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01/01/03 Day Eleven (of my Winter Break) New Years day: I woke up around 8:30am and came down stairs from the attic, to discover an ocean of bodies all bundled up in sleeping bags all over the place. It reminded me of when we had a housefull of juggler staying at our place during BOB. Knowing that it would be several hours before anyone would wake up, and that I would be rather bored just sitting there waiting for people to wake up, I set myself on the task of cleaning up the kitchen, and doing the dishes. We had left quite a mess. After doing the dishes, and cleaning up the kitchen, with a little help from a couple of others who woke up early as well, I decided to lay down on the couch. I fell asleep, and slept for at least an hour. When I woke up, and got up and wandered into the kitchen, I found that the clean kitchen I had left had been overrun by people preparing breakfast, and using up many of the dishes I had just washed. Well, that is the nature of life. Of course, the reward was getting to sit down and eat some toast and bacon, and a glass of pineapple juice.
Eventually everyone woke up, and we spent the early afternoon just lounging about. I spent some time in the back conservatory working on some cigar box moves. Around 4:00pm, we packed up the car to head back to Bristol. We went back in Richard's car, with one more person--Annette joined us. The ride back was longer than the ride there. But we occupied our time towards the end with some fun lateral thinking puzzles. I have several that are my favorites.
We arrived home, feeling tired. Annette stayed the night, sleeping in the living room. I went to bed pretty early (around 9:30pm.)
01/02/03 Day Twelve (of my Winter Break) Because Circomedia is closed today, very little worth mentioning happened today. Around 10:00am I took my bike back to the shop AGAIN. Same problem; the back wheel is loose in the axis. The guy at the shop told me that he would put in a heavy duty axis in it for free. This is why I'm glad I bought a new bike (under waranty) and not a used one. They told me it would be ready the next day at noon. On the way, walking home, from the bike shop, I knew I would be walking past a certain part of town where Will had spotted a Moscow State Circus poster for a show they had here in Bristol a couple of years ago. Will wanted the poster, but when we walked past it on Sunday night after going to Comedy at the Bunch of Grapes, we discovered that it was behind the glass of the window it was on. I decided I would try and get the poster for him. It involved going on a little adventure around the back of the building, finding a mechanic's shop, talking to an Indian mechanic who was very curious why I wanted the poster, and following the man back into what appeared to be a graveyard of autoparts where he pulled down two of the posters. I asked him for two (out of the three that were up,) because I figured there was a better chance of getting one poster that was relatively intact. Will seemed pleased to get the posters.
Annette, Will and I went shopping at Lidl at some point. Then also at some point we tried to go juggle in the park near my house, but it proved to be too cold. Then after that we played hacky sack in the driveway while listening to music (this was probably the highlight of the day.) In the evening I made a pot of soup, and Daren (Annette's friend,) came over and the four of us watched Shashank Redemption. I went to bed shortly after the movie was over around 11:30pm.
01/03/03 Day Thirteen (and last day of my Winter Break) Alas, my last day... I started my day out by walking to the bicycle shop around 11:30am and picking up my newly repaired bike. They put a new, higher quality hub on the back wheel. He explained to me that the bike I bought comes standard with a pretty poor quality hub. I found this interesting. I'm guessing they take a chance that most of their costumers are not as large as I am, and do not ride their bikes as many miles as I do, and therefore do not have to replace the hub that often. They probably also assume that many will not bother to claim on the warranty for something as small as a broken hub. Such is not the case for me. Anyway, my bike is fixed, and it has a heavy duty hub on it now, and I didn't have to pay anything for it.
Around 1:15pm, Will and I headed up to Circomedia. We stayed there until about 8:30pm. Very little time went by in those 7 hours where we were not juggling. We had a couple of nice long sessions of passing 9 clubs on double spins. I also learned a new cigar box trick, and created a new one as well. I am coming up with new tricks on the cigar boxes every day. I also made a significant amount of progress in learning how to idle on my unicycle. Also my left hand turning is getting better.
In the evening, after returning from Circomedia, we got some food, and then decided to head over to the pub near my house. Annette joined us, and the three of us played a round of darts. It was fun. I'm surprised I haven't taken more advantage of this pub before. They have a nice dart-board, and nice darts as well. Plus they have a pool table that is free.
After the pub Annette asked if she could check out my website. So I set her up. She was still reading my diary when I went to bed.
01/04/03 Saturday: Around 9:30am, Will and I headed up to Circomedia. Shortly after arriving it started to snow. It snowed for about 30 minutes, but the snow just melted when it hit the ground. We stayed at Circomedia until around 5:00pm. We did a lot of 9 club passing. I brought my video camera and captured some nice long runs. I think our best run, captured on video, was 37 passes each (I'm not sure if you would call that 37 or 74 passes.) I came up with a neat variation to another cigar box trick. Annette, and Oskar eventually joined us. I did a little passing with Oskar. All in all it was a long day of juggling. I felt very tired at the end of the day, and went to bed pretty early.
