01/10/2010
Shoebox Tour Iceland Limited Edition 3 Disc Set is available for $25 from www.shoeboxtour.com

07/06/2008
www.realjuggling.com

is online!

07/04/2008
This is why juggling is art-
Words by Ivar Hecksher:

The object of art is to show not what there... not what IS, but what could be. All the expansion of our humanity that could be and it could be to the benefit of any man- I would call art.

Juggling for sure is an unexplored area of art as art, because in some old time juggling was 'merely' entertainment, or 'merely' techniques, or 'merely' individual show-off or whatever. But to you guys juggling is something you want to show the world.

You want to show it to people because you have the feeling- "Yeah, they will like this. I like it, and I can do it in a way that they like it." And by now we know that this is true because I like it and I don't know [juggling].

Juggling is art. Singing is art. I mean, only no one thought of juggling as an art a while ago. But I can hardly imagine anyone denying it... hardly imagine anyone denying it- that it is an art. If you do what is in IT, and not only what is in you...

In the old days... This is good- In the old times guys like, up to at least Michaelangelo and even up to- to be exact- Rembrant, they used the colors to say something. But they USED them. The colors were kind of enslaved into the minds and hands of painting artists.

Then comes Kandinsky and his gang and they turned this whole thing over and asked "How can I server you, Blue?" or Red. Or "What do you want to say, Yellow?" And how can I as a painter be a mediator of what Yellow wants to say?

And as long as you have this humble attitude to juggling- What does these objects want to say when they move? Not- What do I want to say with these objects when I move them? But what do they want to say when they move? Then you're absolutely artists and juggling is absolutely an art and I could fight any guy on that. Not a problem.

06/01/2008
MRL #2 has received 15,000 SEK from the Swedish government, as well as that same amount again from a private education project.

This means I am finally an official lazy artist with no real world responsibility for my work! Maybe I'll have to move to Finland or France for MRL #3...

MRL #2 will focus on composition and will most likely happen in November 2008. If you are interested in participating please send me an email and I'll let you know all the details after I'm done counting all my kronor...

05/05/2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpaMIjCw-nw

04/24/2008
SBTF08 details are up over at
www.shoeboxtour.com

04/15/2008
research is the new improvisation....

04/05/2008
one of the guys in the show i am directing right now is touring with ROBYN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

03/29/2008
hello.

monome.org

i am performing in the new cirkus cirkor show called "Inside Out."

i am directing the new show from sirqus alfon called "Eurotrash"- www.sirqusalfon.com

i performed a new solo called "Snapshot" and photos are here- http://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsdalecollegian/2329995603/in/set-72157604105737406/

02/29/2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDxAG3i7TAQ

02/21/2008
MRL #1 Educational DVD and Bonus CD on sale now! Limited edition of 100, sold about 10 within minutes of being available earlier today so order fast if you want one. Website here:

www.shoeboxtour.com/mrl

11/10/2007
State of the Union Address

When I started juggling I learned and researched everything in my immdediate environment. This happened to be limited mostly to IJA videotapes and festivals (along with regional mini-festivals). When I went to Europe I saw a totally different style of juggling than what I was used to. I set out to explore this different style and learn how it is made, and where it came from. Put very simply it was American sport juggling vs. European art juggling. I’ve known for years that the juggling of the future will be the combination of technique and creativity. With the release this summer of VSNBT MNPLT SRS 4 I’m very happy to say my research of “European” style juggling is basically over. Not that I’m so good and can do everything but because its time to move on in the process. I didn’t feel ready before to really start on the next generation of tricks but its now or never!

Looking more closely at the end of the European phase, I found several relationships that I knew existed in the back of my mind but are worth finally fleshing out and seeing where all this is going… please feel free to join me in this final 10 year retrospective (or also there are some new videos up over on rec. that you could watch instead!):

I guess the reason for sharing this online is also the new motivation framing creation these days- I’ve talked about this before but to summarize quickly when I started juggling I made work that “pleased myself first” without consideration of what the audience wanted. Next was doing things on stage “that made me laugh or I thought were interesting stories to tell after the fact.” This evolved into “pretending I was sitting in the audience and imagining what I would like to see happen on the stage.” The most recent motivation was to “do things I wish michael moschen would do,” mostly in relation to juggling culture and community. Finally for now I’m really into “making work that my close friends will find interesting and intelligent.” I think this is an effort to get productive and immediate feedback, a source of inspiration and sharing instead of throwing everything out into the void and having to keep the spirit going without knowing when something will come back.

A closer look of why the VSNBT #4 marks the end of a process can be seen in three steps. In this specific case, first I started exploring manipulation with rings (this was directly after shooting Cooking Fat). The next step was using different size rings. Finally the circles themselves were changed to a different shape. Of course this could be looked at in another way but “the rule of 3” seems to show up a lot in my work (3 parts of juggling- objects, body, rhythm, with 3 smaller parts to those parts, etc.).

The three step process is also just about the limit of my patience to keep interest in a project. A good example is the 3 shows I directed for the Scuoalo di Circo in Torino-

1.Northern Star (2005)- a first stab at directing a show for this school with absolutely no starting context or concept of what I would find when I arrived. I came with a notebook full of enough ideas for 3 shows and ended up putting them all on stage at the same time with the foreground, main stage, and background.
2.Terminal 9 (2006)- the content of this show had to evolve from the first to be a commercially successful sequel with things being different and yet similar enough to build on the popularity of the fist show. However the process of creation and other details remained the same.
3.Eresia (2007)- all the mistakes of the first two years were addressed. The limit of this process, both in terms of what I get out of making these shows artistically and the method of working, is reached. After this experience I feel there are only variations of the past to explore- nothing much can be done to push the work into a totally new area unless one of the starting concepts is changed.

Other trios of related material easily appear-

Work with former students from Alby:
1.The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood- with Peter and Frida
2.Snakewater- with Matias
3.Mix-Tape- with Quentin

One-off hardcore structured improvs with lots of organization, zero rehearsal time, focusing entirely on content and ignoring production values:
1.Burning the Candle at Both Ends- with Miku and Peter, based on ideas by Ivar.
2.Circus Ruska Festival Solo- some people said it was the best show I’ve ever done, some people were angry, specifically Henna…
3.Barn och Ungdom- with Malin and Viktor

Final solo show artistic statement:
1.Nouveaux Nouveaux- the “lost” version which included non-traditional juggling props
2.Nouveaux Nouveaux Remix- new choreography and intent (juggle until you die!)
3.REFLEX- with live music by Erik Nilsson, its not going to get any better than this. REFLEX is my Cirque Lili, the show I’ll be doing until I’m too old to go on…

Compositions written exclusively for live orchestra collaborations:
1.Lavola- with the Tapiola Symfionetta and the genius of Pekka Kuusisto
2.Music Under the Stars- part of SBT07, music by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra
3.Furioso!- Wintergarten performance with Manu

KUKA routines with Manu:
1.clubs
2.rings
3.balls

The list could go on and on (it already has!) but maybe what’s more interesting are the lists that aren’t complete yet-

Writing, directing, and evolving large group show ideas with full budgets and production values:
1.TOKYO- 2nd year student show for the Circus Pilots in Alby
2.i.- by Circus Ruska premieres January 2008 in Tampere, Finland
3.(vague ideas to form a personal company)

Shoebox
1.Tour 2006
2.Tour 2007- Secrets Revealed!
3.(2008)

Which means, as you can see, there will indeed be more Shoebox Tour goodness in the next year! I’ve also got 11 new dvd’s finished and mastered right now waiting to be published in collaboration with Erik and Object Episodes. And I really really hope to finish the new 3 ball routine that’s been around since 2005, hopefully I can now that I’m moving on (although I might still do a ring, triangle, and square piece).

11/08/2007
Shoebox Iceland
Shoebox Sweden
Shoebox Finland
Shoebox Japan
Shoebox America

Shoebox Ireland?
Shoebox Canada?

11/08/2007
Hello! If you want to see a video of the show I’m in right now, go to:

www.wintergarten-variete.de

Once you are on the website a pop-up window may appear with the trailer already playing. However, if you have pop-ups blocked or need to find the link, below the purple box on the left side which says Aktuelle Show bis 26. Jan. FURIOSO! Is a red box which says “Sehen Sle den Trailer zu FURIOSO!” Click on this red box and the video will appear in a new window…

06/05/2007
new tour dates posted here and new website online-
www.shoeboxtour.com

06/05/2007
I'm very excited and nervous as Mike Day as granted me permission to cover his 2 manipulation routines on the Shoebox Tour this summer. I have to start practicing! The first piece uses 1 radical fish club, 1 ring, 1 junior rhythmic gymnastics ball, and 3 stage balls. The second uses the rhythmic gymnastic ball, one ring, and one stage ball, and can be seen in the film "Extracts" by The Gandini Juggling Project. These 2 routines are the finest examples of manipulation available today, even though they were created over 15 years ago! At least I don't also have to invent siteswaps on this tour...

04/14/2007
The last of the Ayn Rand quoting. This time from Atlas Shrugged. The first passage here really reminds me of people who wanted to make “Gandini- Just Say No,” t-shirts years ago. They hated the shows because the work wasn’t mainstream or commercial. I kind of agreed with the shirts, not because there weren’t any sequins on the costumes in the shows, but more because of the second passage included here. To put it another way, to keep with the same example, I didn’t like the shows because there was no thinking behind them, just a big mess of stuff that was labeled “art.” And I used to get angry at people who would talk badly about the shows, I wanted to shake them and say, “You’re wrong to not like the show! You should not like the show for different reasons!” Anyway, I digress…

“Miss Taggart, how many people are there to whom my work means as much as it does to you?”

“Not many,” she answered simply, neither as boast or flattery, but as an impersonal tribute to the exacting values involved.

“That is the payment I demand. Not many can afford it. I don’t mean your enjoyment, I don’t mean your emotion- emotions be damned!- I mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoyment was of the same nature as mine, that it came from the same source: from your intelligence, from the conscious judgement of a mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that went to write it- I mean, not the fact that you felt, but that you felt what I wished you to feel, not the fact that you admire my work, but that you admire it for the things I wished to be admired.” He chuckled. “There’s only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive. But it’s a fear I’ve never shared. I do not fool myself about my work or the response I seek- I value both too highly. I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively- or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show- or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone’s heart- only by someone’s head. And when I find a customer with that invaluable capacity, then my performance is a mutual trade to mutual profit. An artist is a trader, Miss Taggart, the hardest and most exacting of all traders. Now do you understand me?”

“Have you heard the moralists and the art lovers of the centuries talk about the greater example of such devotion than the act of a man who says that the earth does not turn, or the act of a man who says that an alloy of steel and copper has certain properties which enable it to do certain things, and it is and does- and let the world rack him or ruin him, he will not bear false witness to the evidence of his mind! This, Miss Taggart, this sort of spirit, courage and love for truth- as against a sloppy bum who goes around proudly assuring you that he has almost reached the perfection of a lunatic, because he’s an artist who hasn’t the faintest idea what his art work is or means, he’s not restrained by such crude concepts as ‘being’ or ‘meaning,’ he’s the vehicle of higher mysteries, he doesn’t know how he created his work or why, it just came out of him spontaneously, like vomit out of a drunkard, he did not think, he wouldn’t stoop to thinking, he just felt it, all he has to do is feel- he feels, the flabby, loose-mouthed, shifty-eyed, drooling, shivering, unconcealed bastard! I, who know what discipline, what effort, what tension of mind, what unrelenting strain upon one’s power of clarity are needed to produce a work of art- I, who know that it requires a labor which makes a chain gang look like rest and a severity no army-drilling sadist could impose- I’ll take the operator of a coal mine over any walking vehicle of higher mysteries. The operator knows that it’s not his feelings that keep coal carts moving under the earth- and he knows what does keep them moving. Feelings? Oh yes, we do feel, he, you and I- we are, in fact, the only people capable of feeling- and we know where our feelings come from.”

04/13/2007
here's some news from the costume designer of the new cirque show, if you've been paying attention elsewhere on the internet, you already know who she's talking about here!!!


For the Juggler's costume, designer Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt found a fabric made of mirrored squares that reflect the light and make him look like a living disco ball. The effect is so dazzling she was actually afraid he might blind himself when he moves his arms.

04/13/2007
While working in Berlin about one and a half years ago, we had an artistic director named “Cowboy.” The theater had requested an intermission be added to the performance and several ideas were being explored on how to do this. Most of the ideas resulted in variations of having me on a unicycle, delivering drinks through the audience to or from the bar at the back of the house. I personally didn’t see the point of having the unicycle at all, there was no theatrical motivation, nor any just pure “Hey, look, isn’t this funny and fun to look at, I’m riding on one wheel! Entertainment ahoy!” Cowboy was trying to make the scene slightly clever or at least try to fit some sort of story in there, as far as I could tell. The unicycle was clearly not working, also on a basic logistics level of getting off the stage, carrying the drinks, etc. When I asked Cowboy why in the world I was riding a unicycle in the first place in the scene, his completely honest and professionaly paid I’m-doing-my-job response was, “Pretend you’re going to the grocery store and to get there you have to ride your unicycle.” He may have prefaced this with a short “I don’t know, maybe…”, I don’t remember exactly.

So then yesterday when I was on my way to the store and I got a flat tire, I thought of Cowboy as I pushed my uni home. Ok, the epilogue to this store is a lie, unfortunately the first part is true…

04/04/2007
check it outs! nouveaux nouveaux remix remix!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbH6-Eti65s

04/02/2007
You can find below where I posted earlier about a show description from Finland that just couldn’t be beat. Except now I came across an even better one which I’d like to share here. However, before I do, I’d like to give some advice. Lots of people ask me all the time, especially students at the schools when I’m teaching, what it takes and how to go about being a professional performer. The quoted show description following is from Cirque Productions. They had requested I send them a DVD of my work. After viewing the DVD they explained they were not interested as their circus was more of a “European style show.” When I asked what that meant, they immediately replied “Well, for example, our juggler wears a MASK during his act. Your work is just too American…” My advice for becoming a successful performing is to cultivate an attitude that is as original, interesting, and thoughtful as this-

"Cirque Dreams Coobrila will be like no other show we've ever presented at Six Flags Over Texas," said Steve Calloway, vice president and general manager of the company's flagship park. "This is exactly the kind of world-class entertainment our guests have been looking for - an escape that will transport them to another place and time. It will, quite simply, take their breath away!"

The word "Coobrila" was created by combining three key descriptive elements of the show - the outdoor performances will be presented at night when temperatures are COOler...illumination effects throughout the park BRIghter…and park operating hours LAter to maximize guest enjoyment. These elements also fuel the three principal characters of this new Cirque Dreams attraction.__

"Cirque Dreams Coobrila is a fantastical journey into a world of imagination," said Neil Goldberg, producer and artistic director of Cirque Productions. "In the Coobrila dream, three personalities reign supreme…the 'cooler', the 'brighter' and the 'later'. When aligned under the light of a bright new moon, their inventive antics and acrobatic adventures will unfold to inspire, entertain and amaze audiences, bringing them to their feet, cheering and chanting 'Coobrila, Coobrila!'"

Its me again- I'd just like to add, as a final thought, a small suggestion for the title of their next show:
STUpidest TItle To A SHow EVer mADe = STUTITASHEVAD!

03/22/2007
Attention citizens of Earth- partial catalogues of the Gilligan Vault DVD collection are available for public viewing at the national contemporary circus schools of both Canada and France. Please visit their respective websites for more information regarding library opening times and travel plans-
ENC- www.enc.qc.ca
CNAC- www.cnac.fr

01/27/2007
HUGE NEWS FOR BERLIN:

2 great events coming up in the next weeks-

1. MRL #1
Manipulation Research Laboratory
with Jay Gilligan, Luke Wilson, and Ben Richter
@ www.jonglierkatakomben.de
Join these 3 juggling greats as they explore the “rules of manipulation.” Guests at the laboratory will be able to follow and try first-hand the investigation inside the process of placements, traps, rolls, balances, grips, lines, and anything else which involves less throwing. All props will be examined and considered. Included in the price of admission is a free copy of the resulting instructional DVD. WARNING: This is not a traditional instructional workshop. Instead guests will be allowed to observe (and juggle), and invited to interact and personally benefit from the presented research materials and the resulting outcome of the work.

2. Reflex (www.realjuggling.com) will be performed for ONE NIGHT ONLY, Feb. 17 in Berlin! Email for details and special priced tickets. Also opening the evening will be none other than Ben Richter (www.bensmalls.com)!!!!!!!! Historical! Ben and I started The Pain Project in 1998 in Scotland. This evening promises to hold more than a few surprises....

01/26/2007
By the Numbers
It all started with a simple idea- one juggler, one evening, one show, one hour. The result was titled Quest and the reality- one juggler, one drummer, one treadmill, two dancers, two hours! 10 years, and 40 original productions later, its time to look back.

This special anniversary performance will include my favorite piece of work from each of the years dating back to 1997. Most of the routines presented have been retired and this will be a once in a lifetime chance to see them on stage, for the last time*!

The Jay Gilligan 10 Year Retrospective-
North America Dates Coming Soon!

*erm, I mean until the 20th Anniversary Tour of course…

01/24/2007
Selby didn’t exactly ask me for some combat tips, but it got me thinking anyway. The main point I see in combat is controlling chaos. It’s a very elegant game, and like so many other things, more of a challenge to yourself than battling others. The most common mistake made when playing the game is attacking with the wrong timing. I mean this on every level.

Generally an attack shouldn’t be motivated by wanting to make the other juggler drop, as much as stopping a potential future threat. Each offensive encounter instigated by yourself means calculating the risk at the present and weighing its possible magnified future presence. Your focus should always be directed inwards, even when you are the aggresor. You need to be constantly aware of your own pattern and the entire environment of your kinnesphere.

There should be no surpises, just information registered in the brain. A club from behind you swoops down throgh your pattern? If it hit nothing then who cares, no time to worry or panic. If one of your clubs is effected, deal with the damage in the best way possible, usually by first calming down as much as you can. I have experienced a few times in my life time slowing down; seeing all the clubs in the air in slow motion when playing really good combat. This is the state of mind which needs to be cultivated. An almost trance-like consciousness which will allow you to process new information instantly. This will help you fix the next most common level of bad timing- the blind hit.

