Anyhow, basically I didn't do much of anything productive.

Around 9:40 I headed up to the school, and I did the cleaning of the Gym, Studio 2, and the South Wing. This will probably be my regular schedule for Sundays. After doing the cleaning, I headed home and took a nice long nap. I woke up around 5:30, had some food, watched some TV, and then headed back to bed to do some more reading of the last Harry Potter book. I'm not sure what to read after I am done with this. Perhaps I should find a copy of Lord of the Rings. I have never actually read the whole set.

I am excited about Monday. We start our "Juggling Intensive" week with Seand Gandini from the Gandini Juggling Project. It promises to be one of the best weeks at school.

And now here are my experiences, and thoughts on the Juggling Intensive Week with Sean Gandini: (most of this is from my original entry. I happened to save a part of it while I was typing it out, and it was still on Mandy's computer. )

First of all, I should say that the entire week was not what I was expecting, and hoping it would be. That said, in some ways I was disappointed by the week, and in other ways I felt that it was rather valuable at the same time. Sean Gandini is a brilliant juggler, and a fine artist as well. I admire what he does.

Sean's class were separated into the following categories (on which I will write a little about each one): Warm-up and Games, Site-Swap Notation, Two to Three Person Three Ball Patterns, Club Passing, Sean's Five Eight-counts Juggling Routine, and The Show.

Warm-up and Games:
Sean started the first class by having us do a warm-up that felt close to being a dancer's warm-up. He taught us a simple sequence of steps that carried us across the floor, all while carrying and tossing a single ball from one hand to the other. He explained that this was mostly a warm-up for our legs, since we would be doing a lot of moving with juggling in the class. We actually didn't do that same warm-up again for the rest of the week. Considering the direction of the style Sean was taking us, it would have been good to do that warm-up every day. However, time was a major issue. Because he arrived late from Spain, we had already lost a couple of hours with him. What we did do, much to my pleasure, was end every class with games and/or competitions. The competition was an endurance competition. The game required that everyone juggle 4 or 5 objects (depending on your skill level,) until the last person dropped (that person becoming the winner.) I only won a couple of those rounds. Its amazing, running into someone like Sean Gandini, who can juggle 5 clubs longer than I can juggle 5 balls. On the last day, Sean had some fun with the competition and had everyone juggling odd combinations of objects. He started us off with everyone juggling a ball, a club, and a ring (with no practicing before the competition started.) Then he took the odd object up into combinations of 4 objects (still choosing between clubs, balls, and rings.) I remember for the five odd object portion of that competition, I was juggling 3 balls in a fountain on my right, and two rings in a fountain on my left. Needless to say, that pattern didn't last very long. For the games portion, we played Combat. Combat is my favourite juggling game, but in the entire week, I didn't win a single round! Oh well. It was still loads of fun.

Site-Swap Notation:
Without a doubt, this is one of the main areas where Sean Gandini's is a very valuable instructor. Sean started the lessons off by teaching everyone the basics of site-swap notation. For the fist lesson, he didn't cover anything that I didn't already know, but he did present an interesting method of showing how it works. He likened site-swap notation to airports. He said that each hand is a terminal and the balls were like airplanes going from one terminal to another, with the air traffic control (site-swap notation) was in control of how long each plane was in the air, and what hand it landed in. I won't begin to bother to explain how site-swap works (there are plenty of well written papers available on the internet that explain it in better detail than I could.) After explaining simple site-swap notation, he gave us some site-swap patterns to work on. I already knew the "342" and the "441" so I wrote down some of the other patterns he presented us such as: 522, 45141, 4512, and 45123. The 522 seemed simple enough. The way I translate that pattern is just as a very slow cascade with high throws. Sean however started showing us all the different things you can do with the ball while holding it in the "2." I found just making small throws (half the size of a "4" throw) difficult. Sean was doing complicated things like using the time in the "2" hold to reach across with the hand holding the "2" and tossing the ball over the opposite arm (over the elbow,) back into the same hand. That trick has a very nice affect. I did manage to learn the 45141 (which feels like a weird mix between a shuffle and a shower.) After covering the more simple site-swap notation patterns, Sean started talking about families of Site-Swap. He showed us three different families. The first family was the 42, 522, 62222, and 72222. The second family was the 53, 633, 7333, and the 83333. The third family was the 64 and the 744. I had never thought of site-swap patterns having "families," but looking at these patterns, it is obvious to me how they do fall into families. I found this fascinating. In the second lesson of Site-swap, Sean started going into information about site-swap that I knew existed, but I did not yet understand. First he mentioned the "x" symbol. The "x" symbol basically is placed next to a even numbered site-swap number to indicate that the throw is a crossing throw. For example, a 4x is the height and time of a 4, but it is a crossing throw. Next he talked about how to notate things like the box. What is interesting about the box pattern is that two things are happening at the same time, so simple site-swap notation has no way of indicating what is going on. So to indicate that two things are happening at the same time, you put those two things in brackets. For example, the box would be (4,2x)(2x,4) Assuming you start with the two balls in the left hand, the first bracket set indicates that your right hand tosses a 4, and at the same time, your left hand tosses a 2x. The second bracket set indicates that you do the opposite. Apparently the "*" indicates that you do to the opposite side what you just did. So the short notation for the box is (4,2x)*. Also in my notes I have written that the site-swap notation for the "one-up, two up" pattern is (4,4)(4,0). Next Sean went into a bizarre collection of 4 balls site-swap tricks. He explained that there is a whole family of 4 ball patterns that are based on the 4 ball sync pattern. He explained that when he thinks of 4 ball sync patterns visually, he thinks of them as domino tiles.

