Juggling has spread - juggling set at IKEA

I have spent the days after Christmas lying in my bed reading insanely many books, so I didn't bother to join my sister to IKEA.

"They have started to sell juggling equipment at IKEA!", my sister told me when she came back.

I think this is really good, even though I don't expect much from the juggling equipment itself. When I started doing diabolo, I had one from the local toy store, and then as I got better, my parents got me a better one. I hope this IKEA juggling kit will do the same for kids and juggling.

Having the right equipment is crucial in juggling, since you are going to spend so much time using it. If you equipment is so bad it actually prevent you from succeeding, you might loose all you joy of juggling and motivation. On the other hand, until you have tried something out you don't know if you like it and it is considerably easier and cheaper to get some "bad" toy/unprofessional equipment.

The key in this dilemma I think is to know when it is time to move on to get professional equipment, but it is hard to know when that is.

Back to this IKEA juggling kit; it has a description of key features.

- Juggling helps your child develop important concentration skills.- Encourages your child to train and improve. They start juggling with 1 ball and move up to 3.
- The balls and clubs can be used together as a bowling game.
- The rings and clubs can be used together as a tossing game.
- Your child can also swing the rings around their wrist or ankle, and throw and catch them with friends.
- Easy to store away in the included net bag.

I think they have kind of caught the essence of juggling: Train to improve step by step, juggle with friends and encourage new creative ways of using the equipment.

To end this article, I will include a picture of some of my own juggling balls:

La cage aux folles - a review

For quite a while ago we saw La cage aux folles together with the circus club at Norrbottensteatern.

Even though this was supposed to be a mnusical, it hade borrowed some elements from circus, when they had more of these "singing acts" where we where supposed to get glipes from what the audience at the club where the story is set see.

I remember it almost like a varity show with different acts. I was supprised that even though La Cage aux Folles was first written in the 80ths, the subject and the musical as a whole still was up to date today, dealing with subjects as cross dressing, core family or not, expectation from the society and HBQ realted questions.

My two favourite thing that I am not sure is included att all La Cage aux Folles was the fact that thwy at the end where wearing the Kiruna Hockey match sweater in all the rainbow colors (since Kiruna Hockey is the first HBTQ certified hockey team in Sweden) and that the parents dressed up as the Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst, with her dress and beard.

There where many beautiful costumes, good dance acts and singing acts.

At several points, one of the dads say "The circus horse gets ready again" in a sad voice as he is about to get changed to enter the stage. This still points out that circus still have a very low status in society.

As a whole, I really enjoyed La Cage aux Folles.

Circus and juggling update

You might think that I have done less circus since it was a while since my last entry, but it is actually the opposite.
In my last post, I happily showed my new LED juggling balls and my glow in the dark flowerstick, and even if it is just about a month since I got them I have made routines and performed with them.

The weekend 6-7 of December I went to Stockholm to attend the Women in Circus Consortium at DOCH (University of Dance and Circus). It was very nice to both see some performances, work in progress, acts, workshops and lectures.

I have also attended the DOCH open house when I was in Stockholm.

At uni, we have practised and planned a lot of our own self-made show, which was tiring and somewhat strenuous to organize and make, but I am so happy with the result!

I am now home meeting my family and friends, but I brought my juggling balls and flower stick with me. Surprisingly, I spent a lot of time on the train discussing aerial with an other passenger who was interested in circus.

As I have mentioned before, it is dark it the north in winter, but it makes the LEDballs glow even more!

My first flower stick and LED juggling balls

The snow has come to Luleå these last days. I have spent a lot of time indoors playing with my new equipment: A glow in the dark flower stick and some LED juggling balls.

This flower stick is my first flower stick ever and I am so happy with it! I did some devil sticks years ago, but then I didn't now how to continue. But since the club at uni got some members who dd flower sticks I have been so inspired! I found out that flower sticks are easier to "experiment" and invent things with due to that the flower stick also have this silicone surface.

For me, I feel that I have a pretty good basic technique from my devil sticks practice. The learning curve is definitely not as steep for those staring directly with flower sticks, but starting with deviel sticks force you to get a correct tick-tock fast and to get a good control of the devil stick. So when I went from devil stick to flower stick I suddenly saw a lot of potential in many of my old tricks.

For the LED juggling balls, I went for 4 green ones and 2 white ones. The are quite big and hard, but I don't get annoyed by the fact that you can feel the switch when juggling.

When I juggle with the LED balls I get another strange feeling of flow juggling that I have had a really hard time to find. I guess I get it because they remember me of poi spinning. I also realized that just moving the balls in unexpected patterns also make an effect, so now I am watching all the LED juggling videos I can on Youtube.

I think I have most of the props that I would like to, so now maybe I need to find some kind of prop stand, because all my apartment is filled with scattered juggling things. It is very nice.

The ultimate colors for juggling balls set

We have all seen them: These really professional jugglers that has like 9 white clubs and do amazing things. To me, having white props, black clothes and enter a black stage will give me some prejudices about what style of juggling the juggler will do.

I will soon order LEDballs, and last time I bought juggling balls I was thinking a lot about what colours to get. I was practising five ball flash quite a lot so I wanted the balls to have different colours so I could check that I caught the balls in the right hand. I wanted six, and they only had six colours, so I ended up with one in each colour. I still don't like that pink one.

So now I am buying LED-ball to use at performances, so I here are some suggestions if you like to have different colours when you juggle.

Don't get me wrong, I like when they are all in the same colour too.

3 balls
2+1 makes it possible to enhance special trick such as jugglers tennis.