All the time players are freaking out, constantly running around, trying to prepare for what might come next, and generally not paying attention to what is actually happening. When two players meet what usually happens are one or two high throws, followed by blind hits that slash or thrust in the general direction of the other player with no real plan of what might result. Beyond this method being dangerous if fingers, noses, or eyes become the target, this technique usually fails to make an experienced player drop. The best you’ll get is a hard whack to a club that is already grasp in the hand. What you want to do is time your interference to coincide with the rhythm and throw cycle of their already existing pattern. This is especially important to notice if they are also already engaged in another interference. Spot the club you want to take out of their reach, follow it, and then USE THE LEAST AMOUNT OF FORCE NECESSARY to make that club leave their kinnesphere. Its called finesse and there needs to be more of it in civilized combat. Again, if only because brute force doesn’t really help you to win. It just makes the better players take you out faster in each additional round.

A small side note should be added that even though I sincerely believe combat is a battle with yourself, this does not mean that you should not engage other players. You should be able to handle anything that comes your way, so sooner or later you’re going to have to learn how to deal with it. If you run away the whole game, you’re just going to encounter the same situation at the end and there’s no way to fake a win. Plus you will never get any better- it goes back to the idea of controlling chaos. By playing the game you are putting yourself in an environment which is different to what you are used to. What is to point of playing the game if you don’t accept this new reality and only ever try to make it what you are familiar with? Winning is only the by-product of mastering your own pattern. You can easily do this on your own if you choose to run away from the challenge.

01/11/2007
If you would like, I can do a B+P of the soundtrack by Tracey Vs. Tricia from our December 2 Chicago show. Its just ripped from the video footage but it came out pretty good. First, contact T vs. T through their myspace page and ask if its ok for them. Then email me for my current address and we’ll go from there.
Tracey Vs. Tricia- www.myspace.com/traceytricia
B+P concept and rules- www.mcnichol.com/bnp/

Also, I found an interesting quote from Tim Burton who says the exact same thing about his work as I have tried to examine before-

“Growing up with Godzilla movies, their sense of design and color really appealed to me, and it has a slight martial arts twist. I liked those martial arts movies, and if you like something, then you like to see it. That was always my attitude. I’ve never been able to predict or think what an audience would like to see. I’ve always felt: how can anyone else want to see it if I don’t want to? And if I want to see it, and nobody else wants to, then at least I get to see it. So, there’s one person who will enjoy it.”

01/05/2007
2 Things I Noticed Recently Which Made Me Question Reality:

1. Without a doubt, one of the strangest things I have ever witnessed in my life just happened 2 nights ago. I went to see the show Talvisirkus Aika in Helsinki and the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, was in the audience!

This however was not the strange thing. What I could not believe is that absolutely no one in the audience seemed to care at all! No one talked to her, even said hello, or took photos, pointed, whispered to friends, smiled. Nothing. When the show was over and the crowd was filing out through the small entrace doors, she joined in the sea of people, shoulder to shoulder with the citizens of her country. The only visible security were two men in grey business suits with monitors in one ear and microphones on their wrists, the classic presidential security image. They stayed outside the main hall, positioned in the lobby.

The president seemed happy during the show, clapping enthusiastically and smiling most of the time. This has to be the only country in the entire world where the president can go out in public and not be disturbed, especially with so little security. Can you imagine any other country in the world where this might be possible?? I would guess even in iceland the locals would at least strike up a conversation with their elected leader. And for the president of a country to see a children’s winter circus show alone, with no press cameras or media attention. It feels like I’m leaving something out, but the concept is so simple, that’s it. Strange world. And perhaps even more astounding to think that now the president of Finland has seen Jouni Temonen being a large mosquito on stilts…

2. I have a friend going to circus school in France. We met recently and she told me some things that are beyond comprehension. Perhaps it helps to know a bit about the school- CNAC (National Center for Circus Skills) in Chalons, is funded by the national government. As far as I know, CNAC is the official French school of new circus. Beyond its standing in the cultural system, it is also quite well known all over the world in circus related fields. For the most part, in recent years, the school has a reputation for being quite ok, with perhaps one or two interesting performers graduating there every year. Keep in mind during these next few paragraphs, again, that the school is funded with tax money paid by the citizens of their country.

The school is organizing two projects this coming spring term. The first involves “exploring the element water.” To this end, the students will be scuba diving for 2 weeks. Their diving suits will have small bendy spikes, or tentacles that will of course move with the flow of water. Aparently then after these 2 weeks the students will get to try and recreate the movement of these costumes in the circus school (on dry land), by twisting and turning the body. A tightwire will also be set up completely submerged so the students can “see how it is to walk on the wire underwater, as compared to normal.”

The other project involves “exploring the element snow.” As preparation, the students have already spent one full week rolling around on the floor. Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to sound as if I am trying to say they did some bad modern dance. I mean quite literally that they rolled on the floor for one whole week, in an effort to “be prepared inside the body” for when they will be rolling on snow. Then they shall present a show at the end of the week, demonstrating what they have learned about working with the element snow (I wonder if they’ll find it slippery? Cold?? Wet?). I really hope for the future careers of these young circus artists the school adds a third chapter called “exploring the element real life.”

12/26/2006
erik is doing nice things over at www.objectepisodes.com, i really appreciated his show description from france! so, in that same vein, i had a couple of shows in december.

the first was hosted by tony gonzalez and if you haven't seen his one shot juggling videos on youtube, you need to do that before reading further. the performance space was a rehearsal studio that doubles as the backstage to the main concert hall at hillsdale college in michigan. tony described the room on the phone as being much smaller (at least in my mind) than it actually was. the room was more or less a cube, about 40 feet on each side.

the week before the show i was in a mild panic as i had no live musician for the gig. normally in this situation i would play cd's from a boombox placed on stage next to me. this works ok for sets about 20 minutes in length. i had to do an hour in michigan and i really wasn't looking forward to the boombox option, even more than normal as i hate having recorded music at shows these days.

with nothing obvious i could do to change the situation, i went shopping! that's not just a cheap literary device to move the plot along- its always funny to go shopping in america after being away for a really long time. since the value of the dollar is so low, prices seem to be incredibly cheap. i was cruising the toy isles, looking at the new generation of electronic gadgets for kids and i spotted an interesting looking music box. of course the picture on the front always looks better than what it will turn out to be in reality, so i decided to buy it, and seeing as it was in america i could always return it if i didn't like it. i also bought some plastic baby rattle balls that were supposed to make five different jungle noises, they looked like they would be great! as it turned out, the music box worked better than i could ever imagine and the baby balls all made a single "thud" sound (very similar i suppose to dropping a rock on the ground in the jungle, just not what i was looking for).

the only flaw of the music box was no output other than a single speaker on the bottom. i would need to amplify the signal if i was going to use it in a show. i had a toy guitar which comes with a microphone for vocals, but the guitar turned itself off after 45 seconds without any buttons being pushed. as well the guitar only had a speaker output, with no direct lines to a mixer. i tried to fix the auto off feature by placing my jumping toy dog in such a way that when the dog's legs kicked out to push the dog in the air, instead they hit the power switch on the guitar, therefore keeping the machine on with every jump. it worked brilliantly for a total of 2 jumps until the dog's leg broke. i also had a toy d.j. station which included a microphone, mixer, tape deck, sound effect buttons, and an a.m. radio transmitter. however, when i put it next to the music box some sort of magnetic interference from the radio transmitter caused the whole operation to short out. i went back to the toy store and found a toy guitar with an amp and microphone included for under ten dollars. i am proud to describe the following musical system set up that i ended up using in the hillsdale show-

music box acoustic analog speaker to toy guitar microphone run through a toy guitar amp placed far enough away from the source for no interference with acoustic analog speaker to toy d.j. mix station microphone broadcasting an a.m. signal into a boombox. i had the ability to play cassette tapes from the d.j. mix station, with sound effect buttons on the same machine, sound effect pedals on the toy guitar amp, cd's could be played from the boombox, and finally i could load acoustic live samples into the music box so i had a transparent toy rainstick denis paumier gave me, and a toy accordion. i was able to script two sound samples on the tape deck, one being douglas coupland's girlfriend in a coma book on tape, and the other a karaoke version of the final countdown recorded over pinocchio read in norwegian that i found in a dance studio when rehearsing in oslo around 2000.

the end result of using all these toys was that everything could be run off batteries. i could put the whole contraption on a cart with wheels and push it around the stage without worrying about electrical cords. this gave me the idea the show could be composed in a circle around the space. i would start in one corner, and one hour later, end up back in the same spot. there was one light switch in the room and i could do the pieces in the dark at that physical location in order to get a blackout. i laid out all the props on the floor and wrote a large number in chalk at each spot, ending with the last number in the middle of the space. i thought in this way the audience could move around the space to see different things and at the end of the show move to the edge for a small improvisation to happen in the middle.

during rehearsal that afternoon various people kept popping into the space to say hello. and almost all of them said, "this room is kind of small, what happens if you get a lot of people here tonight?" and my oh so clever response was always, "well then that will be a good problem to have for a juggling show!" with no disrespect to tony, the show was on a monday night, with finals coming up, and with my previous experiences of self producing shows i thought i would be shocked to have more people in the audience than the number of pieces i was planning to do and had written on the floor.

the people started coming one hour before we were supposed to start. at first i thought they were just confused about the starting time. then, with 20 minutes to show time, i looked out in the hall. there was a line stretching back to the entrance of the main concert hall! we had about 200 people waiting to get in!! we had a "good" problem. then it turned into a real problem with about 50 people left to squeeze into the room. already the available floor space had been taken with the chairs we were passing out. people had already stepped on, kicked, knocked over, or otherwise moved my careful floor plan with props, balls, glass of water, etc. placed around the floor. i mean, there was literally no space for me to stand in the room and juggle!

i think the hour long show ended up taking about a half hour longer than planned. i got the audience to push together, giving me a couple of square meters that needed moving around as i tried to push ahead to the next station. i hit a few people, maybe one newspaper reporter twice in a row even. but she didn't include that as part of the experience in her review. overall everyone seemed happy if not more than slightly confused. including myself. we taped the whole thing and for sure it will be out on dvd in the near future. major thanks to tony for putting it all together, and also to everyone who came out to share in the experience together. its one i won't easily forget!!

i did another show the week after in chicago, but that's a story for next year...

10/29/2006
NEW T-SHIRTS!!!

www.instantjuggler.com

the only other place i'll have them is at the december 2 show in chicago. also, its another extremely limited run so order early if you want a particular size... they are going fast!

10/29/2006
When I was young, instead of saying “moves,” we would call them “tricks.”

Actually I just remembered that this was also a debate in the unicycling community about 11 or 12 years ago. Someone was deeply offended to think that the public’s perception of unicycling would be cheapened if the skills involved weren’t referred to by a name less associated with magic. Because as we all know, in the first place public opinion was putting a damper on professional unicyclists’ incomes , plus its obvious that mirrors or strings might be used to ride on one wheel. If I remember correctly, the terms maneuvers, skills, or moves were battling for the offical replacement of tricks in the unicycling culture. Maybe one of the reasons the Unicycling Society of America has so fewer members as compared to the International Jugglers’ Association is because in unicycling there are actual separate tricks called “pirouettes” and “360’s”, therefore unicyclists are unable to shed the negative connotations of a dance genre related word. Maybe I’m getting my Associations and Federations and Societies all mixed up here.

What I really wanted to talk about is something I find to be an extremely (Xtreme!) curious difference between American and European juggling cultures. I’ve noticed that in general, American jugglers tend to think in terms of patterns that repeat, usually on both sides, and Europeans have a more asymmetrical style. Maybe this doesn’t seem like such a big crisis but I know that in my own work it’s a constant battle. And I think its also super interesting that this trend continues quite strongly even today, as compared to when I started juggling about 20 years ago. Once I started looking, examples are all over the place.

Juggling Insanity and Unkown Juggling (I probably messed up the capitolizations there) are two websites that claim to generate never before seen juggling tricks. In both cases, for the most part and at least in the beginning, the videos showed patterns that were looped and were executed on ‘both sides.’ There is certainly nothing wrong with this but I know when I was starting out and tried to make up a trick it would always end up as a looped left/right hand pattern. When I started travelling overseas and meeting other jugglers I became slightly frustrated at my inability to make short sequences where each hand did a different thing for each throw.

I guess I’ve talked about this before, but this gets into the larger concept of American juggling vs. European style. I had the American thing down, if only because that’s where I was from. Since then I’ve had to very consciously study and develop my brain to work a bit in the European way, which to go further with the definition includes tons of starts and stops, lots of placements and carries, and rarely doing more than 3 or 4 throws of the same pattern. And to take this all a step further, I believe the future of juggling is combining these two styles, which turns out to be the European asymmetry but with throwing all the time. The only person I’ve seen doing this is Saku who just released the Juggledoll DVD. He’s been working in this way for some years now and its completely crazy.

I had the pleasure to perform in the same gala as Michael Moschen in Paris 5 years ago and I noticed he also still works in this American juggler style! Even though his work is based more on dance aesthetics, the way he composes a piece is totally like an American juggler. The patterns repeat, on each side, he does one trick and shows one concept with the objects and then moves on to the next. Pick nearly any of his pieces and its hard to find a ‘chorus’ that repeats in the choreography, or one hand doing something that the other doesn’t eventually copy. What sparked this essay most recently was watching Wes Peden’s trick of the day videos on YouTube. Actually it was specifically the Ringreen video where I noticed him inventing tricks and then either looping the pattern or at least doing the technique with both hands.

I was trying to think why this difference in cultures existed and only have a few guesses. First, perhaps the culture in Europe is more geared twords performing and in America its more of a hobby, or dare I say, sport. This could mean in Europe people are more concerned with whole routines rather than just individual tricks. They might then spend more time looking at the larger picture, putting only a tiny bit of one trick in as it helps the flow. American culture might focus more on each pattern as there is no need to worry about an audience getting bored quickly. One thing I know for sure growing up is that I was always taught to learn things on both sides. I got this advice from everyone I met. If you could start 5 clubs from your left hand, learn to start it from your right. This might be considered more of a sport mentality, since the best juggler could obviously do everything with both hands. Indeed, its this idea of practicing the ‘pure’ art of juggling technique untouched by performance concerns, that led me to focus on running patterns for X (yes, X, but in this case not Xtreme) amount of catches and repititions. Try to watch any IJA competition video with a vocal and snide Scandanavian juggler and the first thing you’ll hear about is how much the juggler is repeating patterns and being boring by doing too many catches (ok, maybe not the first thing, but it will come up eventually).

As a small footnote to all of this, a small twist in this concept occurred around 10 years ago, just as siteswap was really catching on in America. I remember Sean Gandini being really aggrevated by Adam Kariotis’ routine because Adam only threw some siteswaps out of one hand, and not both. Or to be more correct, he juggled 7445 instead of 744. I was the same and I think this was because some of the more common siteswap tricks were already quite well known in America before siteswap defined them in a different way. Take 534, I first knew this pattern as the way to juggle 4 clubs and then do a chin roll with the same club back and forth all the time. 663 was actually just the pattern where you could fit a headroll in with a club while doing 5. I could venture a guess that Adam wasn’t doing 7445 as much as ‘juggling 5 balls, throwing one high, juggling 4 balls for a short time, and then going back into 5 ball juggling.’ But here was a case of Americans being criticized for not being equal with both hands.

10/14/2006
berlin masterclass added in december... the only public workshop i'm offering the rest of this year

10/14/2006
www.juggling.tv has been updated!!!! you can now buy all the dvd's online... just in time for christmas, or i mean halloween...

10/14/2006
Here are some excerpts from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand that seem relevant to my juggling (read this quick before I get sued for copyright infringement!!) -

"A house can have integrity, just like a person," said Roark, "and just as seldom."

"In what way?"

"Well, look at it. Every piece of it is there because the house needs it - and for no other reason. You see it from here as it is inside. The rooms in which you'll live made the shape. The relation of masses was determined by the distribution of space within. The ornament was determined by the method of construction, an emphasis of the principle that makes it stand. You can see each stress, each support that meets it. Your own eyes go through a structural process when you look at the house, you can follow each step, you see it rise, you know what made it and why it stands. But you've seen buildings with columns that support nothing, with purposeless cornices, with pilasters, moldings, false arches, false windows. You've seen buildings that look as if they contain a single large hall, they have solid columns and single solid windows six floors high. But you enter and find six stories inside. Or buildings that contain a single hall, but with a facade cut up into floor lines, band courses, tiers of windows. Do you understand the difference? Your house is made by its own needs. Those others are made by the need to impress. The determining motive of your house is the house. The determining motive of the others is the audience."

"Mr. Janss, when you buy and automobile, you don't want it to have rose garlands about the windows, a lion on each fender and an angel sitting on the roof. Why don't you?"

"That would be silly," stated Mr. Janss.

"Why would it be silly? Now I think it would be beautiful. Besides, Louis the Fourteenth had a carriage like that and what was good enough for Louis is good enough for us. We shouldn't go in for rash innovations and we shouldn't break with tradition."

"Now you know damn well you don't believe anything of the sort!"

"I know I don't. But that's what you believe, isn't it? Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. Will you tell me why, when it comes to a building, you don't want it to look as if it had any sense or purpose, you want to choke it with trimmings, you want to sacrifice its purpose to its envelope - not knowing even why you want that kind of envelope? You want it to look like a hybrid beast produced by crossing the bastards of ten different species until you get a creature without guts, without heart or brain, a creature all pelt, tail, claws, and feathers? Why? You must tell me, because I've never been able to understand it."

"Well," said Mr. Janss, "I've never thought of it that way." He added, with great conviction: "But we want our building to have dignity, you know, and beauty, what they call real beauty."

"What who calls what beauty?"

"Well-l-l..."

"Tell me, Mr. Janss, do you really think that Greek columns and fruit baskets are beautiful on a modern, steel office building?"

"I don't know that I've ever thought anything about why a building was beautiful, one way or another," Mr. Janss confessed, "but I guess that's what the public wants."

"Why do you suppose they want it?"

