I stayed at Circomedia until about 2:00pm. My plan was to do a lot of juggling, and maybe a little bit of stretching. But I found myself doing a lot of talking with Phil and others. Phil and I also spent some time working on an idea we have for a piece in the end of the year show. We sat down outside on one of the blue mats, and wrote up the beginings of a script. The idea behind the piece is that I am a rich American, and he is a British waiter/bartender/butler type. We have both washed up on the beach after the cruise ship we were on sank. While on the cruise ship he was serving me. My character is stupid, but of high status. He fails to realize that the ship has sunk, and keeps asking Phil's character for service (drinks, food, towel, etc.) The piece still needs a lot of brainstorming before it actually takes on any real form. But I think that it has potential.

Around 2:00 I headed home because I had not packed a lunch, and didn't have any money on me. I spent the rest of the evening at home, just relaxing. Delicatessen, the French film, came on in the evening, and I stayed up, and enjoyed watching that film. Shortly after it started Annette showed up with Mandy. We had tea and biscuits, and watched the film--although Annette spent most of the time checking her email. After the film, Annette headed home, and I went to bed.

Seeing I didn't have a class until 2:00, I decided to go do my job of cleaning the office. I also cleaned Studio 2. While I was doing the cleaning, I borrowed a video tape from Charlie, and set up the machines to make a copy of the creative projects we did at the end of the last term. I need to bring Charlie a video to replace the one I borrowed. I wasn't able to retrieve the video after it was done recording because Bim was in the video room.

Around 12:00 I spent a short while passing clubs with Javier. I showed him the eight club 1 count pattern that Mandy taught me. He liked it, though our success rate with it was minimal.

I ate my lunch around 1:00pm.

At 1:30pm Oskar and I began working on this passing routine that I have written. We didn't get very far on it. It opens with both of us doing a 3 club flash start, and going right into a right handed 2 count passing pattern. This is not a problem. But after 5 throws in the 2 count pattern, we go into this sequence where for 5 throws one of us is throwing tomahawks while the other person is throwing over the shoulder throws, and then we switch. We don't have a problem with the tomahawks, but the over the shoulder throws are proving difficult for both of us. Its easy to nail one over the shoulder throw randomly here and there, but to do 5 in a row, and keep them nice is hard. I think we managed the whole sequence once. We didn't get much further in our routine, because we actually spent the majority of the time practicing our over the shoulder throws. I am pleased with this. I have written things into this routine that I am not very good at, and hopefully it will force me to get better at them.

At 2:00pm it was time for my first class of the day. Bim lead a class that involved all the students in the gym. He started the class off by having us play a game of Name Tag. It was really confusing playing that game with all the students. We normally play that game with only about 10-12 students. It was fun, none the less. After the warm-up game, Bim had us separate into groups of six. My group included Charlotte, Michelle, Annette, Jeremiah, Kat, and myself. Bim explained that we would be doing a lot of choral work this class. So needless to say, once we were in our groups of 6 people, Bim had us start with a flocking exercise. He had us start out by facing inward in a circle, and doing some sound choral work. After a few minutes of vocal choral work, Bim encouraged us to include movement into it. Most everyone is pretty comfortable with flocking, though some don't like to do it. My group did fine. After several minutes of the choral warm-up, Bim explained that we would be doing arm/hand choral work next. For this he had us all lay down on the floor in our groups, in a circle, so that our heads were touching. Then we raised our arms/hands above our heads (which puts you in a position to see your own hands and everyone else's.) Then from there we did a hands/arms flocking exercise. My group was giggling almost the entire time. I'm not sure what they thought was funny about it. I found it fascinating seeing all those hands moving around above my head, but I wasn't finding the humour that they were. After several minutes of this exercise, Bim had us take turns showing the other groups what it looks like. It was fun to watch. It looked, at times, like some weird sea creatures. Next we did the same exercise but this time used our legs and feet. For this position, we layed down on the floor with our bums as close to each other as possible. I found this exercise not as interesting, mostly because the feet do not have as many flexible joints as the hands do. I also found it more tiring. For the final part of this class, Bim had us do choral work with skills. We had two choices, we could either do acrobatics, or do juggling with bounce balls. I, of course, chose to do the juggling. Bim gave the jugglers three things they could do while they did their choral work. They could juggle a small cascade, juggle a really tall cascade, or bounce juggle the balls. The bounce juggling in the gym doesn't work that great. You have to do a force bounce pattern for it to work because of the floor. Because there were a lot of jugglers, Bim had us break into two groups. My group had Oskar, Fabian, Annette, and myself. We were having difficulty with it at first. We kept wanting to slip out of chorus work and go into choreography (e.g. "lets do this first, then this, then that...") Eventually Bim had each group show the rest of the class what they had come up with. Watching the acrobatic chorus work was nice. It was very fluid. Some of it was very much like Capoeiera (spell?.) Our juggling went okay, but the other group of jugglers ended up doing this hilarious routine. They started out by doing regular flocking with the balls, and then eventually their patterns just started falling apart. Because one person would drop, to keep true to the chorus work, others would drop too. This kept building and building until the entire group was just running around picking up balls, and dropping them. It was quite hilarious. After watching all the groups demonstrate their chorus with skills, Bim gave us a short break before the second half of the afternoon.