01/05/03 Sunday: Will and I did not arrive at Circomedia until around 2:10pm today. Before we left for Circomedia, Phil had called me from his mobile phone to tell me that Helen was looking for me. So when we arrived at Circomedia, I went directly to see what Helen needed. She offered me the opportunity, for one day, of doing the cleaning job that Yam usually does. I agreed, and went back to set up Will so he could juggle for a couple of hours while I did the cleaning. After I did the cleaning, I watched Phil and Tamsen do their routine and gave them some feedback. Then Will and I worked on all the 7 club patterns that he will be teaching tommorow in his 7 club passing workshop. Here is the patterns that he taught me:
Patterns (Seven Clubs):
--Every other triples (four count pattern throwing triple spin passes): sync pattern, both start with right hand, person starting with four clubs does a triple spin pass r to left, and person starting with 3 clubs does a single self r to l.
--Single vrs triple: sync 2 count pattern, person starting w/ 4 throws triples, other throws single spins, person with three clubs waits a whole beat before starting or does a right to left self throw before starting.
--Crossing Doubles: One person throws left to left passes double spin, other person passes right to right double spin passes--staggered like a regular double spin 7 club 2 count.
--STTs(Single, Triple, Triple, self):4 club person starts at the begining of the pattern, does a single spin pass, then two triple spin passes all on a 2 count, then they do a right to left self, then cycle over. The person with 3 clubs starts with the second triple (they are exactly out of phase)
--STTTTho (Single, Triple, Triple, Triple, Triple, hand over): Person starting w/ 4 clubs start at the begining of the pattern and do a single spin pass, followed by 4 triple spin passes all on a 2 count, then after their next left self they do a hand across from the right to the left, then the club that was handed across is passed as a left to right self which forces the first single pass of the begining of the pattern. The person with 3 clubs starts on the third triple (TThoSTT)
--3 Count and 1 Count 7 club passing: On both patterns the person with 4 clubs passes straight across, and the person with 3 passes on the diagonal. 3 count is usually done in doubles, and 1 count is usually done in single spin.
--PPs (Pass Pass self) with 7 clubs: on sync pattern, some collision risk that you have to figure out how to avoid.
Person with 3 clubs does a right to left self, followed by a left single spin pass to right, followed by a right to right double spin pass (sPP) at this point the pattern starts over but reverses sides.
Person with 4 clubs starts the pattern with (PPS) and all their passes are crossing double spin passes their first pass being a right to right double spin pass.
--321 or Popcorn: Staggered pattern. Person with 4 clubs does a right to left double spin pass, followed by a right to left single spin self, followed by a right to left triple spin self (213) Person with 3 clubs (321) starts off with a right to left triple self, followed by a right to left double spin pass, followed by a right to left single self.
To keep this pattern in the right tempo, watch the double spin pass coming in, and place your triple spin self above the double spin pass.
(Annette's variation is replacing the triple spin self and the left single spin self immediadetly following the triple with two double spin throws straight up (right double, left double)
Another variation is bringing down the triples to doubles, and the doubles to singles--gives it a kind of gallop feeling.
---32 vs 12: Staggered pattern, person with 4 clubs starts with the double spin pass. One person does triple spin right handed selfs, and the other person does single spin right handed selfs. Each does double spin passes. the "32" person is training for the feedee position of a 11 club feed, and the "12" person is training for the feedee position of a 10 club feed.
---32212: All 2s are right to left double spin passes, all 3's are right to left triple spin selfs, and all 1's are right to left single spin selfs. Staggered pattern. Person with 4 clubs (21232) Person with 3 (32212)
--10 club feed: Feeder starts with 4 clubs, each feedee starts with 3 clubs each. Staggered pattern. Each person does double spin passes, feeder on a 2 count, feedees on a 4 count.
Alternate: 10 club random feed. Because each feedee is passing a half a beat after they are passed to, the feeder should be able to make random passes, and the feedees will only pass back if they see a club coming in their direction.
--11 club feed: Feeder does exact same passing as in 10 club feed, but starts with the feedee who has 3 clubs, but recieves first from the feedee who has 4 clubs. Staggered pattern, each feedee does a double spin pass and a right to left triple spin self (four count pattern)
At 6:00pm we headed home. I cooked a couple of fozen pizzas for us, and we hung out watching TV until 8:30 when we walked to the Bunch of Grapes pub to watch the free Sunday night stand-up comedy. The comedy was better this time, but there were only Mark and Simon on stage this time. After the comedy ended, Will and I walked home. I went to bed shortly after getting home around 11:30pm.
01/06/03 Day Fifty-six: First day back at school from my winter
break. I woke up around 7:00am, did a quick diary entry for the
previous day, and got ready for school. I woke up Will around
7:45 and let him know he could either ride up with me at 8:30am,
or wait an extra half-hour and show up at Circomedia at 9:30. He
opted for the later. The ride up to Circomedia was uneventful. So
far my bike is being good. There was no rain, but there was a lot
of frost all over the place. It was quite cold. Strangely, just a
few minutes before I arrived at Circomedia, I started feeling
very dizzy and faint. As soon as I got there, I tore into some of
my lunch, hoping the food would help me out, plus I drank some
water. This seemed to help. I'm not sure what caused the
dizziness and faintness. I had a decent breakfast. By time the
warm-up started, I was fine. Rachel is leading the warm-ups this
week. She started with us playing stick in the mud. Everyone was
moving a little slow, it seemed to me. After the game, she took
us through a basic warm-up. It felt good to stretch and warm up
my body.