"I don't know."

"Then why should you care what they want?"

"You've got to consider the public."

"Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given to them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgement?"

Peter Keating had never felt the need to formulate abstract convictions. But he had a working subsitute. "A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom" - this had always been his credo, unstated and unquestioned. This spared him any attempt to reach, reason, or see; and it case a nice reflection of scorn on those who made the attempt. So he was able to enjoy the work of Lois Cook. He felt uplifted by the knowledge of his own capacity to respond to the abstract, the profound, the ideal. Toohey had said: "That's just it, sound as sound, the poetry of words as words, style as a revolt against style. But only the finest spirit can appreciate it, Peter." Keating thought he could talk of this book to his friends, and if they did not understand he would know that he was superior to them. He would not need to explain that superiority - that's just it, "superiority as superiority" - automatically denied to those who asked for explanations. He loved the book.

"In this sense, you share things with others?"

"No. It's not sharing. When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal for each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience. I'm alone when I design a house, Gail, and you can never know the way in which I own it. But if you said your own 'Amen' to it - it's also yours. And I'm glad it's yours."

08/07/2006
hey! i'm doing a show this weekend with marcus and lana and in italics and its going to be the best!

07/27/2006
3-3-10*

Saying there has been a bit more talk about juggling lately is a bit understated. At least the conversations have been a little more high profile, or mainstream, than usual. America seems to be producing some buzz in the mass media, and of course on the internet even Anthony made a separate forum to talk about sport juggling (where’s the Carey Pickford Jr. Forum??). Seemingly lots of people have lots to say about “sport juggling,” and Chrisss Blisss, among other things. Perhaps it really boils down to a handful of 13 year old instants with a broadband connection.

However there does seem to be a loose connection between all the recent gossip- Xuggling (anyone know the media savvy way to write that properly? “X Juggling” sounds like you fill in the ‘X’ with other words like ‘cat’ or ‘Random’ or ‘What?!?’), Chrisss, Jason, Volga, etc. and that is there is one ‘right’ way to juggle. I know everyone will pretend to be open minded and encourage all kinds of jugglers to live in harmony around the world, that their event or point of view is just how they see things and what’s wrong with having more choices inside the community, we’re all getting along, blah blah. This politically correct rhetoric is perhaps true, but kind of the starting point for all the debate and different events going on now is starting with an opinion on what kind and how juggling should be promoted and accepted as ‘best’. Xuggling, unless I was confused reading their manifesto, was born partly out of trying to fix what they saw as flaws in the WJF system. The XWFJ.com takes that idea a step even further. Technique vs. creativity and the public’s perception of jugglers is highlighted by the Blisss Dis thing. But you know all the rest.

Anyway, this got me thinking about where I stand in this whole slightly boring mess. I started trying to pin down what I thought counted as the ‘best’ juggling, which naturally lead me to have to define what I thought was juggling in the first place, always a fun game to waste a few hundreds hours on. The result was presented as a short workshop at the RIT and EJC festivals this year. The ideas in the workshop are certainly not new and really not my own since Denis Paumier already laid everything out so nicely in his “Layers” system for juggling. But for some reason everything worked out in threes which I’ll get back to soon. For me, juggling concerns 3 main areas- the objects, the body, and rhythm. Inside each of these areas are three more points. Objects include the relationship of the objects to each other, the relationship of the objects to the body, and the relationship of the objects to the environment. The body includes the relationship of the body to itself, the relationship of the body to objects, and the relationship of the body to the environment. Rhythm breaks down to short dwell time, long dwell time, and suspension, or no dwell time such as in balances, rolls, unstable placements, etc. I guess if juggling covers and includes each of these 9 elements, then I think its ‘better’ than other juggling. Or at least more fun for me to try to do. You can do whatever you want that makes you happy of course (you might even get a medal or be on tv!!!!!!!!!!)!

Cirkus Cirkor asked me to write a juggling curriculum for a 3 year professional education in juggling as part of a contemporary circus school. I took the task slightly seriously and did my best to make some sort of codified system. All things considered, I have serious doubts about juggling being taught in a school in the first place, let alone trying to write down a formal process for such an education. I decided upon a conceptual plan which called for learning technique the first year, learning composition the second year, and creating a final piece the third year. Another way to look at it is the first year you learn words and tools to say and make things, the second year you experiment and learn how to say all different kinds of things, and the third year you finally make a statement and say whatever it is why you are in the school or wanting to be an artist in the first place. This fit the basic structure already existing in the school which tried to prepare the students for the professional environment upon graduation. The reason I bring this up is because while thinking of all the different arguments about juggling lately, it’s the third year of the Cirkor program, or the content, that no one seems to have said much about. Indeed, it’s the content that is certainly the most difficult to deal with from using juggling as an art form.

For example, Jason comes close to talking about it when he said the public doesn’t really like Chrisss’sss juggling, they just like the song. And for me, I enjoyed the Blissss Dis, but I was so sad to not see what Jason really thought. I mean, Jason made a video making fun of Chrisss and took the same form Chrissss did. Jason didn’t say “Hey, this idiot can’t juggle very well, here, watch this video of what I think is a better way to compose juggling to music.” Its sad that the best juggling I have ever seen Jason do was held back because he didn’t say anything personal. Sure his point was basically to have more technique or at least to say lots of people are better jugglers than what the public was reacting to. Still, what does Jason really honestly no joking think is good juggling? You would think I wouldn’t have to ask this question, that its obvious and redundant. But when you start having uniforms to make an event look more professional and then giving points for hitting tricks on the music (or even having music), at what point do you sit down and say “Wow! I was just thinking maybe… and I know this sounds crazy, but what if… the uniform and the music, kind of, I don’t know, matched or something?!? And actually, it was so cool when Thomas did that 7 ball pirouette and then smiled at the crowd like he didn’t even care, we could give points for smiling after cool tricks!!!”

With every new creation I have recently realized there are 2 main areas which break down into 3 total areas with juggling. How you say something, meaning usually with juggling what object (and how many) and what technique is going to be used with the second area, what it is you want to talk about. It always annoys me endlessly that a rock band can get up on stage and with the same exact techniques and props, entertain a screaming crowd for hours. If 3 balls were your instrument, how long would you last up there? Jerome Thomas made an hour long show with 3 balls which you can just about fast forward through on video at the CNAC library if you’ve watched all the Russian tapes arleady. But I digress.

What I wanted to tell you is about some great shows I have seen recently which really deal with content. Saku Mannisto’s “Casio 6- You Can’t Make a Lion Out of a Butterfly” perfectly uses juggling technique to talk about some poems he likes (that’s putting it mildly in both regards, his juggling and the poems are nothing you can imagine, for real!). Luke Wilson basically literally tells you exactly what his show is about in the opening speech of “Flawed 2”, but its still fun I think to see him then play it all out over the next half hour. Damaged Goods dance company from Belgium and Montreal gave the best dance performance I have ever seen in my life, no doubt, and they didn’t have a single piece of dance technique for 2 and a half hours, it was all pure pedestrian movement and yet they had things to say to the audience so you couldn’t look away. They sat on chairs without moving for 20 minutes at the start. I didn’t leave, it was really great!

And finally I wanted to talk about the content of my most recent show, not because it does a good job of talking about its ideas, or that it was a great show, but because the content was really fun to work with. “Burning the Candle at Both Ends” deals with ideas from Ivar heckscher. Ivar is a great philosopher and had a lot of thoughts concerning the nature of objects, and nature itself. He talked at length of ideas being immediate, in the moment, tying the performance specifically no only to the time of day and year as well as place, but also to the unique personal demographic of the current audience. He suggested relating to objects in the first or second person so you are always present and included in the conversation, the conversation being two sided and not simply manipulation or imposing your will on an object. Objects in nature having a thin line between being alive and inanimate, the nacken from Swedish folklore, and a painting by Ernst Josephson all made it into the show somehow. Certainly it was a show that used juggling as the main technique to explore these ideas and we most certainly did some pirouettes (I think Peter did 360’s…) and backcrosses but the show was not about these tricks (Peter and his ‘moves’). We used them as a tool to talk for Ivar. There’s nothing wrong at all with ejoying juggling technique as an end in itself. If fact, Jon Held would say it’s the only way. But is it really possible to completely separate delivery from content? My waist is size 34, shirt size 14, shoes 49 European, I’d like the shorts to be gold and blue, the shirt transparent, and you spell the name on the back G-I-L-L-I-G-A-N. See you next week!

*-sorry, just had to point out that all the instants will just think this title is an invalid site swap, while the rest of us old people will certainly recognize the universal greeting…

07/19/2006
i woke up really tired the other day. then i made a list of everything so far this year-

-snakewater with matias
-finished loft with 7 fingers
-added erik to nouveaux nouveaux remix
-filmed the new club passing dvd
-KUKA ball routine with manu
-filmed KUKA ball dvd
-added viktor into fighting machines
-shoebox tour with erik å. and marcus m.
-burning the candle at both ends w/peter & miku
-compile, organize, and write essays for 15 dvds
-mix-tape with quentin
-edit new sean mckinney dvd
-script and direct terminal 9 in italy

only 2 more new shows left to do this year, seems quite easy with a full 5 months left!!!

but overall i am most happy and excited to share 2 experiences i will never forget- first, i stumbled upon winning the Sean McKinney Freestyle Competition. i wasn´t going to even enter but then got in at the last minute. i have to admit i had not really considered the possibility of ever winning the competition even though i secretly really really wanted to at some point in my life. i am deeply honored and grateful to have this happy surprise with me now!

then, me and manu got to (had to??) open for kris kremo at ejc in ireland! what a crazy crazy idea! when i first heard this plan months ago i thought it sounded a bit strange but didn´t really think what was going to happen. however, last week when we were backstage next to kris, it certainly became clear. kris was warming up his act, which he has probably done for what... 30 years?? and then there was me and manu, in our blue jeans, mis-matching tennis shoes, t-shirts and little white bean bags. maybe we had a total of 30... hours of practice in our whole process. i guess it all worked out as i am still alive to sit here and type these words. but my hands almost start shaking again just to think about looking over and seeing the bouncing hats and spinning boxes...

07/12/2006
DVD order information:
Please contact www.juggling.tv for prices and shipping logistics! Juggling.tv is taking care of all the details with duplication and distribution. Happy viewing!

06/22/2006
Iceland update!

Mix-Tape, with Quentin Bancel, has gone extremely well here in Iceland. So far we have done shows at

1. location: rock festival stage
audience: thousands
2. location: (mostly) empty sheep barn
audience: 20
3. location: tent
audience: 250
4. location: garage
audience: 50

We even managed to get our own full sized tour bus to go to the sheep barn (seriously)! In addition to the France dates, we are trying to play the show in Finland and Germany. Keep your eyes open for new dates as soon as we can clear the cows out...

06/06/2006
Time for an update: sorry this is just going to be some more house cleaning details for now. But once I get this all out of the way maybe I can post some more interesting things soon I hope.

The shoebox tour was perhaps one of the best things I have ever been involved with! So many nice people from so many places came out to the shows and said hello! Each show was notably different, if I had to sum it up I’d say:

Minneapolis- guest stars! Katie rose came and danced with me during my set and then Marshall, Andy, and Maurine played music for us to jam.

Madison- I got engaged! At the end of the show I asked my girlfriend, Miku, to marry me, and on her birthday no less. It was her first time to America. She said yes!

Indianapolis- In Italics! Lana (the sister of Marshall from the Minneapolis show band fame) was on stage with us but didn’t juggle once, instead she held down the groove with Rob, Tricia, and Tracey. I can’t believe they were so nice to come and play with us!

Arcadia- road trip! Brian brought a car full of nice people from Eastern Ohio, people came from Michigan, Southern Ohio, oh and did I mention Rochester?!?!? It was really nice meeting everyone after the show. I was so impressed and grateful that people came so far to see our show! Much respect!

Pittsburgh- improv! We ended the tour with a half hour improv. We were all a little bit too tired for my taste but the audience was more generous than we deserved and gave us the only standing ovation of the tour. What an amazing ending! Michael and his crew had everything in order, look for his rap on the documentary…

All in all, we did what we set out to do. Hopefully we can do it again next year and in more places. Plans are underway for an international Shoebox run. Email us if you want us to come your way and we’ll try to work it out. What all this means anyway is that we are in Boulder now editing the next Sean McKinney DVD! It will be out at the IJA festival this summer. Start mowing the neighbor’s lawn and washing some cars to get extra money so you can buy all your friends a copy- its going to be even better than the first one!!!

In other news, no rest for me after the tour, I’ve just completed a limited edition DVD single box set. The set includes 7 DVD singles of recent works ranging in length from 4 to 34 minutes long. Only 6 boxes were made, with 5 available to the general public. There should be more releases in this series and perhaps they will all be compiled and released commercially when I collect maybe 100 clips or so. Until then maybe someone will bootleg it on the internet or something. This box set is in no way related to the 15 DVD collection for sale at the EJC this year, or the 20 DVD edition coming out next year! As one new fiance pointed out, seems someone has gone mad with DVD fever. Perhaps these thoughts will help-

Bjork

Being a Bjork fan was slightly difficult there for a while in the late 90’s. Not that her music was suffering in quality, to the contrary- Homogenic was a billiant album that sounded very much like the future at the time. However, that CD was released in 1997 and it was 3 whole years before anything new from her came out. Even then it wasn’t the long awaited Domestica studio album we had been hearing rumors about. Selmasongs was ok as a soundtrack release but certainly did not fill the void as her next musical statement. One more year later we finally saw Vespertine (formerly known as Domestica), 4 years after her last proper full length release.

After Vespertine, things suddenly became much more exciting with the release of the Volumen DVD somewhere in there along with DVD singles from the new album (I know there were great Homogenic single box sets released in the late 90’s but it was 4 years there of the same basic material), all of a sudden- new CD! new DVD! new singles! And it didn’t stop. Bjork released DVD’s of her older television appearances, past concert tours, current live show, Volumen Plus, and the complete greatest hits music video collection. She also made all her previous solo albums with live recordings from the corresponding concert tours. And had a greatest hits box set and mainstream release. And put out Medulla. And Medulla related DVD’s. Books, Drawing Restraint 9, etc. etc. Basically, in my mind, she put in the time and energy to not only create new material but to document the past and share a depth to her work that was really hard to get access to before.

With that spirit in mind, I am proud to announce my very own DVD box set release! The first half of this set is called the Movement Based Object Manipulation Theater Collection. These discs represent the most accessible presentation of archived footage with full feature menus, essays examining the work, and bonus content. The second part of the content is called the Instant Composition Series-

Pearl Jam started capturing and selling their concert tours on CD in 2000. This has resulted in somewhere around 200 official bootleg recordings to date! Even if you were not at a specific show or are not a huge fan of their music, these CD’s are still a fascinating glimpse into their live concert experience with all the unexpected surprises (good and bad) included. My greatest enjoyment of Bjork’s live box is hearing the development of the same song over a period of performances.

Improvisation has been a large part of my work in recent years, with many changes to a piece happening onstage in front of an audience. The films in this series are straight (often single) shots from home video cameras, sometimes handheld, sometimes stopping before the show is even finished. The video and audio quality are sometimes great and at other times… improvised.

Much of the juggling material is the same from show to show, but I wanted to try and document how the work evolved. At the very least these shows all feature world class musicians, the best in their fields, and the soundtracks alone are worth watching for. The packaging is streamlined with no extra baggage. No chapter selection menu, but you can still use your fast forward and chapter skip button to easily find the small surprises in each show. And you don’t have to offer up copied computer programs to Ben Jennings or wait 45 minutes for a download on the internet that quits half way through to get one of these performances.

The Movement Based Object Manipulation Theater Collection and the Instant Composition Series are capped off with a one time only, double bonus DVD featuring the best and worst of live performances with two different original shows.

The DVD singles project started maybe 5 years ago. I was really jealous of all my musician friends having ‘product’ to sell after their shows. Not because of making more money, I just always enjoyed having a memory or souvenir of the event whenever I went to a music concert. Jugglers didn’t really get to share in that experience no matter how many t-shirts, stickers, or signed 8x10’s you didn’t sell.

I also started to see many related ideas branching out and manifesting in different ways with my work. This was just after the remix culture craze had sort of died down in popular music a few years ago. CD singles which included the original song or idea, and then remixes expanding or breaking that idea, seemed like a perfect parallel for a product to offer up at a juggling show. While this first DVD single box set is missing any B-sides, it loosely follows the formula of one of my favorite CD singles box set- The Aeroplane Flies High by The Smashing Pumpkins. The CD’s here range from 4 or 5 short songs on the first to a half hour medley on the last record.

Another cultural influence I have tried to promote here is one thing that I think makes collecting music more fun- small releases. I much more prefer my first pressing of Skittish and tour copy of Rockity Roll by Mike Doughty over the double ATO release. And how many times have you gone to the Four Tet website only to find out you were too late for the live concert album download? I’ll be the first to clarify that I am in no way comparing my content to the likes of Four Tet or Billy Corgan. But the hunt for rare music is really fun and helps spread this underground culture around the world while promoting a more grass-roots oriented movement focused on community and communication, as well as real world involvement. Almost better perhaps than a widely available commercial release which you can download in the isolation of your own universe . I wonder what would happen if Anthony would only put out 10 copies of his Gatto Entertainment series at a time? I’d be the first logged in on the message boards to track them down from the lucky chosen ones! With that in mind, please stay tuned for Luke’s Random Luck DVD selection forum coming soon…

And if you’ve read this far, I want to get one final thing off my chest. It occurred to me last week that I’ve entered a new phase of my career. There’s been many, starting off with (as I think most people do) “I am going to try and please the audience”, moving on with “I am going to try and make myself happy with my show so at least one person is happy”, then “I am going to do things on stage that would make a good story to tell my friends afterwards”, more recently “I am going to try and make a show I would like to watch.”

The new one might be “I am going to do things I wish Michael Moschen would do.” And again, let me say I know I am not Michael Moschen nor do I think my work is anywhere near the universe and scope in which he operates. However, if he released 42 dvd’s in 2 years, and shared his motivations for performing on his website, I couldn’t be more happy!!! It’s a little bit like what Jason Garfield is trying to do in the way of creating a culture that doesn’t really exist yet…

05/18/2006
pittsburgh date change for shoebox, also marcus monroe cast change. this is already shaping up as being true to form for shoebox philosophy and we haven't even started yet!!! you don't want to miss this one folks...

