten på ett sätt som bildar nån sorts… ja, en bild på det ena eller andra sättet. Det är ju samma sak som arkitektur till exempel. Det är ju samma sak, det är ju också en bild, som en front av ett hus eller liksom en allé med träd. Det blir ju också en grafisk bild på samma sätt som jonglering kan vara fast det gör ju nödvändigtvis inte att vi måste räkna in det som jonglering.

Free translation by me:

If I make a certain visual pattern with my juggling so the objects makes something, or if Ii hold the objects so the make up some kind of... picture in some way. That is the same thing as architecture for example. That is the same thing, that is also a picture, like a front of a house or an alley with trees. That also makes a graphic picture in the same way that juggling can be, but that doesn't require us to count it as juggling.

There are big contrast between juggling and architecture, but they both is a kind of art focused around patterns, and this could in fact be applied to almost all art forms.

For people interested in juggling I recommend this documentary.

Aerial practise and choreography

I think I have become a lot better at climbing the silks that for my first time three weeks ago. In the aerial class the day before yesterday we did our assessments tasks which was spotting someone and then do a trapeze routine.

My trapeze routine was quite simple, but I am still happy with my performance and the feedback I got from the teacher. I did the trapeze moves gazelle, angel, reverse angel, candlestick, mixed grip straddle, up to sitting, balance, lamp post, coffin, birds nest.
This picture is a screen shot from the movie of me going into this position, but I think I have become a lot better at climbing the silks that for my first time three weeks ago. In the aerial class yesterday we did our assessments tasks which was spotting someone and then do a trapeze routine.

My trapeze routine was quite simple, but I am still happy with my performance and the feedback I got from the teacher. I did the trapeze moves gazelle, angel, reverse angel, candlestick, mixed grip straddle, up to sitting, balance, lamp post, coffin, birds nest.

Finally I mastered a nice silks position

On Wednesday afternoon we had aerial choreography. Unluckily, I was unable to participate for a very funny reason. I was jumping and dancing around at lunchtime, and just when my foot was in the air a diabolo from one of the other students flew in under my foot. When I landed I hit the diabolo and strained my ankle, so then I decided to rest to not risk the rest of the course.

So instead I took a lot of notes in the choreography lesson. I have some experience of choreography from dance and figure skating that I practiced when I was younger, so it was interesting to hear how this teacher thought about it.

We discussed different starting points for a choreography, like space, context, character, equipment, budget, duration, music, theme, safety, costume, narrative, solo/duo/group and so on. We also talked about the importance to know who is in charge of making different decisions when making the choreography. Sometimes the buyer want to make them, sometimes there is a director and sometimes the artist. Then we did some exercises in tempo, when they did the same series of aerial moves but in different tempos.

Watching an exercise in aerial choreography class

Chorepgraphy top tips

• Be present and do the moves worth watching
• Have a clear ending and a clear end
• Don't be afraid to use the ground as well as the air in aerial performance
• Choreography doesn't have to be complicated, just clear
• We like patterns
• Don't be afraid of repetition
• Try to vary the tempo pf the moves from static holding to flowing moves
• Don't be a slave to the music
• Try to create contrast in speed, shape, pace
• Audience see shapes, not moves
• Slowness and still points give confidence to the performance

And most important of all:

• Audience don't remember tricks, they remember moments. Create great moments!

Game is good, play is better in clowning class

Today, we had another full day of clowning. I had no idea what to expect from the clowning classes that are compulsory in the course, but they are getting better and funnier now compared to the first class I think. It is both frightening and fun to do clowning, but sometimes you just feel stupid, boring or vulnerable. It sounds like a cliché, but the clowning classes actually helps you find out more about yourself since we have nothing to "hide" behind, and in our clowning classes we don't use any costumes or props or other things.

Some good things that you get better at in clowning class is to always be positive, give it another try and to learn to try to sens the subtile sens of how other people are feeling or thinking, and then try to follow them.We have also learned to be enthusiastic and never reject other people ideas, how crazy they might be.

List of things our techer likes to say:
Game is good, play is better
Clowns are not gold medal winners

Clowns alway go for another try

What I have learned from this is: To be a clown is to dare to fail.

We actually did an exercises when we were suppose to hide under a blanket, the pop out and try to surprise the audience, and then just wait for the fun to die and the do something about it. The exercises was about to try to be funny, but fail and then try to solve it.

Our clown classes basically consistes of five hours of playing silly games, improvising and speaking nonsens. It is a fun way to start the week!

In the evening I went to the new parcour course, at is was very fun to run, jump and roll around, but to do these thing on the concrete seems far away at this point. Then I did trapeze beginners class but I forgot my phone at home, so there are no picture. Thats is really a shame since I learned a nice move called "the unicorn".

Circus Space in London gains status as "National"

Article from The Guardian:

Acrobatic artists find new status as London circus school goes national

Directors hail victory for campaign to keep world-class talent in UK as London centre leads renaissance in big top skills.

Link to the article from The Guardian.

A quote from the article:
" British tightrope walkers, acrobats and trapeze artists are to be given the same recognition as the country's leading troupes of musicians and dancers. Circus Space, the training centre in London's East End, is being elevated to "national" status by the government in a move to show that "circus arts" are being taken seriously."

I like this since it means that circus slowly is getting more and more recognition as an art form. I recommend to read the article.