After warm-up and shortly before my first class, Rod showed up. I
explained to him that Will and I had learned several 7
club-passing patterns, and that Will was prepared to do a
workshop on those patterns. Rod said it would work out that Will
could teach his workshop during the class time (which I was
hoping would be the case.) As we were speaking, Will pulled up to
the gym on Phil's bike. Shortly after that, I had introduced Will
to Rod, and the E&M class was getting on its way. We started
the class with the game where we hit the red ball as a group as
many times as possible. Our previous record was 194 hits. After
several attempts, we never managed to break 50. Oh well. After
the warm-up, Rod separated us into two groups. Those who are
comfortable with passing 7 clubs went to the far end of the gym
(that included myself, Will, Annette, and Oskar.) Everyone else
stayed at the front of the gym and worked with Rod. Rod covered
basic passing with these people. There was actually only one
person in the class, Jeremiah, who had no experience with passing
clubs. Will's workshop did not cover all the patterns we learned
on Sunday, mostly because of the shortage of time. But we worked
on the following patterns (refer to the descriptions of each
pattern in the above diary entry): Crossing Doubles, 3212 or
Popcorn, the reduced spin variation of Popcorn, 32 vs. 12, 10
club feed, and the 11 club feed. Unfortunately Annette is having
some problems with her right arm and fingers, so she was not able
to tackle the patterns as vigorously as she might have wanted to.
Each of us learned the different parts of each of those patterns.
I was bummed we didn't get to cover more of the other patterns.
At the end, Rod brought the class back together, and we
demonstrated what each group had learned. The class had actually
separated into 4 groups. Jeremiah, who had never passed,
demonstrated a half a dozen or so passes on a 4 count with Rachel
the TT. Phil and Pascal had been working on passing a 4 count
pattern with double spin passes. The pattern didn't last long,
mostly because Pascal's passes were under spun. Then Merlin and
Ashling showed us a nice finished passing routine that involved 6
or so passes on a 2 count, finishing with a double spin pass for
a clean finish. Oskar and I demonstrated the Crossing Doubles.
Then Will and Annette demonstrated the 321 or Popcorn pattern.
Then Oskar and I demonstrated the reduced spin version. Then Will
and Annette demonstrated the 32 vs. 12 pattern. Then Will, Oskar,
and I demonstrated the 11 club feed, with myself feeding (as it
is the easier position!) and Will and Oskar being the feedees.
After that, Will and I demonstrated our 9 club passing pattern in
double spin passes. We didn't manage a very long run. I was
hoping to pull off another run of 37 passes each, but it didn't
happen. Incidentally, Greg Phillips, who reads my diary on a
regular basis, wrote in to tell me that by IJA standards, I can
actually call the 37 passes 74 passes, since each of us is making
37 passes. Thanks for the information, Greg. After only getting a
short run of 9 clubs in front of the class, I let them know we
had done 74 passes a couple of days ago. :) E&M ended around
11:15, and I had a 15 minute break before my next class. I gave
Will directions to the Kingswood shopping area, and told him if
he wanted to return and do some more passing, I would be
available from 1:00 until 2:00pm during my lunch break.
At 11:30, I headed over to Studio 2 for Performance. Bim was
teaching the lesson, and this week we are covering Stage Combat.
I have taken a couple of Stage Combat workshops from Jyl Hewston
at HSU. Bim had us start the class by doing a quick review of
pushing and pulling-the mime movement we learned in our movement
technique class last term. While reviewing this movement, he had
us take special note of what parts of the body moved and in what
order. Then we moved on to imagining different parts of our
bodies being pulled or pushed, breaking down the movement, and
becoming aware of what parts of our body move, and in what order
they move. The different body parts we pushed/pulled were; the
nose, the chin, the forehead, the back of the head, both
shoulders, the chest, the upper back, the lower back, the
stomach, the sides, and the back of the knee. After going over
these body parts, and having each one pushed and or pulled, as a
group, Bim had us each get a partner and practice. The partner
would, using only the soft touch of their index finger to
indicate where on the body the strike would take place and at
what angle, and the other person has to respond as if they had
been pushed/struck. After that he had us move into our own space
and practice randomly each move, increasing the pushes up to hits
and slaps. So basically each of us looked as if we were standing
there in a spot in the room getting beaten up by an invisible
person. Quite amusing to watch from the distance, I imagine. Next
Bim separated the class in half, and had one half watch while the
other half did the similar exercise, but included the desire to
get to the opposite door (presumably to get away.) My group went
first. Watching the other group was interesting. They all managed
to take a step forward (towards the door,) in the same tempo, and
all get struck by some kind of blow at the same time. It had a
very amusing affect. Next we got together with another partner
and started working on the full stage combat techniques. We
started with the slap. Bim explained that the stage combat strike
is divided into three sections; set-up (drawing your hand back to
indicate that you are going to strike, and creating the tempo,)
action (actually moving your hand in a striking motion towards
their face,) and reaction (the person being hit responding to the
strike.) First we did a trust exercise where one person just
stands there while the other person makes a striking motion
towards their face, stopping just short of the person's face.
Then we worked on progressing the slap so that it has a follow
through (usually an upward motion.) And next we added the
response of the person being slapped. And finally we added the
knap. For the knap we simply slap the upstage thigh with our hand
at the time of impact. After practicing the move several times,
Bim had each group of people demonstrate the move for the class.