05/04/2006
got some real times and places for shoebox tour 2006 up...

04/20/2006
maybe there is a new essay coming soon to this website. There are a lot of things kicking around inside my head I want to write about, just have to find the time. But I need to update everyone about what has been happening. Did a new pain project in NYC with marcus monroe!! It was great, and more importantly we found an ending to the act. It involved lots of tape along with some pizza, drum sticks, small socks, a lemon, and sean blue taped to lana bolin. Good times were had by all. Chris chiapinni. 2 new t-shirts are being made right now. The shoebox tour 2006 shirts as well as instant juggler shirts! The shoebox ones are reversible! Its like 2 shirts in one. Plus they are historically accurate. Hard to describe until you see them. Email if you want me to set one aside for you. Norbi? It looks like mix-tape with quentin bancel will be in iceland as well as france this summer. And there is a yet untitled project coming in july in sweden directed by ivar. New KUKA ball routine, and all the dvd’s are being copied as we speak. Look for the box set at EJC. For real!

03/17/2006
please check out www.marcusmonroe.com, i am a big fan of his work!!! he was in the flying wallendas family 2005, and luke also thinks he rocks...

03/11/2006
me and mat did some filming around berlin for snakewater. one of the places we shot was the hugo boss store down the street from the chamaleon. they had this huge christmas display which featured a mirror disco ball that was about 6 feet tall! there is a song in the loft show called ‘shiny disco ball’ so mat cut that over top of footage of me running into the store with 3 clubs and juggling in the window display. when I first got inside the store I was all excited and juggling really fast since I thought I would get kicked out soon. after a while no one came and I was quite bored, much less dramatic than we expected. however, the day after I saw a security guard at the entrance. I don’t know if they somehow ended up knowing we were in there, but the security guard has been at the front of the store every day since then. I took the final edit, burned a dvd, and gave it to the guard today. the dvd menu has a picture of me and mat and you have to click on the phrase “your security guard sucks” to see the video.

03/11/2006
Go to www.checkerhead.com and see the new OMWD, featuring… me! Dave and I did a show years ago called The Instigators which was tons of fun. Dave does really well on this new video, considering my bad technique and description…

02/21/2006
We just finished the first period of filming for the new club passing DVD we are making. I would like to thank Florian, Florian, Jochen, Jochen, Jorg, Manu, and Miku for their talents, patience, and hard work! The DVD should be out, along with 7 others, at EJC in Ireland this year.

02/21/2006
The WJF website says "Vova Galchenko, arguably the world’s best club juggler, continues to lead the pack in the WJF club division." Therefore, I would like to congradulate my good friend, LUKE WILSON, for automatically becoming the best club juggler in the world!!! At the IJA festival this past summer Luke took first place in the club juggling competition and Vova took second place. I guess that makes Luke better than Vova, and it seems to even be a concrete fact since first is before second place. Way to go Luke! And now we can all get back to writing random things on websites and pretending that Anthony Gatto doesn't exist...

02/08/2006
Terminal 9
I am directing another show in Torino, right after the Olympics are finished. Its a comedy set in an airport and uses students from the same circus school where I directed Northern Star the past 2 years. Their new website is really nice- http://www.scuoladicirko.it/

02/08/2006
For immediate release:

The Shoebox Tour 2006

From one of the most famous theaters in the capitol city of Germany, to simply small and obscure venues across mid-west America- Jay Gilligan, with very special guest Erik Aberg of Sweden (www.objectepisodes.com), presents a program of modern juggling unlike anything ever seen before in North America. The Shoebox tour, inspired by Mike Doughty’s own self-proclaimed “Small Rock” concerts (www.mikedoughty.com), showcases bleeding edge modern juggling compositions in bare bones conditions. No distractions, no excuses, no hype- just raw performances from two artists totally committed to their life’s work. As the former skateboarding front man of China’s favorite punk band “Aztectwostep”, Erik wholeheartedly represents Scandanavia’s recent domination of the experimental underground juggling scene.
Email question@buildingweight.com for exact dates, times, and venues…
The Shoebox tour, coming to a city near you the last week of May, 2006-
Minneapolis
Madison
Indianapolis
Ohio (I know Ohio is not a city but the town is too small for you to easily know where it is…)
Pittsburgh (??? unconfirmed)
Philadelphia (??? unconfirmed)

01/05/2006
Don't miss your last chance to see REAL new circus in Finland (as opposed to a bunch of ideas from 10 years ago that are presented under the pretense of being new since they are sponsored by government grants, except the only new thing is that the performers get paid this time instead of starving like 10 years ago...). Sorin Sirkus is playing their final performances of their 20th anniversary show in Tampere this weekend (and the show actually has NEW ideas in it)- www.sorinsirkus.fi

01/05/2006
"Loft" update- Sunday is my last show in January. I added 7 balls in the show and sometimes it even works. We've had 8 dropless shows in 4 months! Doesn't sound like much, but makes me proud...

12/29/2005
Ok, I have to admit, I’m a Gatto junkie. I download all his videos and buy all his dvd’s. He’s a super genius. And that is the root of the problem. I’m being absurdley hypocritical here because I normally hate people telling Anthony what to do. Or how to do it. Or when, or where (Las Vegas, December, free convention registration, etc. etc.). But let’s consider an analogy where instead of a juggler, Anthony is a doctor. And he is regularly posting on his website recipes on how to make cures for diseases. He is so good, so much beyond normal human abilities with juggling, that as a doctor he could basically perform any miracle he wants to. However, instead of looking around at the problems and challenges of the medical world at large, and ignoring the other advances in the medical field by his contemporaries, he is just randomly curing diseases that happen to pop into his head. Hey do you have Alzheimer’s disease? Then check out this 4 club high/low shower! Instead of learning about site swap and doing the craziest site swap ever performed not by a computer on this planet, or more to the point instead of watching In Motion with Michael Moschen and seeing Michael’s triangle act, Anthony is posting videos on his website of bouncing 5 super pinkys off the wall of a raquet ball court (ok, I know, I know, its alongside videos of 7 club pirouettes. And bouncing rings off the walls too. And anyway for sure I enjoy seeing the world’s best juggler ever have a little fun now and then). Almost like instead of finding the cure for cancer, he can give you the magical formula to repair your borken fingernail. That being said, I like not having to figure out how it would look like to fix my own fingernail. Or maybe if instead of a juggling doctor, he was all good at writing analogies…

12/27/2005
snakewater program notes in english:

Technique is nothing without something to say. These words we are writing have no meaning if all they talk about is how to write words. Fingers striking keys on a computer, the up and down motion of the button, sending electrical impulses to form little collections of dots on the screen in the shape of letters- all this tells you nothing about what we want to say. The craft of turning a physical action such as moving a finger into words on a page that you can read has nothing to do with the art of expressing something of value, something you cannot find anywhere (or anytime) else in the world.

Also, to show that we can type these words really fast, or really small, or different colors does not help to convey our message. Your computer can probably do tricks our’s cannot. Alternatively, the craft of language, being written by the arrangement of dots in the shapes of letters, letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, also fails to meet our needs. Of course the more words you know of a language, the better your chance is of expressing yourself successfully. However, using eloquent language for the sake of it, gratuitious technique just because you can, does not talk about anything more than the craft of speaking. The content is still missing.

It is in the editing and selecting of the correct techniques that will result in the unique arrangement of the letters on this page (in this show), which will give you an experience you have not had before, an experience that will move you; that will make you stop and think, not only about how we said it but what we said. We cannot tell you on paper what our show is about. The techniques we had to use to write our message were movement, time, and humanity. These tools’ capabilities were beyond our currently available technique to comminicate our thoughts by simply hitting a few keystrokes.

12/12/2005
i just went and checked out www.bestjuggler.com and in that same spirit, i would like to announce that i am currently booking dates for 2008...

12/10/2005
Practice Makes


It must have been around 1992, I was using renegade numbers clubs. I was trying to get the pattern for 6 clubs solid and also threw 7 enough to get it on video and say I did it once. I think I have 21 or 23 catches of 7 on tape somewhere. Then in 2002, I was juggling with Lana Bolin in Edina, Minnesota. One night I decided to put 7 up just for fun. I don’ think I had tried it for 10 years and only thought to do it because Lana asked if I could. The first run was 14 clean catches. That year I had only been working on 6 clubs and was so amazed and surprised at how easy 7 seemed that first run. Of course I couldn’t do 7 again after that to save my life, not even a flash. 7 clubs is one of my dream tricks I always wanted to do, along with 5 clubs while bouncing a ball on my head. For some reason those 2 pieces of technique really look good enough to me to put in all that work. Still, after my first lucky run in 2002, my 7 clubs was completely hopeless. This past year I have tried to work on my pattern as I’m not getting any younger, or more to the point, finding more free time in my schedule to practice more as the years go on (all you circus school students who are reading this, stop now and go to the training hall this instant to practice while you still can). After banging my head against a wall for over a year, and seeing matias perform 7 clubs in our show each night, I decided to change my grip on the 4 club release hand. Normally changing a grip this late in the game is a sure slow death with the result being that both the old and new grip fail to work reliably at all. However, its now been one month and finally today it only took me 5 and a half minutes to flash 7 clubs 10 times. This is relative to the 35 minutes using the old grip when I started training the trick again one month ago. All of the technique exercises with less clubs and cross training with 7 balls and rings seems to have paid off. But the reason I wanted to write about this is the biggest improvement I have found recently which is simply my mental attitude. When I watch matias train, I see he has 6 or 7 years of confidence built up that he can easily do the flash. Now he is working on running the pattern (which he also does ridiculously well). His start is so confindent that its not even a question to get the first 7 catches, he is more worried about catches starting around number 30 or so. I have a bad habit of enjoying a process more than the end result and surely this applies to my 7 club flash. A long time ago at some festival a group of us were debating which tricks we would like to instantly be able to do. At the tme, after much thought, I said I wouldn’t want any magical super power tricks granted to me. I enjoyed practicing too much, and also the small rewards as the tricks finally start to take hold and work properly. Accomplishing a new trick is a very satisfying, concrete, and immediate experience. It’s a process where you absolutely get out of it what you put into it. These days I might not be so idealistic as to turn down instant 7 club juggling powers, but for a long time I was happy to just throw the clubs up in the air and catch them maybe once a day to feel good, like I was going somewhere. Except now, with my new grip, and the first small steps to finding my pattern, I start to remember what it was like learning 7 balls years and years ago. Sean Blue got a run of around 70 catches at a small juggling festival in Akron, Ohio, around 1992 or 93 (sean, email me if you remember this and know what year it was…). He stopped and said it felt so good to just hold the pattern up there, to feel that he could actually do the trick. And this is what I remember now with my own experience of learning 7 balls- after some time I knew how they would look in the air, and I could put them up there in that place without a doubt. I am starting to see glimpses of this with my 7 club pattern now and it’s a bit of a gift to have this same feeling of excitement and learning a good 15 years after throwing 7 balls in the air for some of the first times. This confidence that a trick can be done can also certainly be seen in the general juggling community. There are stories of the 197…? 79? IJA Festival where there were 3 jugglers present who could juggle 5 clubs for a few short runs. These days kids coming into the juggling scene look around and see lots of people throwing 7 clubs or 5 club backcrosses. Surely the exposure to these techniques at such a young practice age prepare the mental state of new jugglers to try tricks I never would have tried in my first year of juggling. I hope that soon I start to believe I can flash 7 clubs every time, and run it after that. Especially after seeing Anthony run it for one hour (I’m sure that video will be on his website soon)…

12/08/2005
i seriously wish i could make this stuff up:

Winter Circus "Snow" by Hurjaruuth Dance Theater-
When the frozen food emperor wants to make a luxurious frozen ham, he kidnaps the elves' christmas pig mascot. Christmas mother and the elf twins decide to go after the villain and save their beloved friend. The elves go through great danger, facing terrible creatures in the frost wasteland...

12/08/2005
i made it on to nina's website, so i thought i would return the favor and say hi to nina here, as well as sorry for not emailing sooner!!!

11/10/2005
government grants can't buy you good ideas

10/31/2005
me and mat got our script in hand for snakewater. here is the start of the show, if you want to see it live, get a friend and work it out:

Start of show, collect mobile phone numbers as people come into theater. Call 6-10 people progressively as start of show approaches. Tell them to stand on spots on floor. Need to label floor spots. Chair is also pre-set on stage. At start of show have director of theater bring out mic stand which is set low on arm. Gets chair from stage, sits down and reads text about show. Need to write show text. Stands up, puts chair back, but in wrong place. Walks away with mic stand. Music starts and jay comes out in place with blindfold and 3 clubs, starts to juggle. Mat comes from other side of stage and with great sound effects does dance through audience members. At end of dance, sits down on chair to soundtrack 5, 6, 7, 8 count. Same cue jay stops juggling does half turn and throws club. Mat misses chair, jay’s club goes over the head of mat. Jay drops to floor after throw to reveal the “catch”. Soundtrack gives signal like symbol crash for “catch”. Jay stand up and takes off blindfold and faces audience to reveal “catch”. At the same time mat takes off his blindfold and goes to get club. Jay sees mat leaving to get club and goes to move chair to the “right” spot. At same time jay moves chair mat throws club on time with the music in effort to “correct” mistake. Jay stands on chair to catch club but is hit with club before. Mat runs into group of people to begin the piece, jay picks up dropped club. Jay throws to mat through group of people and mat misses the catch. Mat goes to pick up club as jay takes position in people group. Mat recovers club and on music on beat one club passes very fast around people. Jay does one club rolling on soundtrack effects around people. Need to make intelligent map of floor to position people. Mat comes out from wing on soundtrack change juggling 5 clubs and goes through people. 3 clubs each around people at end of piece throw clubs away on 1, 2, 3 count in music. Mat walks to front with mobile phone and piece of paper from pre-show. Jay goes to get light. Mat dials phone number of audience member as walks off stage. Jay lights ringing phone in audience. Audience member tells audience members on stage to go sit down. Next part of show.

10/28/2005
new show info.


Snakewater
matias salmenaho + jay gilligan

What connects two seemingly random events? One phone call can change your life. 10,000 kilometers, 1000 millimeters, 10 years, Differences don’t matter. We spend hours a day juggling. Sometimes we absolutely hate it, but we can’t stop. Snakewater collects our thoughts about composing juggling technique using 4 hands (and tells you who we are).

Mika yhdistaa kaksi toisistaan riippumatonta asiaa? Yksi puhelinsoitto voi muuttaa elamasi.
10,000 kilometria, 1000 millimetria, 10 vuotta,
erilaisuudksilla ei ole sananvaltaa.
Aikaa kuluu tunteja paivittain yrittaessa pitaa ylla jongleerauskykya. Joskus sita vihaa sydamestaan mutta ei silti lopeta. Snakewater
Keraa ajatuksia jongleeraukstekniikoista neljalla kadella (kertoen samalla sen tekijoista).

10/22/2005
IKEA show and tour announced! plans are in the works to make a show using only IKEA products which will be toured to all the IKEA stores on earth (well, maybe just europe and north america). the best part is, if you are following along, we don't have to bring anything with us on tour- ITS ALREADY THERE IN THE STORE! mimes, eat your heart out!

10/22/2005
the fine folks at addicted to fun (me and matias salmenaho) who brought you 'MER', are making a new show as yet untitled to premiere at the circus ruska festival in tampere, finland, on jan. 14, 2006.

10/07/2005
Have you ever wished you could ask your favorite artist to make a piece just for you? Usually its not even a question of money, time, or resources- its simply not an option to pose the question. I’ve always wanted to see what my favorite musicians, jugglers, writers, or dancers could create around an idea that I was working on at the time. Since this has rarely been a plausible scenario, I would like to open up my creation period for the next half year and accept proposals for commissions. If you have an idea you would like me to work with, please email the details plus the way in which you might like the new work presented (video, live performance, written script, etc.) and/or explored (rings, balls, clubs, everyday objects, etc.)- question@buildingweight.com

09/13/2005
Luke Wilson, Matias Salmenaho, and myself performed the Pain Project last night at the Chamaleon Theatre in Berlin in the midnight cabaret. I did my balloon and feathers piece with the original spoken word text written for MER. We also performed Denis Paumier's site swap trio with 441, 4413, and 44133 along with his little known site swap duet titled "summer siteswap". Then Luke performed his legendary "Failing" piece. Overall I think it was quite painful for all the German Variety artists to watch...

09/13/2005
last year i did the winter circus in finland. here is an email i got from a performer i directed in TOKYO, who is doing the winter circus this year:


I just started the rehearsals with Hurjaruuth today: well, it was kind of good for us to know what we can expect from the future. We came late with XXXXX of course, because of the boat and stuff.. When we entered the rehearsal place, I just put my bag on the floor, not watching the stage. Then, I heard "Welcome to Finland!"; I looked up and I saw 1 frog, 2 squirrels, 1 rabbit and one snow ball.
That was my first contact with the team.
In the afternoon, we worked on the rabbit theme: we were doing some rabbit jumps, rabbit tricks and rabbit pyramids. Then, we were asked to find (seriously) our "inner rabbit".

09/06/2005
robert skoro has a new cd out!!! go to www.yeproc.com and also check out the cd release show this friday in minneapolis. being as i am super special i of course already have a copy of the cd and it is simply amazing. some of the tracks you have already heard live at our shows. pick up a copy for yourself and someone you love...