For example, there are these three combinations:


The first diagram above is just your standard 4 ball sync pattern. The second one can be juggled out of a 4 ball sync fountain either with a (6x,4) or a (6,4x) and to get out of that pattern and back to a regular 4 ball sync fountain, you would throw either (2,4x) or (4x,2x). The third diagram can be juggled out of a 4 ball sync fountain either with (6,4) or a (4x,6x) and to get out of that pattern and back into a regular 4 ball sync fountain, you would throw either a (2,4) or a (4x,2x).

Needless to say, most of these patterns I can't do yet. Site-Swap is easy to understand, and very helpful in learning patterns, but at the end of the day, you still have to put in the time to get your muscles to learn the sequence. I'm sure people like Sean can come pretty close to reading an unfamiliar site-swap pattern and juggling it after a few tries, but I am just not at that level. Sean gave us three sheets of paper with several patterns on them. I'm sure I will be using those hand-outs in the future.


Two to Three Person Three Ball Patterns:

Club Passing:
Exercise #1: 7 club passing (2-count); both passers making double spin passes, and double spin left handed self throws.

Exercise #2: 7 club passing (2-count); both passers making single spin passes, and double spin left handed self throws (this one is a real mind twister.)

Exercise #3: 8 club passing (2-count); both passers making double spin passes, and double spin left handed self throws.

Exercise #4: 9 club passing; One person starts with 5 clubs, the other with four. The person with the 5 clubs starts by doing 6 throws of a 5 club double spin cascade (this gets them used to the idea of throwing left handed double spin selfs.) The 7th throw (the fourth right hand throw) is thrown as a regular double spin pass. At this point the person who started with 5 goes into a 2 count passing pattern; double spin passes, and double spin self throws. The person with 4 clubs makes their first pass right after the other person passes their first club. The person starting with 4 clubs does not do double spin self throws. This allows for one person to practice the hard part with someone who is only a 8 club passer.

Exercise #5:10 club passing (double spin pass, double spin self;) both passers start with 5 clubs. Each, in sync, do 6 throws of a 5-club cascade. The seventh throw (4th from the right hand) is a double spin pass. At this point both passers go into a 2 count pattern. The passers can stand pretty close to each other, because, in essence, what they are doing is mixing two 5-club cascades together.


Sean's Five Eight-counts Juggling Routine:
The Show:

Movement class (9:30-11:00) Notes (this class was used to wrap up our study of status levels):

-movement medicine: 20 positions

-move around room, tempo, slow to fast, sustained to sudden

-do status exercises for people who hadn't had a chance to practice them yet:

Telling a story using varying status levels (set by Helen): Phil, Tom, and Eley told a story.

Doing a teacher/student (low/high or high/low) status scene: Eley and Pascal did a scene, and Deniz and I did a scene (but our scene was a archeologist/digger scene. I was the digger.)