It was amusing because I was teamed up with Ashling, who is a
very small person next to me. After the slap we worked on
punches. We learned 2 punches; the upper cut, and the straight on
punch. With both punches, the downstage fist approaches the
downstage side of the profile face. The uppercut one approaches
the cheek and then arches up (with an appropriate response from
the one being hit,) and the straight on one just approaches the
cheek then pulls back. For the knap on this one, you use the
upstage loose fist and make a thudding sound by striking your own
chest. After practicing this one each pair demonstrated the
technique to the rest of the class. Unlike the first time we
demonstrated our moves (the slap,) where each pair moved to the
front of the class to demonstrate, this time we stayed in the
circular pattern that had formed and went around the room
demonstrating. I don't know if this was intentional, but it was
good to watch them this way, because it gave you a good view of
the different angles of viewing, and it helped us see which angle
would be most realistic for these moves. The next move we worked
on was the kick to the stomach/groin area. The person being
kicked has to, as they see the kick coming in, move their hands
into place so that with the arms extended, the hands are placed
one over the other with about 2 inches of space between them
(back of one hand facing the palm of the other,) so that they are
located near the groin area, and about 3 inches out in front. The
person kicking kicks so that when their foot makes contact with
the person's hands, their leg is extended, and their foot is
completely extended as well. The motion of the foot striking the
hands causes the hands to hit each other and make the knap sound.
As soon as the strike happens, the person being kicked has two
possible responses; they can either use their hands (which are
already there,) to cover the struck area, and double over in
pain, or they can pull their hands back to make it look like the
blow was strong enough to send the person back, making their arms
fly out to their sides. We worked on this for a while, and then
again, taking turns, each pair demonstrated what they had
learned. For the final part of the class we worked on 3 different
falls. For this we each brought out a thing gym mat to fall on.
The first fall was the side fall. For this move, Bim taught us
that the foot that is attached to the leg that is going to hit
the mat first, should be tucked behind the other leg. This
creates a curve in the leg. As you fall, your body curves down
onto the floor, and your hand slides out as the rest of your body
hits the mat. The second fall we learned was forward fall. For
this one he had us bend our knees as far as possible getting them
as close to the ground as possible before falling onto them, then
once you are on your knees, your upper torso, slightly arched,
continues to fall forward in a sort of rolling motion. The third
fall we learned was falling onto one's back. For this one, you
lean forward as much as possible and at the same time lower your
bum towards the floor, keeping your legs straight. At some point,
gravity will win, and you fall onto your bum. At this point you
continue falling backwards onto your back. The final fall Bim
demonstrated I did not try on the harder mats, but moved to one
of the bigger, thicker mats to try. It is a forward fall without
the falling onto the knees first. Basically it is a clown move.
You fall forward, your body stays unbent the entire time, and you
catch yourself on your hands in a press-up position, quickly
lowering yourself. It looks painful. But I imagine with practice
you could get it pretty smoothly. At the end of class, Bim let us
know that we would be devising a fight routine with a partner for
presentations on Friday.
After Performance, I headed over to the gym to meet up with Will.
I wasn't sure he would be back, but he did come back. So he and I
spent a good chunk of my lunch break passing 9 clubs. After the
break, I told Will I would not be available for the rest of the
day and would probably see him back at the house around 6:00pm.
At 2:00 I headed over to Studio 2 for Dip Notes. Rod was teaching
Drip Notes today and was going over our previous Action Plans, so
that we could fill out new ones. He handed out some form that was
not as organized and well designed as the first one. He then
started talking about changing the format, and asking us if we
would like a different format for the Action Plan. We all agreed,
so Rod ended the class early, letting us know he would get us the
new forms by Wednesday. I spent time in the class mapping out my
new goals and commenting on the old ones (e.g. which ones I was
continuing with, and which ones were successful, and which ones I
had decided to abandon.) I will post the results of my new Action
Plan when I get the new form.
At 3:00pm I noticed that because we hadn't had a PT class yet,
there was no reason to stick around for PT practice. So suddenly
I realized I could go home at 3:00 if I wanted to. I thought of
staying and juggling for a while, but decided it would be better
to conserve my strength, so I headed over to the gym to pack up
my stuff to go home. When I arrived at the gym, I found Will
there, working on his kicking the hacky-sack and juggling 3 clubs
at the same time trick. He apparently had been hanging out in the
gym since I left at 2:00. I told him that I got out of class
early. Suddenly I wanted to do some more juggling, so I asked him
if he wanted to do some more passing. He agreed, and we passed 9
clubs for 45 minutes-until we had to leave because the Acro
practice session was starting. We managed to break one of my
clubs during this session. Its been bizarre, Will and I have
broken 4 (3 of his, and one of my,) clubs since he arrived. I
guess it is all that 9 club passing we have been doing.
At 3:45 I had a couple of loose ends to tie up, and shortly
before 4:00pm, Will and I headed home on the bikes. Once we got
home, I asked Will to help me type up the details of all the
seven club passing patterns he had taught me. Mostly I just
needed him to remind me of a few details here and there. I posted
the details of the patterns in the above (Sunday,) diary entry.
Around 7:00 we walked down to get some take-out, returning, to
eat it at the house. Then at 8:30, Richard came by (with Annette,
and Jamie) and gave Will and I a ride to the Monday night
juggling club meeting. At the meeting, Will and I did a bunch of
passing. We started out with 6, doing tricks, then moved up to 7,
8, and back up to 9. By time we ended the nine club juggling, my
hands were starting to crack open a little and bleed from a
combination of too much juggling, and cold/dry weather. Next
Tarim, and Will and I worked on a 3 count feed, with the feeder
alternating because of one of the feedees running over to the
other side. It became a rotating feed after a while. I had done
this before on a 4 count feed, but never on a 3 count feed. It
was fun to learn. After the juggling club meeting, we all went to
the pub and hung out. I had a soft-drink, and chatted with
people. I was feeling quite tired.