08/11/2005
tonight and tomorrow only- the fighting machines of north hollywood do-it-yourself home box set giveaway!!!! come see our performances and perhaps walk away with your very own home version of our show! comes with everything you need to be a fighting machine including peter, frida, and jay action figures, mini-sticks, and extra small juggling balls. each box set signed and numbered limited edition (of 2). www.suborb.se

08/07/2005
catch me with the fingers sept. 7 to jan. 8-

www.chamaeleonberlin.de

08/07/2005
Pain Project 2005- IJA setlist:
as performed by Luke Wilson, Lana Bolin, and Jay Gilligan

improvisation around the following points-
1. electronic toy guitar and eating a banana
2. inflatable plastic bubble juggling with audience volunteer on guitar (Mark Hayward)
3. Denis Paumier 441, 4413, 44133 180 count site swap trio
4. WJF parody sketch, with Luke as the voice of Ben Jennings
5. Luke club flip piece
6. reading aloud the Harry Potter book 6 spoiler
7. Denis Paumier 4 club each trio improv spin fountains with new ipod soundtrack

08/07/2005
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT- 2005, just around this time of the year marks my 10th year as a professional performing artist!!!!!! i graduated high school in 1995 and have been performing professionally ever since. this is certainly not to say that i have never needed help to get by or that it has been an easy and instantly successful path. i could not be here today celebrating 10 years of shows without my biggest supporters- MY PARENTS! so, thank you mom and dad- from all the paid credit card and phone bills, to shipping my equipment all over the world, and giving me a touring van... I LOVE YOU! also to all my friends and anyone who has ever come to see my shows, your enthusiasm keeps me going and makes it really hard to quit when things get rough and start working at mcdonald's!

07/28/2005
sorry i have been away so long. some crazy news to report! the flying wallendas family survived another rough year at the IJA festival without their trapeze rigging. this year we had 10 people take the stage under the stolen name:
me
lana bolin
marcus monroe
steven ragatz
matt hall
luke wilson
sam nebenhaus
will oltman
tony gonzalez
michael karas
also then tonight at st. supluice in montreal, addicted to fun made a new performance. along the same lines of MER from last year, addicted to fun took the opposite route and instead of having "more" (the meaning of "mer" in sweden), we used much less. the crowd seemed confused as did the other performers backstage. well, this is new circus, what are you going to do??

07/12/2005
if you are in philly or minneapolis you can go see:
www.thecandidatos.com
and if you are in montreal you can come and eat BBQ with us since seb is the greatest person ever...

07/08/2005
i have 7 new bosses now. one of them said last night, "when you are happy, then i am happy." that's what i've been trying to talk about all these years...

07/05/2005
The Flying Wallendas Family has another show this year! We play at the public show of the IJA festival. I wrote an 8 part script and here it is (except for part 'J1' since that's inside my head and not written down)-

The Flying Wallendas Family IJA 2005 Script


Each beat of the music is written out below. Following each beat of music is a symbol-
‘#’ means throw on that beat,
‘*’ means walk on that beat,
‘@’ means catch all props and stop juggling on that beat.

All patterns are in cascade unless otherwise noted. When there are two beats in a row with the ‘#’ throw symbol, you will catch the first throw at the same time you throw the second throw. This just means you are juggling on beat and the beat is in your hand, not in the peak of the ball. So when you have not been juggling and you throw on beat 1 of a phrase, you are obviously not marking the beat in your hand as there is only a ball leaving your hand and not one coming down since it is the first ball to start the pattern.

Then, just to make things more fun, the ‘*’ symbol for the step means the foot lands on that beat. It does not move on that beat but instead hits the floor on that beat. So for example if after the first 1 in a phrase of 8 counts, I have to step on count 1 and I have not been stepping before that, I have to move my foot on the music count ‘and’, which is a half beat before count 1, so that my foot can hit the floor on the actual count 1. this means that if you move your foot on count one, it will be late when it comes down.

I have made this difference between feet and hands because it was the most natural way to move with the music. Don’t stress out about it and do your best and breathe and have fun!

The ‘@’ symbol means that you do not throw on that beat, only catch on that beat. This means that if I want to juggle inside of 8 counts of music, I only do 7 throws so that the last catch is the last beat. Obviously if I would do 8 throws then I would catch the last ball on the 1 of the next phrase of 8.

Nothing after a number in the beats below means that you do… nothing.

The starting formation on the stage for the piece shall be a straight line with the performers facing the audience and running stage right and left. We will be lined up in order of height and not in order according to our part in the script. This means people who have the same part in the script will be spread out around the stage so you can’t rely on your friend to tell you what comes next! At the start of the piece we all take steps to get into the line. This is simply accomplished in rehearsals by first forming the line, then looking at your part of the script to see how many steps you have to take at the start. Then you take that many number of steps out of line in a random direction. In this way we can all be randomly placed on stage and over the course of the first 8 counts of 8 we can come into an orderly line ON BEAT.

Time has been built into the script for you to change props when needed.


Cast member I.D. tag ‘J2’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

3
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

4
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8#- high throw

6throw from 8 still in air
2throw from 8 still in air
3throw from 8 still in air
4@
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7# box all throws still on beat, one box side for each beat
8# box

6# box
2# box
3# box
4# box
5# box
6# box
7# box
8# box

7# box
2# box
3# box
4# box
5# box
6# box
7# box
8@

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

2#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

3#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

4#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

5#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

6#
2#
3@
4
5
6
7
8

7#
2#
3@
4
5
6
7
8

8#
2@
3
4
5#
6@
7
8

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5hold ball between head for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1put one club down so you only have 3
2get into position for start
3
4
5
6
7
8

2#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

3
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

4
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8#- high throw

6throw from 8 still in air
2throw from 8 still in air
3throw from 8 still in air
4@
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!


Cast member I.D. tag ‘La1’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

4
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8#- high throw

6throw from 8 still in air
2throw from 8 still in air
3throw from 8 still in air
4@
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5# reverse cascade on beat still
2# reverse cascade
3# reverse cascade
4# reverse cascade
5# reverse cascade
6@
7*
8*

6*
2*
3*
4*
5# reverse cascade
6# reverse cascade
7# reverse cascade
8# reverse cascade

7# reverse cascade
2# reverse cascade
3# reverse cascade
4# reverse cascade
5# reverse cascade
6# reverse cascade
7# reverse cascade
8@

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1
2#
3#
4#
5#
6@
7
8

2
2#
3#
4#
5#
6@
7
8

3
2#
3#
4#
5#
6@
7
8

4#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

5#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

6
2
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

7
2
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

8
2#
3@
4
5
6#
7@
8

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7hold ball between heads for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1put down one club so you only have 3
2get into position for start
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

4
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8#- high throw

6throw from 8 still in air
2throw from 8 still in air
3throw from 8 still in air
4@
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!


Cast member I.D. tag ‘La2’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5*
6*
7*
8*

4#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8#- high throw

6throw from 8 still in air
2throw from 8 still in air
3throw from 8 still in air
4@
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5# reverse cascade on beat still
2# reverse cascade
3# reverse cascade
4# reverse cascade
5# reverse cascade
6@
7*
8*

6*
2*
3*
4*
5# reverse cascade
6# reverse cascade
7# reverse cascade
8# reverse cascade

7# reverse cascade
2# reverse cascade
3# reverse cascade
4# reverse cascade
5# reverse cascade
6# reverse cascade
7# reverse cascade
8@

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1
2#
3#
4#
5#
6@
7
8

2
2#
3#
4#
5#
6@
7
8

3
2#
3#
4#
5#
6@
7
8

4#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

5#
2#
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

6
2
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

7
2
3#
4#
5@
6
7
8

8
2#
3@
4
5
6#
7@
8

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7hold ball between heads for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1put down one club so you have 3 in your hands
2get into position for start
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5*
6*
7*
8*

4#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8#- high throw

6throw from 8 still in air
2throw from 8 still in air
3throw from 8 still in air
4@
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!


Cast member I.D. tag ‘T1’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

5#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

6
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5# shower
2# shower
3# shower
4# shower
5# shower
6# shower
7# shower
8# shower

6# shower
2# shower
3# shower
4@
5*
6*
7*
8*

7*
2*
3# shower
4# shower
5# shower
6# shower
7# shower
8@

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1
2
3#
4#
5#
6#
7@
8

2
2
3#
4#
5#
6#
7@
8

3
2
3#
4#
5#
6#
7@
8

4
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

5@
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

6@
2
3
4
5#
6#
7@
8

7
2
3
4
5#
6#
7@
8

8
2
3#
4@
5
6
7#
8@

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1 hold ball between heads for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1put down one club so you have 3 in your hands
2get into position for start
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

5#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

6
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!


Cast member I.D. tag ‘T2’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5# shower
2# shower
3# shower
4# shower
5# shower
6# shower
7# shower
8# shower

6# shower
2# shower
3# shower
4@
5*
6*
7*
8*

7*
2*
3# shower
4# shower
5# shower
6# shower
7# shower
8@

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1
2
3#
4#
5#
6#
7@
8

2
2
3#
4#
5#
6#
7@
8

3
2
3#
4#
5#
6#
7@
8

4
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

5@
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

6@
2
3
4
5#
6#
7@
8

7
2
3
4
5#
6#
7@
8

8
2
3#
4@
5
6
7#
8@

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1 hold ball between heads for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1put down one club so you have 3 in your hands
2get into position for start
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!


Cast member I.D. tag ‘L1’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

7#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5# columns
2# columns
3# columns
4# columns
5# columns
6# columns
7# columns
8# columns

6# columns
2# columns
3# columns
4# columns
5# columns
6# columns
7# columns
8# columns

7# columns
2@
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1
2
3
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

2
2
3
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

3
2
3
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

4
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

5@
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

6@
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8#

7@
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8#

8@
2
3
4#
5@
6
7
8

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1 switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3hold balls between heads for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1put down one club so you have 3 in your hands
2get into position for start
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

7#*
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#
6#
7#
8@

8
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
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8

2
2
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3
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4
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7
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8
2
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8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
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8

3
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4
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5
2
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6
2
3
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6
7
8

7start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!


Cast member I.D. tag ‘L2’

First 8 counts of 8 (introduction section)
1*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

2*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

3*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

4*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

5*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

6*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

7*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

8#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

Second 8 counts of 8 (walking section)
1#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8#

2#* all the following steps can be improvised directions
2#*
3#*
4#*
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

3#
2#
3#
4#
5#*
6#*
7#*
8#*

4#
2#*
3#
4#*
5#
6#*
7#
8@*

5# columns
2# columns
3# columns
4# columns
5# columns
6# columns
7# columns
8# columns

6# columns
2# columns
3# columns
4# columns
5# columns
6# columns
7# columns
8# columns

7# columns
2@
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

8* these steps take you back to starting line up position
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

Third 8 counts of 8 (cascades section)
1
2
3
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

2
2
3
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

3
2
3
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

4
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

5@
2
3
4
5#
6#
7#
8#

6@
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8#

7@
2
3
4
5
6
7#
8#

8@
2
3
4#
5@
6
7
8

Fourth 8 counts of 8 (duet section) WE HAVE TO REHEARSE THIS IN IOWA TOGETHER
1 switch balls on ground for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3hold balls between heads for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
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8

4
2
3
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6
7
8

5placements for 2 8 counts
2
3
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5
6
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8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7switch balls in air for 2 8 counts
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Fifth 8 counts of 8
1 pick up 4 clubs and get ready to juggle double spin fountain
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
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5
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8

4
2
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8

5
2
3
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5
6
7
8

6juggle 4 clubs double spin fountain off sync until….
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7make last throw of 4 clubs
8@ catch last club

Sixth 8 counts of 8 (repeat of first 8 counts of 8 with clubs!)
1*put down one club so you have 3 in your hands
2*get into position for start
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

2*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

3*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

4*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

5*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

6*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

7*
2*
3*
4*
5*
6*
7*
8*

8#
2#
3#
4#
5#
6#
7#
8@

Seventh 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Eighth 8 counts of 8 (individual tricks X 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6you have 8 counts now to do one trick or phrase that you want
2you can use any props that you want
3you can pick up and put down the props
4before and after this 8 count phrase
5remember 8 counts is not actually very long
6running a pattern unless it is a high number is maybe not good
7a trick with a clear start and finish is better
8do whatever you want here and have super fun!!!

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Ninth 8 counts of 8 (everyone freestyle!!!)
1for this whole 8 counts of 8, everyone jams together
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tenth and final 8 counts of 8 (4 and 5 clubs)
1start juggling either 4 or 5 clubs, pick which one you
2will not drop, 5 club doubles, 4 club triples, triple
3singles, whatever. Just remember that you have
4a total of 4 counts of 8 to keep it going. So make
5it easy for you so you can be relaxed and not
6struggle, this is the end of the piece so it should
7be clean and nice picture for the audience to
8watch as we fill the stage with clubs!

2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

3
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

4
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

5
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

6
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

7
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

8
2
3
4
5
6
7last throw
8@

2 more 8 counts of 8 not in the script at all but in the song.
This is where we all go to the front of the stage and bow and then leave by the end of the song!

06/27/2005
here are some funny thoughts on how doing a show is like shopping. i wrote it for a friend but thought some other friends might like to read it. if you are my friend then feel free to proceed:



but when i came to finland then i was at the shopping mall and there were so many people there. it really reminded me of talks i used to have with john rauser about walking through crowds of people. but it also reminded me of talking to you in the van about making an act or show. remember how i was trying to describe that we all start from one point but maybe we do or do not know where we are going? and it was my opinion that it was better to know where you are trying to go from the start than from just wandering around randomly and try to get there. it was the whole straight line thing against the guessing game path. well, i don't know if you remember all that stuff. but basically i was saying its better to try and make a straight line between your start and the ending which of course would be the perfect performance. and maybe of course we don't know what the perfect performance is but still we try to guess so that we can do a better job than to just rely upon the blind chance of the french art gods. so, then, therefore, i was thinking about shopping...

let's say shopping is the show. the starting point is when you walk into the mall and the perfect show is then when you buy what you want. meaning, you have accomplished your goal for the day, you are perfect and the best then. so, just like with art, or circus or whatever, maybe when you walk into the mall you don't know exactly what you want to buy at the end of the day. to be the perfect shopper you don't have all the ideas yet exactly what to buy or to do to make your day perfect. so then we can look at this example in 2 different ways- the first is that you just go to the mall with no plan at all. just like trying to make a performance with no real idea of what you want to give the audience. sure, you can say you want to be happy and beautiful and all of those things that are matters of opinion. same for shopping. you can start by being very basic and just saying you want to go shopping and buy things. like saying you want to do a show and you want it to be good. not really saying much there. but, you go shopping anyways. so you start when you walk into the mall, you look around. maybe spend some time in different stores. maybe you find something in one store and buy it and you think you are doing well but then a little later on you didn't notice that another store around the corner had the exact same thing but on sale. or whatever. anyway, this shopping process is taking a lot of time and you may or may not have been doing so well by now. but the other thing to notice, as i did in the shopping mall the other day, is that when your energy is not going in one direction very strong, meaning you have not really decided where you are walking to, then with a big crowd you get bumped into alot!! you know that feeling when someone is walking twords you and you don't know if they go to the right or left, but you think you wait to see which way they go, but they are waiting for you, and then in the end you either hit, or have to stop and say excuse me?? well, this happens so much more when you don't know what you are shopping for than for when you have an idea in mind. you could look at people in the crowd bumping into you as signs of a bad performance- maybe a mistake in a trick or even more simply, a bad choreography which is what it is in real life.

then, we could go shopping with an idea in mind. just like we could start a show with an idea about what we want to give the audience. and just like with a show we don't have to know exactly what we want but just one idea to give us a direction. let's say we are looking for a new shirt. we don't have to know what color, or style, or price. but just to have the idea of a shirt in mind when we start is very valuable. already we save time in knowing what stores to go to now. we can skip the shoe stores, etc. then also we know a bit what size of shirt we usually wear so that helps to speed things up and limit the choices. and limiting the choices is exactly what making choreography is about. but that's another letter another day! anyway, so then we go to the mall, we know we want a shirt, we can even look at the map of the mall to see where stores might be that we could go to. so now when we are walkng through the crowds of people we have focus and direction and they don't hit us anymore. seriously. i've tried this alot. so then its better to know a bit about what you want to do at the start so then you can get there better and quicker. once again, all this is wth the idea in mind that i want to make the best show (shopping) that i can, in the fastest and most perfect way. or i mean the most straight line without wandering around.

which brings me to the game i used to play with john. next time you are on a crowded street. i mean lots of people! so maybe you have to settle for kringlan mall until you get back to sweden. but then what you do is think about your shoulders and you walk really fast through the crowd. mostly when we walk in public there are little signs and hints from the people around us that let us know which way they are walking. we don't even notice all of the things our eyes sees, but for the most part we don't walk into each other. of course there are those of us better at this than others and for sure you have at least one friend who is always bumping into people all the time. but the game goes like this-you approach a person and start to go to the right of them, but then turn your shoulders to the left. do this at the last second and usually they will, stop, slow down, or be very confused. it also feels so strange to do, like swinging your arms wrong when walking. but by playing this game you can start to change how people walk on the street around you! once you've practiced a bit you can really trip people up, just by turning your body, or eyes, or shoulders a little bit to the left or right!! its really weird. anyway, this is because you are playing with the energy and the straight line of intention of where you want to go. its not a very good example with shopping to a performance, but i still think that if you know more about where you want to go, you'll have a better chance of actually getting there!

06/26/2005
this is the best show description i have heard (apart from www.circusruska.com by matias). its from jeans, my old student:


Going to Roskilde soon to walk around in chest-high mud pits ( the
whole festival area that is ), getting drunk and to perform in the
perhaps lamest show I will ever be a part of. It is called, hold on
now, "cirUFObia", and is about a spaceship containing captain
silverspoon ( the guy who is behind it all ), his two second
commanders ( me and another guy ), two genetic freaks ( the twins )
and a big finish dude who's role I am not really sure of. The
spaceship ( which is a big tent that we have to carry around, the
spaceship has feets in other words ) lands on the festival area were
it is greeted by the king of Freedonia and some breackdancers, and
then everybody starts to do cirkus. But since this is new cirkus I do
not juggle, no, I posses the skill of "rapid air movement". Luckily I
only have to do my act in the beginning of the show before I am to
return to the safety of the spaceship and thereby staying out of
sight for the rest of the show. But ok, I get to see four tet and mew
and lots of other cool artist.