Ended the class with high status "Thank You and Goodnight." exercise

PT class (11:15-1:15) This was the last clowning class. For some reason I didn't write down any notes after this class. (I will have to check with other students to get the details)

- talked / wrapped up clowning Q&A session

- played Simon Says

- 4 movements based on 9 movements from Movement Technique class: table top (butt shifting), samurai (stomp/moves), tragedy (skip walk--like ghostbusters), arlequine (weeble wobble)

- learn sequence of all 4. 1/2 class performed while 1/2 watched. Bim called out the changes

- laugh, cry, sing (as loud and dramaticaly as possible)

-groups of 4 (laugh, cry, sing, move) rotate

-talked at end of class about carnival/baffoon

-Books to read (if time permits):

-The Golden Bough - JG Frazer (read section on Temporary Kings)

-Three Late Medieval Plays (Mankind, Everyman, Munduset Infans)

-Rabelias & His Word - Mikhail Bakhtin

-Carnivalesque

In the afternoon, we watched the Acro Intensive Week presentation. It was amazing!! I was very happy, and excited for them, they did an amazing job.

Walking:
1. Use of Weight:
Upper Body/Lower Body
Strong/Passive/Light

2. Relation to Space:
Direct/Flexible
Disturbing/Not Disturbing

3. Time:
Tempo, Sudden/Staccato
Sustained/Continuous
Phrasing

4. Posture:
Think of Status Scale

5. Gestures:
Habitual/Unconscious Movements
Feet, Legs
Hands, Head
Shoulders
Torso
Pelvis

After the exercise was over, we spoke briefly about the exercise. One thing of interest that Helen pointed out was that there was not much of a difference between the way the boys and girls walked, and moved. The reason, she said, that she wanted us to see this through the exercise, was that she imagined that if she just came right out and asked us to walk like the opposite gender, she would probably get a bunch of stereotypical representations of each gender. I believe she was right about this.

After Movement (11:00am,) I did not have anything scheduled until 2:00pm. I spent some of that time up in the quiet room, chatting with Phil, and eating my lunch. Around 12:45 I wandered over to the South Wing to work on my juggling. I only stayed there for a short while because it occurred to me that it was colder inside the South Wing than it was outside. So I went out to the grass and continued to juggle. I worked for a while on my project, experimenting with the new music I have. Eventually people started to join me on the grass. I did a little club passing with Michel (but he gave up quickly,) and then I did some passing with Jeremiah (who is getting much better,) and I even taught Jeremiah the three count passing pattern. He picked that up rather quickly. Around 1:45 I headed into Studio 2 to just hang out by myself. I was feeling depressed for some reason, and just wanted to be alone for a while. I sat down in a chair behind the big blue screen and put my shoes up on the table. Apparently my shoes were visible on the other side of the screen, because when Phil came in, he checked to see whose shoes they were. Then, being the crazy kid he is, he went into a little skit of playing the game show host of a show called "Whose Shoes are these?" And he interviewed several people as they were coming into Studio 2 for PT class, asking them whom my shoes belonged to. I think Polly was the only one to respond, and she said it was Bim's shoes. Phil cracks me up.

