Mezmerizing lightbulbs - Glitch at Umeå contemporary circus festival

It has been a while and I have still many thoughts and reviews from the Umeå contemporary circus festival that I want to share with you!

Now is the time to write about  G.L.I.T.C.H, a solo juggling show by Johan Wellton. The show had a sneak premiere in Umeå before the official premiere th 18th of september at Vara konserthus.

During the festival I heard a lot of discussion about if circus i art or entertainment, and when I ased the writer Margareta Sörensson, she answered that she though La Soirée was entertainment, but G.L.I.T.C.H was art.

When we entered the room, tha show had already started. Johan Wellton was on the stage, holding a monologe very expressive about the stress in life and not knowing it which direction to go. While he was holding this monologe, he did some really amazing juggling tricks that could have been the finale for most other jugglers. But Wellton is lost in is thought, thinking about his life doing this technically advanced juggling.

"-And I was waiting for her, but she never came...I thought maybe we could have a nice time and drink some tea. Where is she? I made two cups of tea, put them nicely on the table, arranged them, rearranged them, and waited for her. She had still not showed up... and the tea got cold, so I made two new cups of tea. But what should I do with the other cold cups of tea? take them away, and pretend that I haven't been waiting, or leave them so she could see them? The two new cups got cold too, and she didn't arrive, so I made two new cups of tea! But what to do?!"

This is a part of the monolouge that I remember the clearest for some reson (translated and writted down very freely though). He was talking faster and faster and I felt familiar with this feeling that you are "juggling you everyday life" fast and fast but have no idea of why we do it. Why do we stress and care so much about things that may not matter? Why are we not happy with nothing but the perfect? My feeling was that Wellton was addressing these questions in the first part of the show.

Then it all speeds up even more, until things set on fire, fall from the floor and Wellton is almost angry and stressed and suddendly finds himself crashed on the floor.

Picture from www.johanwellton.com

The the show suddendly changes everything and the rig with the pendulum lights is suddendly present. It all consist of a bar in the roof, with cords of hangling lighted light bulbs. I was mesmerized just by the view of this.

Wellton then starts to "juggle" the hangling light bulbs i different ways to a soft background music in enjoyment. Besides the patters made from the swinging light bulbs, I also appriciated the technical aspects of the light bulb rig. There was one part where Wellton was playing music by juggling them, with a camera regristrating where the light bulbs where to give the corresponding sound.

From beeing a chaotic and hectic show, it goes to a very peaceful lightbulb swinging, and I could have be watching that part longer. In the end, he is almost not touching the bulb, but just like us watching them making their own patterns in the air with a light trace following them. Maybe the lightbulbs are ideas and thoughts that are finally breaking free?

Visit Johan Welltons homepage (SWE/ENG)

Read more about GLITCH (In Swedish)

Expressen
Västerbottenskuriren

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

Performance at the welcome dinners at uni

Lately there has been a lot of activity in the poi and staff spinning group at uni. During the weekend there has been three welcome dinners where we had a performance. The theme for this year was "Myths and legends".

We had an approximately 3,5 min performance with one LEDdevil stick, two staffs, one double staff and two poi. In the end we were all five on stage to an editet version of Adrian Zieglers Prophency! We also had a funny encore where we danced to the Swedish Eurovision participant Roger Pontare. In the end of this post you can listen to the music.

We had been developing the performance itself during quite a long time, since we had all been working during the summer, but I am happy with how it turned out in the end. The story was that a girl with a LED devil stick walks in a forest where the trees (the two staffs and the double staff) come to life. The two evil forest elfs scares them away (the other poi girl and me), but in the end the good side won!

You can see some pictures here taken by Marie Eriksson:

We didn't get as much applauses at some spots where we expected to get them, but later I heard that the audience was so amazed that they forgot to give some rounds of applauses. Maybe we can develop a better way of making pauses and applause points?

Here is the music for the performances (but we used edited versions).
Main performance:

Encore:

Juggling in the dark

Lately I have been studying intensely for a math exam. These study periods really stress me out and in break times between the calculating I have practiced some juggling tricks. In my apartment I have a gigantic sofa that works perfect as a juggling sofa to save the neighbors underneath me from getting crazy from the drops of balls on the floor.

I have been doing my five balls flash, some four ball colums tricks, juggling with arms crossed and finally gotten my head around the Boston mess!

It is becoming darker here in Luleå and I have been looking at different options considering LED or glow juggling balls. I remember my friend ha some nice LED juggling balls that was filled with small silicon pieces, which made them feel almost like beanbags. From my experience of poi and staff LED equipment I think it is a lot of variety in the market, and LED thins then to be stiff or heavy because of the electronics inside.

For me, it is important that they are rechargeable or have rechargeable batteries and that they have a relatively low price.

Here are some of the options I have been looking at after a quick search on the Internet:

Juggling Glow ball Renegade Juggling
Seems like thay are almoste the same as the ones from Oddballs but it is possible to choose a programmable version, and it is tempting but expensive since they want 9 extra dollars for that feature.

Led Glow Ball Single Color Oddballs
Seem quite good and reasonably priced.

Glow Ball K 8 iBall Renegade Juggling
Extremely cool that they are controllably by the remote and can go in all colors. But the price of 75 dollars each or about 500 SEK each is way too much for me.

Various balls from Lightupandjuggle
Impressive variety of different kind of juggling balls.

Lighted Juggling Balls from Dubé
They seem very straight forward but it is very difficult to say how hard or soft the juggling balls are.

Is there any other good LED juggling equpiment on the market that I have missed? Please let me know!

Juggling passing at the party after the final show at Greentop

Strangely I juggle more now because it forces my brain to take a break from studying. At least for me, it is impossible to think about other things while juggling.

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.