06/22/2005
Marketing Mirth #3:

"The Poster"

i am taken into the office to see a proof of the poster. this is after 3 weeks of solid discussions about what it should look like. i might add that already at this point i feel i have wasted 3 precious weeks of my life. when they show me the poster the conversation goes as such:

them: so, what do you think, do you like it?

me: well, do you want me to tell you what i think or do you want me to say that i like it?

them: no, no, just tell us the truth, we want to hear what you really think?

me: well, before i can understand the poster, what is the idea behind the image you are using?

them: what... what do you mean? the idea?

me: what are you trying to say in this picutre?

them: you know, its about... the show... and, um

me: in my mind there are 2 reasons to have a poster- the first is to tell the public about the show, the second is to make the public want to buy tickets to the show. so, what does this poster tell the public about the show?

them: well, you know, that's kind of up to you- its your show, you are the director so what does all this picture explain about the show?

me: since i said i want no human forms or circus images on the poster, and definately did not want a GIANT FACE on the poster, and this poster has all of those things, then i would have to say the poster has nothing at all to do with the show since you didn't listen to a single thing i tried to tell you for the past 3 weeks. and since it does not tell about the show, then can you at least tell me how this poster is going to sell tickets??

them: um, well.... um... maybe people will walk by the poster and see the big face and that will make them stop and look closer and when they come closer they can read that it is a show they can go see?.... ?

me: if the only reason you are going to have a poster is to get people to stop and read that there is a show happening then shouldn't the image be of NAKED PEOPLE ON FIRE HANDING OUT FREE MONEY?? i mean, at least that would be more effective to get people to stop and look closer if you are not going to relate it to anything about the show, don't you think?

them: well... uh... um... no way! we couldn't do that!

06/19/2005
oh yeah, and also i am moving to berlin to perform for 5 months with les 7 doigts de la main....

06/19/2005
in other news: IF YOU KNOW WHERE MY LAPTOP IS, PLEASE TELL ME!!!

06/19/2005
well, somebody stole my laptop last night here in iceland. if you know anyone in iceland call them and ask them to help find it please!!! on the computer were all my notes for teaching, new shows, my broadway show script, photos, and research for all my new and old productions! i have some of it backed up but of course the most recent work is now missing. if you have any ideas to help, please email:
itisalllove@hotmail.com

06/14/2005
i'm in iceland right now and have a new friend. her name is nina and a great unicycle student. thanks for trying to teach me how to say some local words!!

06/05/2005
Marketing Mirth #2:

marketing person: "all your ideas for the show in this interview sound really pretentious..."

me: "hmmm, there must be a communication problem, maybe its my english since i don't speak swedish. its strange because this show is actually highly accessible and light-hearted. there must be some misunderstanding. maybe the best idea is for you to come and see a run-through of the show, then you can get a better idea of what the show is about instead of just talking about it. we have a run-through tomorrow, would you like to come and see it?"

marketing person: "no, i'll just make something up."

05/30/2005
Marketing Mirth #1:

unfortunately there may be a few in this series of quotes from people in marketing. here is today's gem:

"we paid for the background photo by giving away 50 tickets to one show. that's much better than paying out real money. i mean, you're not going to sell out the shows are you??"

05/30/2005
Come see 3 of my students graduate. They are putting on a show June 9 & 11 in Stockholm. You can then stay and see TOKYO the same evening. Jens, Magnus, and Lena along with 3 other circus students (non-jugglers) complete their 3 year training. Find out if they learned anything...

05/30/2005
Iceland tour end of June with Quentin, Frida, Uuve, and Hampus!

05/29/2005
For those who are curious to learn more about TOKYO, here are my director’s notes from the program-

A note from the director, if you’re bored:
Most directors’ notes fall into a few easily defined categories. Some apologize for the show before you see it in case you don’t like it, others recognize the usual hard work that goes into a production. and then there are the directors who did not want to write something but were forced to somehow. These usually tend to be very self-referencing which I seem to have taken care of right away here. As you read the following thoughts please remember I am a director and not a writer! And if you don’t like the show, just remember I am a performer and not a director. Or, better yet, remember the words of our very own producer ida buren when she introduced me to the box office head of havfuren at the Copenhagen premiere- “this is jay. He teaches juggling at the school. Sometimes.”

The scientific explanation:
This p2 production started life as an unrelated group of isolated performance pieces formed in earlier projects. Their common viewpoint was in that they were all very different. The irony inherent in this situation, while not particularly ordinarily funny, certainly captures the essence of the research and creation process. Different points of view, on all levels, had to be considered to make everything fit. However, just as we started on the common ground that we have no common ground, not all the pieces of the puzzle have fit snuggly in place. Again, the irony resulting from this occurrence is that we were searching for reality, and in an effort to understand reality in a unique way we needed all the trails and troubles of real life. We wish to show you not what you expected to see. However, this is without the normal intention to amaze or dazzle your mind. Instead we want to show you things in our world more clearly and intricately. To define our world we had to construct rules. The rules needed reasons, therefore making our most important work to answer the question “why?” this question is obviously extremely subjective in nature and requires a certain flexibility of opinion. We found comfort in the word “maybe”, which reflected the different hidden possibilities. Problem solving became a giant game of cause and effect. We ended up looking at related situations from different points of view and thinking “maybe if we tried this another way…” bringing the project full circle.

The real deal:
But this is just a bunch of pretentious concepts on paper. The reality of the performance is much more fun and human! You may find the skills presented to be strange to your body and mind but the people behind them are no less rooted in everyday life. Just as a foreign city and culture, such as Tokyo (for example), may seem confusing and out of reach, to the people who live and grow up there the land is familiar and normal. This is the same with circus artists. Like bankers who go to work and crunch numbers, construction workers who cut metal, doctors that save lives, circus artists go to work and perform unimaginable feats of skill and daring. But this does not leave them without feeling, without everyday problems. The moments they are on stage in front of you sharing their lives should not be taken as mere displays meant to impress you. Traditional circus stops here, with the spectator confused as to who these people are and what exactly they do (and why!). the performers you see here have all been at a new circus school for the past 2 years. It is through their skills that they try to express something else, something special about themselves and about the world. It is the process of helping them to speak to you that I have tried to concern myself with.

05/29/2005
hello friends! Many many things happening lately and I’m happy to tell you all about them:

1. TOKYO, my new production in co-operation with cirkus cirkor piloterna program, opens june 2 in Stockholm. Performances are everyday until june 17 except the 4 and 10. this will be the one and only run the show will ever have so if you are interested come now!!!
2. THE FIGHTING MACHINES OF NORTH HOLLYWOOD has an august tour! If you are at all familiar with mike doughty (www.mikedoughty.com) you will recognize the theme of our new tour- “Small Juggling”.
3. Nouveaux Nouveaux Remix has its yearly showing this time in Stockholm in August (www.suborb.se). If you miss it this time, you’ll just have to wait like me until next year.
4. KUKA has a new DVD coming out as a co-production with passé passé (www.passepasse.com).

04/17/2005
now i go to italy for 2 weeks to put a new cast on Northern Star. also the auditions for cirkus cirkor are this week. good luck frida and peter- i hope you're good enough to get in... again.

04/12/2005
pasi showed up and reminded me of a fun game you can all play next time you are training. whenever you drop, especially if you are angry and frustrated, just think to yourself "oh good! i get to try again!"

04/08/2005
i was going to post next week my intent to finally get 100 5 club backcrosses by the end of april this year as a way to make myself finally do it. however, today i caught 103 and stopped clean. previously i had gotten 99 catches which wasn't quite fun enough. the goal of 100 came from conversations with peter davison of the pioneer art juggling troupe airjazz. i saw peter juggling sticks one day back in the mid-90's. i asked him if he ever juggled clubs anymore and he responded, "no, only pure forms." i also asked if he did 5 club backcrosses back in the day and he reflected, "i could do 100 catches standing on top of a tiny box. after i got to 100 i figured what is the point and decided that i didn't have to practice that anymore the rest of my life." maybe i should feel the same...

04/07/2005
les 7 doigts de la main is my favorite new circus company (yes, please please hire me now!!!), go check their new circus website out:
www.les7doigtsdelamain.com

04/07/2005
BIG NEWS!
1. The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood have a small showing this friday at orionteatren in stockholm. we go on at 10pm.
2. Jens Sigsgaard from denmark (and one of my students in sweden) is going to be performing his new solo show in beloit, wisconsin, usa on april 20 @ 8pm.
3. Nouveaux Nouveaux Remix has a tentative dvd release scheduled, along with 2 whole uncut performances of TONIGHT YOU ARE IN PITTSBURGH, and my collaboration with french dance film maker sara sponga and musician robert skoro (speaking of rob, cruise on over to www.robertskoro.com and sign up on his street team for his first ever solo north american tour!).
4. TOKYO, the new production i am directing at cirkuspiloterna in sweden, will premiere june 2 and run until june 17.

03/16/2005
i've been meaning to do this for ages but i finally remembered so i would like to say a huge THANK YOU to MARY WILKINS. Mary used to have a juggling video library system where jugglers could borrow tapes from a long list of acts she has compiled over the years. many of the tapes were of historical footage, but lots of contemporary jugglers were available as well. i'm not sure if she still runs the service. to me it was an invaluable tool that really helped and inspired me at a young age... and still today when i watch her tapes!

03/14/2005
After re-reading my last entry, I wanted to clarify and expand a few points. I do not mean to sound as if I despise the internet nor its influence on the juggling arts. It is an extremely valuable tool that is helping to shape and influence the next generation of juggling on every level. At the very least I can concede that no one could read these thoughts with such ease if they were not online. I personally approach juggling with a very defined set of expectations. This does not mean that what I enjoy about juggling is the only valid reason to juggle. However, it is important perhaps to understand the context in which the rest of this letter will be framed. I am interested in juggling as an art form. This also includes the “craft” side of juggling, but further expands beyond pure technique or casual interest. I can completely understand that not everyone believes in juggling in the same way and that is perfectly fine.

For example, I like to go bowling but I am not fascinated in bowling as an art. I don’t study lane construction, different types of lane waxes, ball finishes, throwing feet pattern steps, or whatever other detail I find trivial to my enjoyment of this activity. I like to throw the ball down the lane and try to knock the pins over. After that I am not so concerned with the finer points involved. Of course I brag to anyone who will listen when I get a good score and beat my friend Henna but that is just another way I pass my time bowling since I don’t particularly care about the rules, the famous practitioners, or the “art” (or culture) of bowling. Using this as a guide, if someone asks me if I am a bowler I usually laugh a little and say, “well I’m not a bowler although occasionally I bowl.” This is just a symptom of my own personal distinction between the art and craft of bowling. Certainly I participate in the craft but I wouldn’t go as far to say I am a bowler. And I’m not this serious in real life. I don’t go around measuring each moment I am in to make sure I don’t commit a faux pas, but in this specific instance I believe I would reply as noted, although that may have more to do with my self esteem as a bowler than with my integrity. This analogy is already stretched way too thin but I have to add that others may in fact still call me a bowler even though by my definitions and choices I do not consider myself one. I am ok with that. This just further demonstrates the subjective and communal nature of all this talk.

Since I do enjoy exploring the past, present, and future of juggling, then I try my best to progress my personal work as much as possible in line with the art. For sake of argument I have to take my personal definitions of what the “art” actually is as well as how I define “best progress” since everyone’s experience is personally biased. Before I explain how I try to do this, I have to say that I do not believe this makes me any better or worse than anyone else who thinks the same or differently. This is just my opinion, ideas that I toss around inside my head sometimes, and totally disregard other times.

The way I try to work is by fitting my juggling into a historical context. This is because it really helps me to have some sort of frame in which to work. I tend to work in a linear fashion (please see other articles on this website) and I am basically lost until I find the beginning or end and am able to fill in the gaps. I also found this system of working has other advantages I did not grasp until later. So much of other art forms depend on context. The whole “readymade” art movement was based upon the environment and trappings of the presentation. Duchamp took a toilet and put it in an art gallery, thereby calling it art. I dare to say that if Duchamp had not referenced and created his sculpture inside the context of art contemporary to his time, then we would not be talking about him still today. He recognized the established “system” and community his chosen field was built on. Even though he chose to reject many of the ideas popular at the time, he still had to be aware of the ideas before he could then twist them with his own unique expression. It is for this reason I find it important in my life to be aware of how things got to be the way they are in juggling. Plus of course I happen to really enjoy the process. It is often a very socially oriented task- meeting new friends, writing letters, talking on the phone, trading videos, visiting studios, watching shows.

Then fundamentally there are other reasons I see to be aware of my surroundings (artistically speaking). Company 111 from France debuted a show titled IJK a few years ago. You can find excerpts of this show on the DVD Bouncing in Paris. The jugglers in that show claim, most arrogantly in my opinion, that they invented juggling combined with music. And they honestly believe that they invented this “new art form” about 5 or 6 years ago. Now it is possible you could argue with me long enough so that I would be bored enough to agree with you that maybe, just maybe, they expanded on a few of the techniques of combining juggling with music, but in no way did they invent it! They had never heard of: The Flying Karamozov Jugglers who were doing musical juggling back in the late 70’s, Michael Moschen who made a rhythm piece inside a triangle, Dan Menendez who bounced balls on a piano in much the same way the Fyodor Karamazov did, Rudy Horn who force bounced 7 balls off a drum head creating a beat, Peter Davison with his piece "Rebound", Michael Menes with "Heinz Klaus", or what about Bobby May with his head stand and 5 ball bounce on a drum to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy? I am sure there are countless others you can think of that you have either personally seen or have read or heard about. Now, this type of ignorance is certainly fine by me. You can think whatever you want. Not everyone is interested in the history of juggling. Not everyone is interested in the worldwide community of jugglers. Not everyone is interested in progressing the art of juggling as a whole. And this is fine! But I just find it so boring. Especially when I talked to Cie 111 after their show and asked if they had ever seen Michael Moschen or the K’s, after they told me they had invented musical juggling with their show. They were not curious to hear about anything other than themselves. This was also a valid choice but it didn’t fit with my personal interest in the art of juggling. It is not in everyone’s ability to find the time or resources to research the art. It’s an ever-losing battle as new acts are created all the time all over the world. I am very lucky to get to travel a bit and meet a few people on the way who are kind enough to indulge my questions. For me it’s a hobby as well as a profession. Maybe if I had invented a new type of juggling like combining ball bouncing with other rhythms then maybe I would have enough work that I wouldn’t have the free time to know any better.

Of course jugglers can invent things independently of each other and it happens all the time. The problem then is when this independent discovery is thrust into the larger community and yet still tries to remain isolated. Another example: a friend of mine chose to work with two and a half meter long sticks. He was aware that Airjazz had created a piece using the same props years ago and they had achieved a bit of “fame” touring their performance around the world. I happened to be good friends with Jon Held and offered to show my stick friend a video of Airjazz which Jon had given me. New stick man said he didn’t want to see it in case he was tempted to “steal” some of their ideas. He said he wanted to create everything himself and that even if he “invented” something they had already done then at least he would not have a guilty conscience because he never saw their piece. I don’t really agree with this train of thought which I hear every so often. First of all, his resulting piece ended up looking pretty much like the Airjazz piece except a lot less intelligent and inventive. This could be due to the fact that I saw the Airjazz one first so some of the overlapping obvious technique sets were not so surprising the second time around. But basically I think the piece suffered from a lack of research and creativity. Sure, if you don’t see the Airjazz piece first then you can claim you made your piece in a vacuum. As long as you keep performing it in that same vacuum then it remains a relevant piece of art to the community since you are your own community. If instead the Airjazz video had been studied before or during the new creation then concepts could have been stretched further and with greater speed, providing more time for more original thought. Just because you see something and reference part of it or extrapolate on an idea does not immediately mean you are plagiarizing. Nor is it necessarily more interesting or fresh to see a naive piece of work than one that has been thought about. Besides, I find it ridiculous and impossible to ignore the mass culture out there.

If I show up at a juggling festival (or perform at a cabaret such as the stick man did) and bounce balls inside a large triangle, everyone in the global juggling community (and from other artistic and performing communities as well) will say that I ripped of Michael, even if the truth of the matter is I invented my act on my own in isolation. Some would say that I because of my “truth” I have the right to perform my act. Indeed I would have the right to perform the act but I would not have the right to get all indignant (or at least surprised) every time someone came up to me and asked why I stole the idea. I’m not sure of the correct course of action to take in this case, but the concept remains that the undeserved criticism is not without reason when anchored in the community at large. There is little you can do to convince me that no matter how much I change the presentation, costume, music, style, number of balls, material of construction, scale, or size of a ball bouncing triangle piece, people won’t think I ripped off Michael. As a side note, privately I don’t think I could deal with the aggravation even if I knew I was “right” and I would make another act. Then again, all I love to do is make new acts (please note I said “new”, not “good”) so that would be a good excuse.

I currently teach at Cirkus Cirkor in Sweden. Part of my job has me sitting on the selection committee to choose the next year’s incoming class. At the audition last year we had one juggler who performed using the new Babache oversized rings. Unfortunately for him, there is a very very famous juggler in Sweden using oversized rings who has been around for many years. The styles of the two acts were also extremely similar. More unfortunately, the boy auditioning had been attending the circus high school at Cirkor for three years. He was hard pressed to convince the jury, and eventually the president of the school, that he had not stolen his act. I talked to him afterwards and he was quite upset. But what could he expect? You have to know whom you are auditioning for! You have to be responsible and recognize the context in which you present your work.


In the same way, if I post a video in an online internet community and I expect people to respect my trick where I juggle 3 balls with my arms crossed one way for one beat, then uncross and cross them again for another beat, and then repeat this back and forth- who is going to #1: take this seriously and #2: say that the creation of this “new” trick advances or contributes anything to the world? I should definitely not be condemned for trying to invent something new. My lack of previous knowledge about the trick called Mills’ Mess should not ostracize or stigmatize me for the rest of my life. But if I fail to look at all the videos and books already out there, and then if I claim to be the “best/creative/superlative” juggler or whatever of my own culture I want to invent, based upon my own discovery of Mills’ Mess, then I should be prepared for some (valid) criticism. Maybe juggling culture doesn’t have such a problem with people “discovering” Mills’ Mess again and again, but when someone sees a video of Vova online doing 60+ catches of 7 clubs and then says Vova is technically better than Gatto, I think there is a slight glitch in the thinking there. You can of course say, “Who cares who is the best technical juggler? No one can say one is better than the other! Technical juggling is so boring- I like creativity! (thank you very open minded creative) Etc. etc.”. Well, I guess I care. And my friend Luke Wilson cares. The only thing I can try to do to contribute to juggling culture, which we’ve already established that I am interested in and not everyone is, is to try to be honest to myself and others and to try and show some respect for the art.