PT class started right at 2:00pm. My bad mood/depression was getting worse, despite Phil's attempts to cheer me up, and Bim noticed it, because he asked me if I was all right after the first exercise. For the first exercise, we just did a group flocking exercise as we did in the last PT class. This time, however, Bim asked us to avoid moving into the inner circle, and move more as a school of fish. He also asked us to try to use the various levels of tension in this exercise, and to play around with excitement and despair. My group did okay, but generally the energy of our flocking was low-probably because of my mood. For the next exercise, Bim had half the class stand on one end of the room, and the other half stand on the opposite end, and he instructed us to yell across at each other, using as many gestures as possible. The idea was that we were a football crowd, insulting the opposite team. After this, Bim had us do the same exercise again, but instead of screaming insults, we were to scream compliments (as if talking to a lover,) but with the same physical gestures as we used during the insults. Then he had us do the same exercise again, but just in pairs, (I imagine so that it was easier to hear and understand the words, because honestly, I could not tell the difference between the first two versions of this exercise.) For the next exercise, Bim had us get into pairs. I originally was going to work with Polly on this exercise, but switched to work with Catalina. The exercise involved having a conversation with your partner, but using insults in a kind manner. Bim said an example of this is in the marketplace where people refer to each other with rude words or insults, but in a friendly, loving manner (e.g. "How the hell are you doing, you old bastard?") Anyway, Bim was encouraging people to do this exercise in their native tongue, so he was matching up the people who speak the same language, and when he asked about Spanish (for Catalina,) I volunteered. I immediately realized my mistake when the exercise started. I am fluent in Spanish, but I must confess I have a small collection of rude words in my vocabulary. Catalina, however was going off, using words I had never heard, words, I could tell were very much Chilean slang. Next, after that exercise, Bim had us present what we had worked on yesterday in PT practice. Charlotte was home sick today, so that meant that only two of the groups were ready to go. Also, two other students could not make the PT practice session because of schedule conflicts, so they didn't have anything prepared. In the end, the two groups (including my group,) presented their material, and the other group took on the extra people, and did an improvised version. Overall, the pieces didn't work very well. We all found this exercise difficult to do. Especially because it is only funny the first time you watch it, then after that, it looses its humour, so you don't know what is actually funny anymore. For the next exercise, Bim had us go into a sort of medieval mode. He set us up in groups of 3-4 people. I was in a group of 3 (Catalina, Phil, and myself.) The task was for one person to play a king, a second person to play the jester, and the 3rd and 4th (if that were the case,) were to play the audience. The king is very arrogant, and is constantly looking for compliments. The jester plays a character that compliments the king, but turns to the audience after each compliment, to verify through gestures, and facial expressions that he means the opposite of the compliment. This was difficult, because you had to find ways to respond that could have double meanings. Bim gave the best example of how to do this by saying his jester would say, after being asked to comment on his clothing, "Oh yes Master, you always have such a wide range of colours in your wardrobe." This is funny because Bim ALWAYS wears black-from his head to his toes. We each had an opportunity to play each of the three roles. It was a difficult exercise, in my opinion. For the next two exercises, I just sat and watched. Bim first had Eley, Polly, Pascal, and Deniz go up to the front. His instructions to them were that Eley would be giving a talk to a bunch of school children (us,) about sex, and the other three would be standing right behind him. They were also students, and reacted as children would (with a topic like that, and being up in front of the class in front of their fellow classmates.) Needless to say, with the topic of sex education, it became very funny at moments. Next Bim had Annette, Yam, Tom and a third person who I can't remember, go up and do the same exercise, but this time; Annette was to talk about morality. This one didn't go off as well. Part of the reason was that they were not listening to what Annette was actually saying, and responding to it. For the final exercise, Bim separated the class into two groups. For this exercise, we did what he called an inversion. Half of the class, he had lay down, sprawled out on a couple of crash mats. He explained that that half of the class was the upper class, very rich crowd, and they would be having a feast (presented in detail by Bim.) The other half was the lower class, poor, beggars, sitting outside in the cold, looking through the window at the feast going on. As the scene progressed, he instructed the poor class to go into some kind of trance, due to the hunger, where they slowly begin to have a vision, and see some God up above them, and start to sing in a thin ghostly voice, and on the crash mats, the glutinous group kept eating and eating until they all died of overeating. It was an interesting combination. Each half of the class took their turn at playing each role. That exercise made me hungry! At the end of the class, we just hung out on the crash mats, while Bim talked to us. He talked to us about the three kinds of fear; universal, social, and personal. Universal fear being fears that are not created by culture or society, (e.g. death.) Social fears are created by societies, (e.g. clothing, social status, farting, all the dos and don'ts of society.) And personal fears are ones that happen to some individuals but not all (e.g. fear of heights, spiders, water, balloons, etc.) Bim mentioned that we would be addressing these various fears, and that the way Carnival handles fears is by making fun of them.

After PT, I spent the rest of what was left of my day in the Gym working mostly on my juggling. I did a fair amount of work with cigar boxes. My newest trick, that I am quite proud of, with cigar boxes is letting go of the 2 boxes on the right, taking the box that is in the left hand, behind the back, placing it in the right hand, then the left hand returns grabbing what was the middle box, while the right hand brings its box back into place. I also did a lot of stretching while in the gym. And as well, I worked on my forward rolls. Kay and Phil took an interest in my forward rolls, and each came over and was helping me out, giving me some good pointers. They each said my forward rolls were looking much better (which is interesting, because I have not actually done any in at least a month!) Towards the end of my day, I did some club passing with Kay and taught her how to do a 441 while passing clubs. She ALMOST did one, but not quite. I believe she could, though.

Around 6:30 I headed home. I was feeling tired. I checked my email, and then headed to bed around 8:00pm.