At 4:00 we returned to the gym. For a warm-up, Bim had us get into groups of 6 again and do a quick run through of the 4 elements as a chorus using movement and vocals. Next, Bim gave use instructions to find a piece of equipment that we could use for the next assignment. For the acrobats, a piece of equipment could mean another person. I eventually grabbed my unicycle. Once everyone had picked out a piece of equipment, Bim had us use the equipment in the style of the four different elements. I found this extrememly difficult, but I did notice that my idling on the unicycle is getting much better. Unfortunately because I am only idling with one side, my left pedle is starting to bend. I need to fix it. Next Bim had the entire class go through the elements again, all together, as he called the elements out. Then he had us go up in groups (according to what element we felt worked best for our piece of equipment.) For that, I chose fire. To illustrate fire with my unicycle, I didn't even get on it. I did a mixture of two different things. First I bounced it up and down, using varying degrees of height in the bounce (thus varying the speed,) and the other thing I did was balance it by the underside of the seat while my other hand cranked the wheel nice and fast. The balance of the pedels on the unicycle caused the whole thing to shimmy back and forth. This, to me, gave it a fire like quality. For the final part of the class, Bim asked half of the class (he picked the people,) to go to one end of the room (and stand on the mats.) Then he told the other half to walk over and choose a partner. I ended up with Deniz. For this assignment the people he chose first (and sent to the mat,) were to echo what the other people did with their skill. Basically, in my case, I picked up 3 balls, and juggled in the style that I like to juggle, and Deniz echoed my movements (without any balls.) It was interesting to watch her. Bim encouraged the echoers to blow up, or exaggerate the movements of the person they were mimicing. For the end of the class, we took time to watch each of the duos do their little bit. Some of them, Charlotte and Oskar in particular, were quite funny to watch. It had similar qualities to the stuff we were doing in Bafoon class.

School ended at 5:30. I spent the next hour playing around with Deniz, Tina, and eventually Charlotte (though she did not come until later because she was rehearsing Michelle's piece.) We played with the hula-hoops. I am planning on choreographing a hula-hoop piece with 4 girls and probably up to 10 hula-hoops. I just wanted them to get used to the hoops, and have fun with them. The plan is that tommorow, we start to put together material.

After working with the girls for a while, I spent about an hour juggling. I have noticed, for some strange reason, that my five club pattern has changed since I got back from my trip through Europe. I'm not sure why, but my throws are much loftier, and it is feeling much more solid that it was before. Not to mention slower. I didn't juggle five clubs at all for about 3 weeks. I guess it is good to take a break now and then.

Around 7:30 I headed home. The rest of my evening was rather uneventful. I was in bed before 10:00pm.

At 9:30 it was time for our first class. Our first class was a E&M movement class with Lizz (who was substituting for Helen.) Liz apparently was surprised that she was only working with E&M students, and seemed a little frustrated by the idea of only doing E&M stuff, so she offered us the option to choose between doing E&M stuff or Acro stuff. Only 2 people, Jeremiah and Merlin, went for the Acro. Liz started the class off by having us sit down and discuss the elements of choreography with her. She put some pieces of paper on the wall behind her, and then she filled them in with the elements of choreography as we came up with them. They were: 1. Repetition/Variation, 2. Timming/Tempo/Dynamics, 3. Form/Phrasing (sync/a-sync, ABA, cannon, etc.,) 4. Space, 5. Motif, & 6. Level/Direction. For the first task, Lizz had us pick the juggling prop(s) we wanted to work with. I chose 3 juggling clubs. Next she had us put our props down and gave us instructions to build a zig-zag shaped obstical course in the gym using objects found in the gym (table, mats, benches, etc.) and to include going over things, going under things, etc. We created a nice little obstical course, and she came along behind us and put little pieces of paper with arrows indicating what direction we would face for each part of the course (e.g. when walking up the slanted bench up to the horse, we had to walk backwards.) Once the course was set up, she had us run through the course 3 times forwards, and twice going in reverse (from the end of the course to the start.) Her objective was to have us memorize the course. This wasn't difficult, since we helped design it. Next she asked us to remove the objects that formed the course. After doing this, she asked us to go through the course again, but without the objects. This of course explained why she needed us to memorize the course.

(not finished... )

At 9:30 I went to my Acro for non-specialists class. It was only an hour long class, and we spent most of the class trying different 6, 7, and 8 person pyramids from this book. Its a cool book, I am planning on photocopying some pages from it. I was involved in some of the pyramids, and in others I acted as a spotter. Nikki explained to us that we would be putting together some stuff so that we could have some non acro spec stuff in the end of the year show. The class ended at 10:30. It was a short class, but it was fun.