We got home around 11:30, and I went straight to bed.
01/07/03 Day Fifty-seven: I got up this morning around 5:00am,
and got to work on my diary entry. Finished that up, and did a
quick job of getting ready for school. Around 8:30, I woke up
Will and said goodbye to him. He is heading back to Bath on the
train, where he will spend the night with his aunt, and then head
to London to catch his flight back to the States. I hopped on my
bike and headed up the hill. The ride was much like yesterday's.
It was cold but dry. There is a path that I ride my bike on
towards the end of my trip that is usually quite muddy. The mud
is all frozen, which is nice because that means it won't splatter
onto my clothes. I arrived at school shortly before 9:00am.
Rachel led the warm-up again this morning. She started with a
couple of games of snake tag, followed by a basic warm-up.
At 9:30 I had a break until 11:30 when my conditioning class was
scheduled to start. So for the first bit of my break I went and
finished up the cleaning job that I was doing in Yam's absence.
Then I returned to the gym where Phil and Tamsen were rehearsing
their juggling clown act that they are going to perform at some
schools soon. I am helping them out with it a little, giving them
some direction here and there, so I sat and watched their
routine, and kept stopping them, making suggestions for how to
make it better.
At 11:30 I headed over to my conditioning class. The class was
pretty basic. Same as it was last term, just lots of slow,
controlled movements that shouldn't be hard but are. Most of
these movements are a test of strength and balance. I always feel
good coming out of these classes.
At 1:00pm I went upstairs and ate my lunch. Annette was watching
juggling videos, and I caught a cigar box routine that was pretty
amazing. Not as good as Charlie Brown, but pretty good. I need to
go back and watch it again.
At 1:50 it was time for Movement Technique. This term we are
covering Contact Dance. Liz started the class off with a warm-up
that involved a lot of lying down on the floor. I would soon
discover that most of the class was spent on the floor. The
warm-up consisted basically of three moves. The first move was
lying down on the floor on your back with your knees bent, feet
flat on the floor. From this position, we do leg swings. The next
movement was going from stretched out on your side to a fetal
position to rolling onto your back, then rolling onto your other
side in the fetal position, and stretching out again. The final
move is a bit hard to describe, but you basically are on one side
of your body, both arms on one side, one on top of the other,
both knees on one side, and you slowly roll over to the opposite
position, unpeeling your arms and legs as you move over. After
the warm-ups, Liz had us, while we were still laying on the
floor, very slowly, very smoothly roll over to on end of the gym.
There she explained what the next thing we would do. Our first
exercise was to roll all the way across the gym. We did this
three at a time, to avoid collision. The idea was to find as many
different ways of rolling and as many different ways of changing
directions. She was playing very slow, soft music throughout the
class, and it was rather relaxing. I found myself closing my eyes
through much of this exercise. Once on the other side, Liz
instructed us to go back across again, but this time we were to
also include exploring ways of getting up into a seated position,
or any position that is partially elevated, but not fully
standing. But the basic idea was the same. We just needed to get
from one end to the other. Once we got to the other side, she
gave us a demonstration of rolling across the floor with a
partner. She used Alex as her partner. It was interesting to
watch them. It looks very sensual, seeing two bodies like that
rolling over each other. What is interesting about it is when one
person grabs onto a body part of the person who is rolling over
them, and the movement of them rolling over them can pull the
person holding on up and over on top. It becomes a collection of
interesting transitions. After the demonstration, we got into
pairs and tried it ourselves. I partnered up with Pascal. Liz had
us go across the floor, rolling over each other. At first I was a
little concerned about crushing my partner, but Pascal is a
strong person, and I discovered he could handle my weight pretty
well. But I still made a valiant effort to put as little weight
on him as possible. There were a few moments, however when I
ended up putting all of my weight on him for brief periods of
time. Once we got to the other side of the gym, Liz had everyone
go back again. The second time across was easier, and more
interesting. Once we all got back to the beginning, Liz set
partners up for the next round of rolling across the floor. She
set me up with Katrina. Katrina is a strong girl, but still much,
much smaller than me. So I was worried about hurting her. After
the first time across the floor with her, she asked me if I was
concerned about hurting her, and I said that I was. She told me
not to worry, and to give her more of my weight. The second time
across was a little better. I was still more reserved about using
my weight on her than I was with Pascal. The nice thing about
doing it with her is that she is light, and easy to manipulate.
After that fourth roll, Liz started us doing some cool-down
exercises (as though she were ending the class.) I thought this
was strange, because the class still had about 20 minutes left.
Apparently she thought the class ended earlier than it did. She
ended the class, and we all started to pack up to go, and someone
mentioned to her that she ended the class early so she called
everyone back. Actually, she told us to take a 3 minute break and
then return. When we got back from our break, she had us get back
with the partner she had set us up with, and do one final roll
across the floor. After that, she had us work on standing back to
back with our partner and leaning into each other, experimenting
with moving up and down from standing to seated, using only one's
feet and legs, and leaning into your partner. This proved quite
difficult with Katrina because of our size difference. But, we
managed to come up with several different ways of moving up and
down, while leaning into each other. After that exercise, Liz did
another quick cool-down, and the class ended.