4 balls
3+1 is one possible combination, but 2+2 is also an interesting one. 3+1 allows monochrome three ball if you want that, but 2+2 allows to have 2+1 with both chosen colours.

5 balls
I felt that it was difficult to fins some good combinations. with five balls, I don't see very often that any accent balls are needed. Maybe 4+1? 2+3 is also a good combination, because the both monochrome three ball is possible and also 2+2.

6 balls
I was thinking that maybe 2+4 would be a nice combination, because I can imagine that it would look nice with one accent ball in each three ball column when juggling? Also this makes many other good combinations for 4 and 3 ball patterns possible.
Also 4+1+1 is an interesting one, because it allows a three ball pattern with 3 different colours.

I wrote this article when I was thinking about what to buy considering LED juggling balls. At the end, I decided 6 balls, 4 green and 2 white like the northern light. It is going to be a nice juggling winter, and since I live in the northern part of Sweden there will be a lot of darkness to juggle in!

That is my thoughts on choosing ball colours for juggling sets. If you have thoughts about this it would be interesting to hear yours!

A guide how to make poi and circus choreographies

I finally have a new computer since my old one broke down! I spend a lot of time studying for the exam week, but we have also moved a little forward in the progress of making our own show with the poi at staff club at uni.

We will now start making choreographies and I wanted to share the process with you!

Before I started making poi choreographies I have competed with different choreographies in figure skating, which might have helped. I have also done some dance courses and played cello, so i feel that i have a good sense of music and beat.

I usually to things in this order. Below I will explain a little bit more about each point.

Suggestion on
how to make a poi choreography

1. Choose music
2. Cut music
3. Write the music down
4. Write a list of tricks
5. Pair up tricks with highlights
6. Play around to find transfers between tricks
7. Look for feelings and poses
8. Practice, film myself and evaluate
9. Rethink
10. Practice
11. Thinking about costume, light color
12. Perform

Choose music

When I chose music I always chose something that I like, because when practising you will hear this music a thousand times. It is good to chose a music that is not a super popular track on the lists, because since it will take some time to make your performance people will think that it is as old and outdated as the music. 

I also often chose something that has a good beat. Especially with poi, the beat is very important so try the music out to see if you can spin in rhythm with the beat. Remember that it is the length of the string that decides the period time!

It can also be a good idea to chose a music with many changes of style or one that contains some high light where you can put your best tricks.

Cut music
If your music is longer than 3 minuets, cut it down. I think about 3 minuets is how long the audience can hold their interest. When cutting music, make sure that the cut edition has a good start and finish.

Try to include some different moods, themes or parts from the music.

Write the music down
I always start with writing the music down. I count the beats, write them down and divide them into sections, and write out where the highlights are. If you are not so good at this or think it seems tideous, one way can be to print out the lyrics (if there is any) or just write "beginning", "flute starts to play" and so on.

I do this to get an overview over the music.

Write a list of tricks

Now, write a list of tricks you want to include. Write only tricks that you can actually do.

Pair up tricks with highlights

Now, put your down written music and list of tricks down next to each other and try to pair them up. Put you spectacular tricks on the highlights in the music. When you add in your trick, try to add them in an order so they contrast each other, like high vs low, slow vs fast and so on to make your choreography dynamic.

Play around to find transfers between tricks

Put on you music and try to do your tricks, and to find smooth transfers. If there are any empty spaces in the music, improvise and see what you think can fit there.

Look for feelings and poses

When playing around, try out some different start and finishing poses. Don't forget to put some applaud poses in the middle as well. You can also experiment with some dance moves or poses, or try to express different feelings and thoughts.

Practice, film myself and evaluate

When you are happy with your outline, it is time to practice. Just do it over and over again. Sometimes it helps to do this in front of a mirror, or in front of a video camera to watch how it looks like from the audience perspective.. You will find out what works and what doesn't.

Rethink

Did you fins something that needs to be changed? 

Practice

After the changes, continue to practice. If you want, you can continue to practice and retink until you are really happy with you piece. Then practice again until you can preform you choreography in your sleep.

Thinking about costume, light color

It is getting closer to the show. Think about what kind of costume you want to wear, what kind of fire or LED color you want, how you will enter and leave the stage and so on. How can you do this so it enhances your theme? Remember to practise in your costume.

Perform

Now it is time to show your amazing choreography. Good luck!

I know that there are other strategies on making choreographies, and there might be a continuation on this topic since I find it very interesting.

A calm plastic bag air ballet - An Afternoon of Foehn

An Afternoon of Foehn - Version 1
Umeå 7 Sept 15:00


Picture source

This might have been my favourite performance during the whole Umeå contemporary circus festival. The program said "A plastic bag dances across the stage". After seeing this show I now understand how plastic bags can dance.

An Afternoon of Foehn is a solo show and starts out very peacefully and slow. A man dressed like an old sailor entered the stage, and almost ritually he makes a "mini human" out of two plastic bags. The he slowly turn on the fans that surrounds the stage, slowly one by one. The fans make some whirlwind that the seaman can control i different ways to make the "mini plastic human" dance around in the wind to a classic music peace. It really is peaceful and beautiful.

The the story starts with more dancing platic humans, some interactin, and umbrella and different mood changes. The end is filled with melancholy and almost made me cry, so I don't want to give it away. In some was it reminds me of  Studie Ghibli films.

Picture source

This is sometimes labeled as a childrens show, but I would recommend this so any age. It is more of a performance than circus, but still full of emotions and afterthought.