Its sincerely great that the impetus to post new videos on the internet has inspired people to challenge and grow in their abilities, not only technically but also creatively. A few solo club jugglers constantly ask the online community for new trick requests. The community then helps them out to give them both drive and inspiration, as well as feedback after the videos are posted. Another area of much activity seems to be 3 and 4 balls tricks. In much the same way trying to win the Junior’s Competition at the IJA festivals encouraged me to learn new skills, these 3 ball juggling sites provide a reason to keep developing themes and variations well beyond unaided interest. The trap then comes when you try to create your own mini-culture that fails to recognize the pre-existing culture. Just to laugh and say that even trying to discuss culture is pretentious and a waste of time doesn’t make the problem go away for everyone, it just erases it from your immediate view. Definitely you cannot care about how you fit into the world of juggling. You can ignore everyone else, or even just recognize the habits and trappings of small group of friends. My interest, the reason why I juggle and practice, does not find this path to be entertaining, intelligent, progressive, personally helpful, or enlightening, but then again I’m also not posting videos of myself bowling.

03/12/2005
I would like to throw my hat into the ring as it were by sharing some thoughts about the current culture of juggling in America. These theories are based in part upon public letters Anthony Gatto has published on his website. If you haven’t already visited his site, please do so before continuing on below. The address is www.anthonygatto.com, choose to enter the “fan” section.

I would like to start by discussing my experience growing up and learning how to juggle. The environment surrounding the juggling culture in America was very different than today’s equivalent. I learned to juggle at age 9, which meant the year was 1986. Soon after I attended my first IJA festival in 1987. 1988 was the first year a complete “festival video” was produced- instead of merely documenting the event the video tried to capture the “feeling” and “energy” of the week’s activities. This is the first point I like to document as the start of the multimedia culture that has so drastically shaped today’s juggling community.

At the same time video production was being revamped, the content to be captured on the video was much more embedded in tradition. The late 80’s and early 90’s were ruled by friendly rivalry among many familiar faces that had been around for years in the “scene”. Most notably in the teams area, The Raspyni Brothers, The Passing Zone, and Doubble Troubble, pushed each other to develop technically as well as trying to find more entertaining ways to present their new tricks. There was a depth to the culture by having more than one team consistently visible in the community and on stage. The growing popularity of the festival videos meant anyone could watch and learn the latest developments in the juggling world without leaving home. An amateur juggling such as myself at the time could study, compare, and contrast the newest techniques and performance ideas even if I could not attend the festivals in person. This was a much better improvement over only a few years earlier where the fastest way to learn about what moves your friends were doing was to go visit them. However, the spread of video was still slower than today’s option of the “instant internet”. Along with this new “instant” culture as I call it, came new “instant” jugglers.

Let me back up a bit and explain my ideas. Each year the IJA festival would come along and focus the juggling culture in America for one week. The festival was a benchmark in the juggling year- a time to meet new people, learn new tricks, but also to connect to the larger community and peer group. As we all know, the easiest way to start out with juggling is to imitate others. An underdeveloped technique set has enough trouble just keeping the objects in the air, let alone creating entirely new patterns. Of course these are generalities and there are exceptions at every step, but for the most part everyone I know including myself started out by doing what they saw in front of them. And what we saw 15 to 20 years ago were people who worked harder each year to come back and try to position themselves at the top of the pile. The Raspyni Brothers invented throwing tomahawks in a 6 club one count. The next year The Passing Zone came and did the same trick but used one hand on each juggler to throw tomahawks instead of having only one team member do the new type of throw. There was a linear progression that could be traced back for years by merely paying attention to the “top” jugglers in the community. The resulted thinking by my young mind was that technique takes years to learn! Hard work, dedication, and an active mind were all needed to take your juggling to the next level.

Not only technique was being spread around this way. Performance ideas also developed quickly as the videos got passed around. This most notably took shape when the late Sean McKinney started using music with lyrics in his competition sets. His onstage choices came around the exact same time as the video explosion. The results over the next few years were Junior competitors coming from all corners of the country, competing for their first time at their first convention, and using music with lyrics (which was too large a break from tradition to suggest that each new Junior act was shockingly innovative). So, even though the developments in the world of juggling were being spread around at a higher speed, there was still a sense of tradition and context for the new ideas.

Juggler’s World magazine and new prop manufacturers also contributed to an expanding base and higher levels were set as the average skill set. You often hear people talk about attending festivals in the late 70’s and they mention that back then there were only one or two jugglers at most in attendance who could hold up a five club pattern. Today you see at least half of the people throwing 5 clubs or 7 balls. Obviously this is because younger jugglers now think that 5 club juggling is not that hard. They see everyone else doing it so why shouldn’t they? This brings me back to my point of the “instant” culture. The juggling youth look around and see 5 club jugglers so they try their hand at that. But what they don’t see is any of the “greats” of the past.

When I started attending festivals Anthony Gatto still made appearances. I got to watch him practice and perform several times. I know what he was and is capable of. I saw it with my own two eyes. With the invasion of the internet, and the majority of users online being too young to have seen Anthony in person, rumors fly wild all the time. It is literally the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard when people post about being better technically than Anthony. The cold, hard fact is that Anthony is the best juggler there ever was. He is also the best juggler currently and will remain so as far as can be known now. There is currently no one in this world who could ever match what he can do with technical juggling, no matter how much they practice the rest of their lives. Let me repeat that- unless someone is born tomorrow who grows up to be better than Anthony, then no one currently juggling anywhere in the world today will ever duplicate, even by practicing 24 hours a day the rest of their lives, the feats Anthony is able to do everyday in practice and performance. You may think this is an extreme statement and that I am blindly devoting my faith to Anthony as some sort of nostalgic inaccurate recollection. This is because you have not seen Anthony practice. It’s that simple. You will be hard pressed to get me to concede that anyone will even come close ever to being as good as Anthony with just one prop. Forget that he does all three. Show me just one person with just one prop- either balls, rings, or clubs- who can even come a little bit close to what Anthony does every day. Seriously, email me right now and tell me who you think has skills anywhere close to Anthony: jaygilligan@buildingweight.com

Another prime example of the change in juggling culture can be seen in the team juggling genre. Team Rootberry is the most recent team “institution” America has. As always I am talking generally mainly about jugglers outside of the “Benji-bot” world as they don’t count in real society. This is another argument we can get into in a later essay. For now I will say the “Benji” mafia is based upon politics and a cruise ship monopoly. These things are irrelevant enough to our discussion of the real juggling culture that we can ignore him and his students for now. Team Rootberry made several appearances on the IJA stage over the course of a few years. Their “rise” was very “old-school” in nature. However, even at the top of their game, their technical achievements were not as high as juggling teams of the past. Doubble Troubble was passing 11 clubs in the gym in St. Louis in 1991. They passed 10 clubs on stage. The Passing Zone passed 8 clubs back to back on stage in 1989, and 9 clubs back to back on the Renegade stage in 1993. The reason for the current drop in technique may be due to a few factors. One is that in 1989-93 Team Rootberry were not even juggling yet as far as I know. They never got a chance to see and take part in the technical revolution of that era. The second reason may be that there was never another peer juggling team to push them during their learning process. (There were other teams contemporary of Rootberry when Rootberry was starting out who were technically more proficient than them. However, these people were “Benji Clones” and the politics involved with that negate any sort of real argument for influencing the general juggling population). Also I suspect another very important point may be what Anthony is alluding to on his website. The state of the entertainment industry changing from gala and variety to corporate events. Technique no longer being a factor in paying your rent.

There is nothing wrong with any of this except for how this all relates to the “instant” jugglers out there. I would now like to conclude by explaining the effects of the internet on contemporary juggling in America (and a bit around the world) as I see it. I’ve already noted that younger jugglers copy what they see. And currently there has not been as much tradition or heritage for them to see. Perhaps the markets currently needed to be frequented to get paid also prevent the higher caliber of juggler from attending the festivals and therefore also not appear on the juggling videos that still get passed around. So what younger jugglers absorb are videos they see on the internet. These videos tend to distort the culture by being deceivingly easy to make. With the price of technology so low now, anyone who wants to can set up a video camera and post videos online. There are instant feedback opportunities through website guestbooks and online forums.

What the videos don’t show are any sort of consistent technique base. An example of this can more easily be seen by relating a story, not about an online video, but rather an online photo. I went to a juggler’s website and saw this beautiful promotional picture of seemingly 7 club juggling. The pattern looked great- nice and big and technically accurate. A few months later I had the chance to meet and practice with this juggler. I was shocked to find that even a consistent 5 club cascade was beyond the juggler’s abilities let alone 6 or the photographed 7 clubs! Nevertheless the juggler happily flailed 7 clubs into the air repeatedly for hours on end. I can’t fault someone for trying 7 or for being happy about not catching them ever. I also can’t fault someone for having a great looking photo online, everyone has to pay the rent and eat. I’m all for promotion. The problem comes when others who are part of the new “instant” culture look at the picture and then instantly assume they are looking at a 7 club juggler. In this way I can imagine that people online think I am insane for saying no one will ever be better than Anthony. If you believe all the hype and self-promotion online then it seems everyone will be the next Anthony!

There may be good parts to the online community- a few years ago someone with a great base technique set (someone who had learned juggling the old-fashioned way) started to flash 11 balls. Younger jugglers saw this and, like they did with 5 clubs so long ago, started to try it themselves. Now you can find a number of videos online where people flash 11 balls. And I am not saying these people are not talented or that this doesn’t contribute to the culture. However, the trick with video is that you can try the 11 ball flash again and again. And again. And again. What people sometimes fail to have is the perspective it takes to watch and assimilate these jugglers into the proper cultural context. I propose that many of the people I know, of all ages, could flash 11 balls if they 1). used the small wisps of beanbags in place of balls 2). spend one solid year with only 11 balls in their hands at any time 3). have a video camera rolling non-stop for the one off chance they catch the balls 4). practice or do nothing else with their time except work towards the goal of catching the trick once on camera. Once again, I am not saying this is a bad thing if you happen to enjoy doing it. I personally cannot see the point in it, other than to create a false image of your juggling abilities online.

Or to be more precise perhaps this is where the argument turns into the whole hobbyist vs. the professional performer thing. Except that you can’t even just stop there with professional performing as a broad definition anymore. It used to be that this type of argument could easily be laid to rest using the old “but you’re performing for an audience and they don’t care if its 5 or 6 rings, they just want you to eat an apple anyway so technique doesn’t matter” line of thought. But now a new organization called the WJF has come into existence to promote juggling as a sport. One of the competitors in the WJF told me one part of their agenda is to create a market for sport juggling, with one facet being that there could be paid professional sport jugglers in the future.

While this is still a performance debate (instead of just being a hobbyist and staying at home in front of your video camera), the question of “on demand” technique comes into play. The “instant” jugglers of today would be hard pressed to do their feats “on demand”. Most of the jugglers who have flashed 11 balls on the internet have not juggled 10. They have not even juggled 9. Some not 8. Maybe 7. Maybe 13 catches of 6. Once. On film. And that is just with balls. We are not talking about clubs and rings too. This all contributes to the current lack of depth in the juggling culture in America. The WJF was hard pressed to find technically inspiring performances in my opinion. I’m not saying they didn’t try. I’m not saying I could do better. I’m not saying they shouldn’t try or that they didn’t succeed on many levels. But where were all the 11 ball jugglers? Where were all the people who can beat Anthony or come close? You could argue they weren’t invited or they didn’t show up or that this whole line of thinking is irrelevant to my point since it’s the WORLD Juggling Federation and I am mainly talking about America, so why didn’t they just get better jugglers from anywhere they wanted? The fact is that we don’t know all the circumstances, or the who or the why or the politics or the money or whatever involved in the WJF competitor selection. But it doesn’t matter, the point remains that today’s “instant” jugglers are ill prepared for such an event.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing except when people go online and post videos (this isn’t the bad thing yet) and then others contribute to the ignorance and watering down of the juggling culture in America (this is the bad thing) by perpetuating false rumors and making uneducated statements out of context that impressionable young minds then latch onto as the truth. To put it another way, they lack the historical and global (I mean large, not literally world wide) view of the art of juggling in which to make intelligent and useful statements about what they are seeing and/or promoting by adding fuel to the fire in the form of either comments or reactionary video posts. But this is not the responsibility of the culture to monitor the behavior of every individual. It is not the idea to censor anyone’s opinion or to argue over one way being right or wrong or better than another way. I merely wanted to express how I think we have gotten to the point (at least in America) where Anthony Gatto, the world’s greatest juggler, has to post on his website a plea for just a touch of sanity in today’s juggling culture.

02/27/2005
I have no idea why this happened, but I updated my show list and now the list is posted as new news. Anyway, here is the original post again with the completed corrections:


We've had a few requests here at news central what with 2 new shows opening this past weekend. Below is a list of all the original productions (excluding only The Pain Project appearances) I have been a part of since I started making real work. I only included shows where the content has been independent of other works. A "*" before the title indicates that I was responsible for all of the writing, directing, and choreography. The listed year is of the first performance and many of the productions toured for a few years or are still being offered:

blink (1995) with morty hansen and fritz grobe

all of the above (1996) with blink and FUSION

cirque de la mort (1996) with FUSION

*Quest (1997)

Farrago (1997) with the Collective

Laputia (1998) with the Collective

Situs (1998) with the Collective

*The Stars in the Sky @ Oddfellows Theater (1998)

*WANTED (1998)

The Collective at Balls Cabaret (1998) with the Collective

Population 56 (1998) with the Collective

The Instigators (1998) with the Checkerboad Guy

*Memersion (1998)

*Question (1998)

Remembering Rastelli (1999) with the Gandini Juggling Project

*Idea Ratio (1999)

Millennium Dome (2000) with the Gandini Juggling Project

*Millennium Dome Solo (2000)

*Insinuation and the Ghost of Jay Gilligan's Former Self (2000)

*September and Sinking, September and Hoping, September and Counting (2000)

*100 percent me (2000)

*Skeleton Key (2001)

Peapot Live: PIG (2001) with Peapot Video

*Point of Entry (2001)

6 dot 9 (2001) with Ochen Kaylan

Rollercoaster Fun (2001) with Ochen Kaylan

*The Jay Gilligan Road Show (2001)

Talvisirkus Sade (2001) with Hurjaruuth Dance Theater

*Building Weight (2002)

*cirque d'ete (2002)

Throwing Small Stones (2002) with Xelias

*Mason Jennings set (2002)

*Eye Level (2003)

Act 2 Act (2003) with Xelias

Milkday (2003) with Jerome Thomas Company

*TONIGHT YOU ARE IN PITTSBURGH (2003)

*Nouveaux Nouveaux (2003)

MER (2004) with the Fun Addicts

KUKA (2004) with Manu Laude

*The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood (2004)

*Nouveaux Nouveaux- Remixed (2004)

Talvisirkus Nauru (2004) with Hurjaruuth Dance Theater

*tOybOx (2005)

02/27/2005
some time ago i posted a list here of all the shows i've made. last night while going over some scripts i realized i had forgotten about 2 more: The Stars in the Sky @ Oddfellows Theater (1998) and the Millennium Dome Solo set (2000).

02/21/2005
When I lived in London I performed with a group of jugglers at the Millenium Dome on New Year's Eve, 1999. The event was quite large to say the least, even without considering the size of the venue. The company I was working for hired a choreographer to help direct our part of the massive production. Since several hundred performers were to be on stage over a relatively short time, we had to literally run to our spots down a long walkway positioned through the audience. After 13 hours of rehearsal the final day, we met with our choreographer to get some feedback. Her only piece of advice, her one idea after being there all day, was that we should all move our arms more when we run in during the entrance. This was because "It looks bigger, the audience can see more clearly that you are running," she said. I thought it was pretty obvious to the audience that we were running since we were, actually, running. However the size of her sallary was equally illogical so I couldn't really argue with her. I moved my arms more.

02/21/2005
I just signed on to direct the new 2nd year student production here at Cirkus Cirkor Piloterna. The first show is in May and continues through June. So that's my spring planned out then...

02/19/2005
The Laudigan Massive has been hired to produce my next DVD release. It will be a 2 DVD set featuring 2 complete shows- cirque d'ete (2002) and The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood (2004). This project is expected to be completed by the end of the summer. A limited release of 50 copies will be made with each set consisting of one PAL and one NTSC version. The two shows are related by some overlapping technique sets which can be used to mark the evolution of the work. Release dates will be posted here when they become available. The DVD's will only be sold through this website and at live performances.

02/19/2005
i taught some unicycle and juggling classes at this circus school last winter:
www.linnanmaensirkuskoulu.fi

02/18/2005
today i am 28 years old.

02/17/2005
the name of the music school collaboration is hand/made stories. tobias took some amazing photos here: www.fotografiskbild.com/hand
time for another fun director story! when i was working in the gandini juggling project, getting ready for the millenium dome experience, we often worked with long-time co-director gil clarke. one afternoon i had to find a transition between passing clubs with one person and moving across stage to pass with someone else. my first idea for the transition did not work gil told me. so we proceeded to spend literally 20 minutes trying to work out the perfect foot steps and number of throws to make the show just a festival of artistic expression. finally, in my frustration with the apparent lack of any sort of intelligent criteria by which to monitor our progress, i showed gil the exact same transition which i started with 20 minutes before. she jumped out of her chair, clapped her hands, and screamed "you've found it! that is what i've been looking for all this time!"