We had a 10-minute break before our next class. Charlotte (the
student) had been complaining about a pain in her back, so I
offered her a quick massage during the break.
The next class was Body Awareness. This class is a short one.
Helen had us all sit down and she talked to us about what we
would be doing over the next 3 weeks as part of our Body
Awareness class. The focus of the next three Body Awareness
classes will be visualization. She talked about how useful
visualization can be when working on something. As a quick demo,
of how visualization works, she had us close our eyes while
sitting there, and imagine a lemon, then she had us imagine the
surface of the lemon, the size of it, the smell of it. Then she
had us take a knife and cut into the lemon, then cut out a chunk
of it and put it in our mouths. I noticed something strange about
this exercise. I was having a very difficult time getting an
actual image of the lemon. But as soon as I imagined my hand
first, then I was able to imagine my hand holding the lemon.
After that exercise, Helen talked about using visualization to
work on learning physical moves (e.g. learning a specific trick.)
For the final part of the class, she had us lay down on our mats
and close our eyes. Then she directed us through some
visualization exercises where we picked something we could not
do, but wanted to be able to do. For me I picked pull-ups. I have
never been able to do pull-ups, even when I was in my best
physical shape. As part of the exercise, she talked us through,
she had us break down each move, and slow it down. I found myself
drifting in and out of a dream like state during this exercise.
Its hard to keep awake when you are laying down after a long day
of exercise, and the teacher is talking in a soft, soothing
voice. It was quite amusing, actually. I was supposed to be
visualizing myself doing pull ups, and as I slipped into my
dream, the pull-up bar became branches of a tree, and I was
pulling myself up a tree. Very bizarre. After that exercise, we
sat around and talked about it. That ended the class.
My next class was a 1-hour E&M practice session. I spent a
good portion of that time working on my cigar boxes. Then I
practiced my backcrosses with 3 clubs, followed by working on my
4 club splits. I made some significant progress with my 4 club
splits. I was able to make 8 throws with my 4 club splits.
Towards the end of the hour, I got together with Pascal and
started teaching him a few passing patterns. I taught him an
interesting sequence that I came up with that goes like this (try
it at home!): all passes are tramline single spin passes- R-pass,
L-self, R-self, L-self, R-pass, L-pass, R-self, L-pass, R-self,
L-self, R-self, L-pass, R-pass, L-self (and then you start over.)
Around 6:00pm I headed home. Around 7:00pm, Richard, one of the
local jugglers, came by and picked me up and we went to the
cinema to watch the new Star Trek movie. I unfortunately dozed
off here and there, and was having trouble keeping up with the
film. But it was still nice to watch. After the film, Richard
gave me a ride home, and I went straight to bed.
Side note: Greg wrote to tell me that I misquoted him above. The
IJA standards for defining what catching is, that I mentioned,
was actually the JIS. Apparently the IJA is very vague. Thanks
again Greg!
01/08/03 Day Fifty-eight: Well this day started off interesting
to say the least. I headed up to school on my bike, same weather
as yesterday, cold, cold, cold. I got to school, and Alex was the
one leading the warm-up. He started with a game of snake tag.
Into the second round of snake tag, I suddenly felt something wet
at my feet. I looked down, and saw that there was a little blood
under my foot. Looking around I noticed dozens of small spots of
blood all over the gym floor. It didn't take me long to realize
that it was my foot that was bleeding. Circomedia is hyper
concerned about safety when it comes to blood spillage, so I
immediately called everyone to stop what they were doing, and
drew attention to the fact that there was blood all over the gym
floor and that it was mine. The game stopped immediately after
that. It took a moment to organize, but Alex got everyone to
leave the gym and go over to Studio 2 to finish his or her
warm-up. I started to put my sock on over the cut, but Annette
who was standing there watching me pointed out that it was
bleeding too much to just put a sock over it. She told me to go
wash it, and she would find a band-aid for me. I hobbled to the
bathroom in my bare feet to go wash my feet. In the bathroom, I
encountered an uncomfortable situation. Eley was in there,
frantically washing his feet with soap and water. I completely
understand his concern, and would do the same. But it felt
awkward. I apologised to him. He said don't worry about it. After
I got cleaned up and bandaged, and got my shoes and socks back
on, I headed over to the office to get stuff to clean the gym
floor. Helen told me when I got there that Alex had already
gotten a bucket of hot bleach water and some gloves and was
taking care of it. I went over to offer to help, but Alex told me
not to worry about it, and go finish my warming up in Studio 2. I
felt guilty for him having to clean it up, so I probably asked
him another 3-4 times if he was sure he didn't want my help.
Finally, I headed over to Studio 2. Everyone was standing around.
I believe Phil had led a warm-up, and they were just finishing
up. Everyone was talking about random things. Next thing I know
the conversation turned to electing the Student Representatives
for this term. Everyone seemed to be of the opinion that I should
be one of the representatives. A form of "punishment,"
they joked, for spilling blood all over the gym floor. After much
discussion, they also decided to make Phil the other Student
Representative. Basically the Student Representatives present
issues that need representing from the students. In other words,
if a student has an issue that they want to address, they tell
the Student Representatives, who in turn address the directors
(that way the directors don't have 20 some students coming at
them from different angles.) After the warm-up we headed over to
the gym for our Movement class. Helen was there, ready to teach
the class, but Alex was still working away, cleaning one spot of
blood after another. He was far from finished. The reason the
blood was all over the place was because when I cut myself open
on the sharp edge of the exercise equipment foot while running
past it, I didn't feel much more than a small bit of pain, so I
didn't realize I was cut open, and was running all over the gym
space dripping blood. Helen realized eventually that the gym
floor would not be ready in time for us to use for the Movement
class, so we headed for Studio 2 instead. I again felt guilty
leaving Alex there, cleaning up the spots of blood.
Running about 10 minutes late, the Movement class finally got
started. Helen started the class by placing two chairs in the
centre of the room, back to back with enough space between the
two backs so that one person could walk between them. Then she
had two people stand on opposite sides of the room, with their
backs against the wall. Then she instructed them to walk in a
normal walking pace towards the chairs and each of them to walk
through the chairs. The obvious dilemma was that only one person
could fit between the chairs. So either the tempo of one person
had to change, or one person had to stop and step aside to make
room for the other in order for both to make it through the
chairs and to the other wall. Helen asked us to watch as every
person in the class had an opportunity to try this out. After
this exercise, Helen asked us to discuss what we had seen. We
rambled on about different issues of tempo and such, and
eventually got around to the subject that Helen wanted to discuss
which was "status." Helen then briefly spoke about the
difference between social status and personal status. She used a
beggar, and a rich person walking past the beggar as an example.
The beggar has a lower social status than the rich person, but
because the rich person will keep safe distance from the beggar,
at that moment the beggar's personal status is higher. She
pointed out that personal status is constantly changing. The
changes of personal status are a result of many elements; mood,
weather, health, environment, etc. For the first series of
exercises, Helen separated us into group A and group B. I was in
group B. First she had us walk around, and had everyone in group
A making eye contact with people as they walked around, and had
the people in group B avoiding eye contact as they walked around.
After a while, she had each group switch roles. Then we discussed
it. I noticed that it was possible to be at both high and low
status in each of those exercises. For the next exercises, we did
the same identical exercise, but the group who was avoiding eye
contact would look back at someone after they had walked past
them. This added an interesting element. In my opinion, this
simple motion of looking back at someone who you avoided eye
contact with could either add personal status or take away
personal status. Next Helen had us stand in a circle, and asked
us to pose in the "open" position (the one where we are
open and making eye contact.) Then she kept telling us to
exaggerate it, over and over again, until we could exaggerate it
no more. Then we did the opposite, and we posed in the
"closed" position, and she again, had us exaggerate it
over and over again (until some were practically curled up in a
ball on the floor.) For the next exercise, Helen explained that
we would be playing a "card game." She had a bunch of
handmade cards (pieces of paper with something written on each.)
The cards were numbered like playing cards (1 through K,
replacing the Ace with a 1, and there were no suits.) She gave
each person a card, not letting them see what was on it, and had
them hold the card up to their chest, exposing it to everyone
else. Then once everyone had a card, she had us walk around the
room. Our assignment was to notice the "status" of the
other people and respond to them using only eye contact, and
while doing that we were to try and figure out what our own
status was by judging the way people looked at us. At the end of
the exercise, she had us line up, shoulder to shoulder in the
order we thought we should be in from low to high status. We
played this game twice, the first time I was a status of 7, and
the second time I was a status of 2. Both times I guessed
correctly where I should stand. Then she told us that she wanted
us to position ourselves again in order of status from highest to
lowest but this time of what our own status is. This is tricky.
She gave people the option to not participate in this. Everyone
did, however, and instead of having a straight line, there were
several people standing clumped together, crowding around between
9 and 5 (10 being the highest position.) After this game, Helen
had us go on to another exercise she called "Ruler of the
Universe!" In this exercise, one person is the "Ruler
of the Universe," while the other 3-4 are his or her
subjects. The ruler takes on the highest status possible (being
the ruler of the Universe, one would expect that,) and the others
maintain a low status. The object of the game was that the ruler
asks for things (e.g. "bring me this," "bring me
that," "do this," "do that" etc.) and
the subjects have to obey and keep the ruler happy. If the ruler
is not happy, he/she can have the person killed. So the object of
the game is to stay alive as long as possible. We played 3 rounds
of this game. It was interesting to watch the game. What I found
interesting was that the subjects could at times have a higher
status that the ruler, without the ruler realizing it. That was
the last exercise of that class. After Movement, I had a
15-minute break. I just stayed in Studio 2 and ate my grapes and
wrote in my notebook because my next class, Physical Theatre,
would be in Studio 2.
Physical Theatre was supposed to start at 11:15, but there was
some confusion, and several people didn't realize the time had
changed. For some reason, they thought it started at 11:30.