02/17/2005
maka put up some super good photos of the "trio" workshop and "the fighting machines of north hollywood", plus rehearsals of nouveaux nouveaux, all from 53fun this past year. thanks maka!!! http://www.lb-o.net/531.html or http://www.lb-o.net/531_2.html

02/15/2005
currently i am directing a collaboration between the music university here in stockholm and the circus students. the premiere is next thursday. looks like this show will have a second round of production later this spring with me also taking the blame for everything that happens so to speak. when i was growing up lots of people suggested that i should work with a director. finally after a few years of hearing this i, along with 2 friends, hired avner the eccentric to help out with a show we had created. his single piece of advice after $400 and one hour later was to cough while juggling 6 balls, apparantly to show my ease with the technique (???). since then i have not had the courage to try the experience again and i can only hope i am not passing on this same bad feeling to the students in my current project!!!

02/12/2005
the two absolute worst introductions for a performer were given this past week in london at the circus space cabaret. both were for luke wilson, a juggler without compare. the first was presented thursday night-

world's worst introduction #1:
"this next act normally works as a duet. tonight he will be doing a solo. here he is, luke..."

please note i have written these speeches verbatim and have not embellished nor paraphrased where in quotes. the next introduction, even worse than the first, was given this evening by the same master of ceremonies-

world's worst introduction #2:
"this next guy used to go to school here. he learned to juggle. he now lives in bern... lives in cologne. he lives in cologne. he's from here but he doesn't work here. he makes all of his money living in germany. he doesn't make any money in this country. here he is, luke..."

also to note that there was nothing about the style, pacing, or character in which any of these lines were delivered which made them less abrasive and pointless. they were not ironic or meant to be funny. these were the genuine introductions delivered by the master of ceremonies hired and funded by circus space, the powerhouse of british contemporary circus (their tag-line, not mine).

02/11/2005
www.popjuggling.com is alive

02/11/2005
we had some server problems here and lost a bit of news and tour dates. hopefully they find their way back to us....

12/17/2004
KUKA the DVD is out NOW! Email for your own personal copy to watch with your friends...

12/17/2004
The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood are playing a date in Denmark on Jan. 8, 2005. This time around we have the sweet sounds of Matias Salmenaho on the Bass Jammer to fill in for our original musicians who are on vacation in Jamaica. Email for details...

11/26/2004
You have to go check out
www.gettheshoe.com
my friends from Germany!

11/26/2004
Here is a review of Nouveaux Nouveaux from the Helsinki Sonomat, Oct. 25, 2004:

Sirkus
Hilpeaa klovneriaa ja rajahtavaa jonglooritaitoa

...

Illan aloitti amerikkalainen jongloori Jay Gilligan hillittomalla puolen tunnin soolollaan. Gilligan on virtuoosiesityksessa ei ole hetkea, jolloin joku objekti ei pyorisi tai olisi ilmalennossa.

Ei Gilliganin esitys ole silti pelkkaa hiottua tekniikkaa. Ohjelman suunnittelu on kekselias ja yhdistelee napparasti eri valineita. Numero on tarkasti suunniteltu, mutta silti siina tuntuu kepean improvisoinnin vire.

Musiikkidramaturgia on heikoin kohta, grunge-kapppaleet soivat taustamusiikkina ja tunnelman luojina perinteiseen kabareetyyliin. Ehka tietoinen ja harkittu valinta.

Jussi Tossavainen

11/25/2004
KUKA has a new American date! Check it out on this site and see you there for our American debut!!!

11/25/2004
Some reviews from Talvisirkus Nauru are in; here is what one Finnish newspaper had to say about me-

"Talvisirkus Naurussa on maailmanluokan vahvistuksena jongloori Jay Gilligan."

It also said-

"Kaapelitehtaalla nahdaan suomalaisten sirkustaltellijolden lisaksi amerikkalainen hulppujongloori Jay Gilligan..."

11/25/2004
Addicted to Fun, producers of MER, are backing a new show! The show is titled "LOVE" and features The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood cast member Peter Arberg, along with Matias Salmenaho of MER, and new super genius Olle Strandberg, one of my students at Cirkuspiloterna. The show had its world premiere two weeks ago at Orionteatren in Stockholm and plays again January 21, 2005, in Tampere, Finland. For more information on the festival where they will play check out www.circusruska.com

11/21/2004
Please visit www.toddsmith.com and buy things from him...

11/21/2004
Hannu 0skala, who played with The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood, produced and recorded the soundtrack for Talvisirkus Nauru. Email for your own copy and several more to give as presents this holiday season...

11/21/2004
Talvisirkus Nauru included a special guest performance yesterday by The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood cast member Peter Årberg.

11/18/2004
French Friends- if you happen to be in france this next week you can check out my friends who are performing some new circus where it all started some 30 years ago. first up we have henna (www.med-andra-ord.com) performing with 99% (www.cirkor.se). then its ville walo (www.walonet.com) and kalle with their old show, "waiting room". your time will be well spent to see these shows and then meet the artists...

11/06/2004
I was talking on the phone the other day to Matias Salmenaho, www.circusruska.com, and we were comparing training notes. Mat said he was getting his 9 ring pull downs pretty good. I am trying to get mine back in shape, still needs another week or so. We both discovered through our conversation that our 9 was better because we were working more on our 7. Mat said he gets around 70 with 7 each run. I have been doing 100 catches regularly. His response was "I´m sure I will get 30 more catches in 10 years..." Mat is only 18.

10/19/2004

I remixed Nouveaux Nouveaux from last year. Basically I couldn't remember the original anyway and was too lazy to watch the video. The new order is partly from the open stage a couple of weeks ago at Orionteatren. Its around 30 minutes long and is a continuous piece of choreography. Just for fun I've included my notes for the piece here. Feel free to use these to create your own performance of Nouveaux Nouveaux...



1. sculpture
2. balls in rings on floor, after picking up stage balls fix silicone
3. kick up 3 rings
4. balls on cheeks
5. drop 3 balls
6. kick up 4th ring
7. take ring off head one at a time, drop balls
8. 4 up full and half pirouette
9. half turn put one ring on head
10. step over sculpture, take ring off head
11. pick up 5th ring
12. 5 ring half shower
13. throw one ring on head
14. throw others on head, kick up ball
15. throw ball to head, take ring off neck
16. balance ball, juggle 5 rings
17. neck catch ball, pick up one ball
18. roll ball down neck, put rings on neck pick up other ball
19. kick up 6th ring
20. bounce ball on floor put rings on back
21. roll ball between legs, put rings over ball
22. 3 up with reverse backcross pirouette
23. 3 throws of stage balls and bean bags
24. under one leg on floor end with roll under leg
25. pick up bean bags into 6 ball multiplex
26. let bean bags fall do double pirouette on next throw
27. neck catch and put other balls on hips
28. fix silicones on structure into the ring
29. 2 clubs between feet
30. roll ball down back onto clubs
31. kick clubs to kick the ball up
32. roll clubs, kick up one club into 4 ball box
33. 534 with club as flat, end with club under arm
34. one and a half pirouette
35. kick up other club using leg catch
36. 6x4 with balls and clubs, let one ball fall
37. 2 balls and 2 clubs piece
38. end with 2 balls in ring stack and clubs rolling around stack
39. pick up silicones
40. 2 clubs and 2 silicones, end by putting 2 clubs on ground
41. 2 silicones trick
42. kick up ring, use to pull clubs up, put 2 clubs down
43. 1 ring and 2 silicones, cross arm and then flourish
44. pick up 3 bean bags
45. 633 thing with 3 bags and 2 silicones put down 2 silicones
46. 3 ball start to neck catch
47. flick ring off neck go into 3 cascade
48. kick up 4th ball
49. 4 ball penguins
50. 4 ball splits let them fall and pick up 4 club splits
51. 4 club shower around ring stack
52. pick up stage balls and silicones, crossing multiplex
53. set down stage balls, 2 silicones in right hand
54. pick up rings, 6 ring stack and 2 silicones thing
55. slide rings one at a time onto head
56. 2 rings and 2 balls start, into 633 box
57. pick up 4 bean bags when ball touches floor
58. set down bean bags and one silicone, other silicone to arm
59. bend arm backwards, pick up 3 bean bags, make pile
60. 6 rings 100 catches pulldown
61. kick up club put on head
62. take rings off, flash
63. put rings back on head over club
64. swipe rings off head, club behind back, trap club on body with rings
65. drop club to club pile
66. take silicones with half turn and rings off and on head
67. set rings down and pre-set 3 rings under silicones
68. 7 bean bags 100 catches, neck catch, stand up let all fall
69. kick up 3 pre-set rings, 3 ring start
70. small section of new 3 ring piece back to beginning
71. 3 ring start into kick up 4th ring
72. flourishes, into on head, back roll, 2 ring grind
73. into 4 ring section from KUKA
74. 4 ring start, kick up club
75. 3 ring and one club pancakes
76. multiplex with club and rings
77. catch everything in left hand, put rings on head, club on chin
78. 4 rings with balance, one ring on head, drop down club into 534
79. pull 4th ring off head, into 5 pattern, all rings on head, club last
80. headroll club, reverse backcross
81. 6 clubs, end with scissor catch
82. 3 club kick up, drop other clubs
83. go to ring pile, throw club to foot, roll one club around pile
84. ring off and on head in roll, other ring up the arm
85. put club in the middle of the pile drop one ring down
86. 3 rings and 2 clubs pirouette
87. all rings on head, 2 club multiplex to underarms
88. sequence with rings off head onto clubs, etc
89. end with 2 club multiplex behind back sequence
90. put 2 clubs down and fix with stage balls from old pile
91. set 3 bean bags for later
92. pick up 3 bean bags, 3 rings and beanbags, pull down rings
93. 3 ring and 3 ball start into beginning of piece
94. 2 rings and 3 bean bag piece from Building Weight
95. 3 ball start, pick up 3 from ground
96. rings off head, 3 ball jam
97. back spin single ring on ground from 3 ring start
98. pick up other rings
99. 8 ring pulldown
100. kickup 2 stage balls take to other clubs, pick up 3 clubs
101. pick up stage ball clubs, 5 club quads
102. 6 balls, 300 catches

10/06/2004
My new show is finally finished. Details are as follows:

title: The Fighting Machines of North Hollywood

written and directed by: Jay Gilligan

cast: Frida Odden Brinkman (Norway), Peter Arberg (Sweden), and Jay Gilligan (U.S.A.)

special guest musicians: Ansley Hendrickson (U.S.A.), Hannu (Finland)

premiere: Oct. 22, 2004 Helsinki, Finland @ 10pm

2 musicians, 3 jugglers, 6 sticks, 9 balls

10/03/2004
***SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*** Our good friend, John Rauser, put up the old jugglingstar.com content on his site! The link is http://www.extracrunchy.com/jugglingstar
Included are a lot of historical photos and other fun things from the good old days. A huge thank you to John for this nice surprise!

10/01/2004
Fellow partner in my show "MER" and an all around perfect guy, Matias Salmenaho (www.circusruska.com), will be performing all of October and November in Stockholm along with new Peapot (www.peapot.net) star Eric Arberg. You must go see the show they are in! Email me for times and dates and places...

10/01/2004
"Somewhere in a Dream," the first year student show by Cirkuspiloterna (www.cirkor.se) will be performed tomorrow in Stockholm. I directed the juggling scene in this show and they have two performances- 3pm and 7pm. Email me for the address and free tickets...

10/01/2004
Big thanks to Air Traffic for sponsoring my juggling club needs. Visit them at www.atraffic.com and buy lots of their stuff.

10/01/2004
I am performing a new solo tonight at Orion Teatren in Stockholm. Show starts around 10pm.

09/01/2004
The Thursday before 53Fun I am teaching a special workshop called "Trio". You may attend this event my emailing the festival organizers and being nice to them...

08/30/2004
MER (Matias Salmenaho, www.circusruska.com, and Jay Gilligan) will be performed in France and Finland next year. Look here for dates and times...

08/18/2004
KUKA (me and Manu Laude) photos at
www.rubbish-monkey.co.uk
click on "performance photos"

08/18/2004
I'm in Iceland right now and want to thank everyone who made Idaho a fun time- Rob, David, Mary Jane, Ricky, Todd, Jason, Peggy, Molly, Vladamir, and of course the amazing Olga (and JJ).
Rob is going to be touring America next year so check him out if he comes to your town...

08/05/2004
T-SHIRTS ARE SOLD OUT!!!!!!!!!!

07/07/2004
The IJA festival is next week in Buffalo (www.juggle.org) and I am performing a special piece with Jouni Temonen, Lana Bolin, Tomoko, and Hide. Hide made a wicked choreography for his part of the piece. Check out his custom experimental juggling prop here:

http://www.cc.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/~hide/redcube.html

07/06/2004
MER soundtracks available!!! Also, there are about 10 limited edition T-shirts left. Email for sizes and prices. All soundtracks same size...

07/06/2004
The first of much new news: www.circusruska.com has the best show description I have ever read. Plus its the best juggling show I have ever seen.

06/12/2004
TONIGHT YOU ARE IN PITTSBURGH opens in Minneapolis this evening. Come on down as this will be the last time we play the show in this city...

06/11/2004
The Pain set list from Toulouse, France, May 21, 2004-
1. rings and performers of different sizes
2. 441, 4413, 44133 site swap trio
3. single spin and no spin club chart duet adapted from a piece of music by Tom Johnson
4. yogurt/spoon, mug/teabag, balloon/feathers/coctail umbrella trio
5. 4 club each improvisation using heights and spins
Performers: Luke Wilson, Denis Paumier, Jay Gilligan

06/09/2004
Sean McKinney- gone but never forgotten, America lost its only juggler who had any style...

06/03/2004
Nothern Star in Greece next week, Hjälp in Sweden tomorrow.

05/25/2004
So many things to say! First, its Miku's birthday today and since I am not in Sweden to drink vodka with all the other Finnish circus students, I want to say vitsi kippu to Miku! Then on Thursday if you are in Turku (Finland) you have to go see Maka and Eva play at blanko! Also med andra ord have their last show in Helsinki tomorrow. The Pain was the best ever this last weekend, but then again every Pain show is the best one. I will try to get a set list for that gig up soon. Special no thanks to all the people who came and smoked during the show... that was real pain!

05/20/2004
WOW! Shooting the DVD in the French Alps, in the middle of a river and in front of a nuclear power plant. Plus all the trouble to type this must mean we are still in France: we gots the Pain show tomorrow and a video projector with three cameras on live feed for Saturday; Festibal plays on Saturday in the north as well: I hope you can see one of the two shows: Viva la spectator:::

05/15/2004
We start to finish up the DVD shoot in France on Monday with Rob and Sara. If you are in Helsinki this week please go see my great friends "med andra ord" playing their show at Kiasma...

05/14/2004
MER played to a sold out audience each night! Perhaps we will bring this show back next year...

05/13/2004
Special notice that Jouni Temonen from Finland will be attending the IJA festival this summer! Get your 7 club patterns cleaned up to hang with this boy...

05/12/2004
MER tonight!!!

05/10/2004
A good friend of mine once told me that the hard part of touring is not doing a show every night, but trying to do the same show every night. Meaning that no matter what the size of the space is like, or what equipment is missing or broken, or the mood of the audience, the shows are of a consistently high quality and if you saw the show every night you would not notice anything different.

05/08/2004
Yesterday I worked on the juggling scene in "Hjalp", the new show directed by Linus Tunstrom. Lots of people and lots of counting= new circus for sure!

05/07/2004
New MER dates now and figure 8 rings coming later...

05/06/2004
The Peapot Headache video is finished and has been out for about one month now. I believe the only way to try and order it is to send an email through the Peapot website. Hopefully it will also be available by the vendors for the festival season. The DVD version is amazing as well! Joonas who is behind the camera and the master editor just had a baby boy a few months ago. The kid is super cute! He will not be available on DVD however...

05/04/2004
Check out http://www.med-andra-ord.com/

05/03/2004
My students present their graduation shows this weekend in Stockholm. Come see some really great people with some really great acts- in addition to the jugglers there are of course other circus disciplines being represented, but I didn't teach them. So come to the shows and vote for the jugglers so they win. Not that its a competition or anything, but vote anyway just in case...
www.cirkor.se

05/02/2004
Look for an upcoming show with Bill Mike and CT! Don't know when or where but when we do we'll pass it on...

05/01/2004
"The Pain" will be performing in Toulouse. Guest performers include Luke Wilson and Denis Paumier. Luke is very dedicated to the project, eating an entire suitcase full of yogurt during his last performance of this show...
www.lukaluka.com

04/30/2004
Its official, STUCK IN PITTSBURGH (the ultimate instant composition performance), the sequel to TONIGHT YOU ARE IN PITTSBURGH, has been put on hold indefinately to launch another run of TONIGHT YOU ARE IN PITTSBURGH this summer in Minneapolis. This time the show will feature the music of Robert Skoro for every show. Expect some surprise guests and new material. Check out the dates here at b-w-com...

04/30/2004
Please go see Bill Mike tomorrow night at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Its going to be an amazing show with James on bass as well. They both play for Robert Skoro who plays for me. Community, relevancy, korv...

04/29/2004
Big thanks to Ans, Ari, Trace, and Loon for hooking me up with a great residency in Madison recently. We got a lot of work done and I look forward to the next time we can all work together. Please, if you are in town, check out Ian's Pizza- the best restaurant in America, besides Archie's...

04/27/2004
I will be performing in the public show at the IJA festival this summer in a special duet with Tomoko, hope y'all can make it, maybe Ani will come down to check it all out....

04/26/2004
The T-shirts are selling out fast. There are still some left in each size though. Email for shipping rates....

04/25/2004
Billy couldn't make it, but Jay Jose showed up and Rob played an acoustic set. I think we won the high school talent show part of the evening, too bad it wasn't a contest...
In other news the American part of the DVD is in the can. We finish next month in the Alps. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the new Cornelius DVD, we here at buildingweight.com are big fans!

04/24/2004
TONIGHT YOU ARE IN PITTSBURGH was in Chicago last night. Big thanks to the following people who made it possible: my parents, Toss-Up Juggling Club, Rob, CT, JT, Andy, Sara, Fergie, Amelia, and Henna. Tonight we are leaving Pittsburgh and doing some older material with Rob. Anders came down last night from Chicagoland, any chance Billy Corgan will show up tonight?!?

04/21/2004
Today me and Sara start shooting the new DVD. New DVD as in "new circus"...

04/20/2004
New T-shirts are available. Email for sizes and prices and buying them...