Anyhow, the situation was eventually fixed, and we got started
with the class. Bim started off with a game called
"Prisoners and Prison Guards." For this game, Bim set
up 6 chairs. 6 people then stood behind the 6 chairs. The
remaining 3 people sat in the chairs, leaving 3 empty chairs. The
people in the chairs were the prisoners, and the ones behind the
chairs were the Prison Guards. The idea of the game is that the
Prison Guards, who have an empty chair, want to have a prisoner
in their chair, so they wink at one of the other prisoners. When
a prisoner is winked at, they try to escape from prison, and go
to the other prison (which makes no sense at all.) The Prison
Guard with a prisoner tries to stop them by tapping them on the
shoulder (or anywhere on their body for that matter,) when the
prisoner tries to get away. It was a silly game. And apparently
that is what Bim wanted it to be. He wanted us to play. After the
game, he let us know that for the next 5 weeks, we would be
studying clowning. Bim spoke briefly about what he meant by
clowning. He said that by clown he didn't mean the red nosed,
baggy pants, big shoes kind of clown. He then went on to discuss
the ranges of character that clown can have, and that it can be
silly and funny, or it can be tragic. Bim started off by having
us walk around in the 4th level of tension. The 4th level of
tension is basically alert, moving around, checking things out,
fast head movements, etc. Then once we had warmed up our 4th
level of tension, he asked us to maintain that level of tension,
but take that into a state of amazement. After a while of walking
around the room, at a tension level of 4 in a state of amazement,
Bim had us switch from amazement to confusion. Then after
confusion, he had us switch from confusion to fear. Then next he
told us to walk around again, and this time, maintaining the
level 4 of tension, switch back and forth from amazement, to
confusion, to fear. I found this interesting. Walking around the
room, noticing something, feeling confused about it, approaching
it, then noticing something about it which changed the confusion
to amazement, and then suddenly noticing one other thing about
the object, and the amazement changed to fear. It worked in any
combination. Very neat. For the next exercise, Bim had us focus
on the "wow" or amazement state, and find an object,
and be obsessed with that object at as many levels as possible.
My object was a pen. It was amazing to see it, touch it, pull the
cap off, put the cap back on, spin it on the floor, etc. Very
amusing indeed. For the next exercise Bim set up a stage area
with the two screens on either side for an entrance area. Then
everyone, one at a time, presented his or her object to the
class. Bim wanted us to imagine that it was Christmas morning,
and that the object was our favourite gift, and to be proud of
the object. This was an odd exercise, but it was funny to watch
the people come out, looking all excited and pleased with the
object and themselves. After that exercise, Bim had us mill about
again, but this time he had us make eye contact with each other
as we walked about. Then he had us begin to speak and greet each
other. Then slowly, little by little, he had us increase the
enthusiasm of our greeting each other. This got silly after a
while. For the next exercise, Bim had us use the stage area
again, and he wanted us to come out, one at a time, and pretend
that it was Christmas time again, and that they entire family was
down in the living room and you arrive, feeling very happy, and
very excited to see everyone. So you make an entrance and see
everyone, and as excitedly as possible, you say
"hello." This simple seeming exercise proved quite an
amusing event. It's hard to explain why things started getting so
funny, but just seeing people trying to look THAT excited was
just hilarious. Towards the end of the exercise, we were having
trouble, because the smallest gesture was making the entire class
break out into laughter. We laughed, until it hurt. Strange,
laughing during a class about clowning. For the next exercise, we
got into pairs. I paired up with Tom. Bim gave us instructions
for the exercise. For this exercise, one of us would take on the
role of a superstar (high status,) and the other would take on
the role of a fan (low status.) I played the role of the
superstar first. Bim had us walk around, while our
"fans" walked behind us, admiring us, almost lusting
after us. Before we switched roles, Bim walked around giving
everyone feedback. He told me that my character in high status
was quite good. After the feedback, we switched roles, and Tom
became the superstar, and I became the fan. For the final
exercise of the class, Bim brought out a box of noses, and we all
chose one to wear. Mine was a bulbous nose. We all stood around
in a circle, looking at each other, and Bim made comments about
how stupid we looked. In this case, looking stupid was a good
thing. Then once everyone had a nose that Bim was content with,
Bim explained what the next exercise would be. He set up a scene.
The scene involved my being a superstar. Everyone else was a huge
fan of mine and they were all waiting outside the back of the
theatre to see me emerge. After building the tension for a while,
Bim had me come out, looking all snooty and stuck up. My fans
were going crazy. After giving an autograph away, I just stood
there with my back to them, facing the audience. Throughout the
exercise, Bim kept giving directions for the piece. Bim guided me
by encouraging my character to say a couple of words. I pretended
to be thinking of something deep and meaningful to say, my
gestures indicating that it was right on the tip of my tongue. I
couldn't see them, but I felt that my fans were behind me, their
tension level getting higher and higher in anticipation of what I
would say. Suddenly Bim told me to say a swear word. So I said
"Poopy Pants." The fans responded. Then Bim asked me to
say a dirtier word. So I said "Torn Poopy Pants." They
responded again, half shock, half amusement. Then Bim came up to
me and whispered to me that I should say something really nasty.
I won't repeat what I said, but it was crude. Bim then instructed
me to wander off. At this point I wandered off, and was able to
turn around and watch the crowd of fans responding to what I had
said. Bim guided them through the transition of being shocked
that their adored idol had said something so nasty, to thinking
it must be cool to say dirty words, and taking turns saying other
nasty words. Then after a while of them exploring nasty words,
Bim had my character come out, and stand with my back to them.
Then in unison, wanting to please their idol (me) they all yelled
out some curse words to me. Bim had me respond in anger, so I
turned to them and said something to the effect of "You
worthless, stupid groupies, you are nothing more than mud under
my boots." And then I stormed off. The last bit of the
exercise was just them responding to what had just happened. It
was a very bizarre and interesting exercise. That last exercise
went longer than Bim had planned, and class ended about 10
minutes later than it was scheduled. By this time I was very
hungry.
At 1:30 I headed up to the student room and ate my lunch. At one
point, while I was up there, I ran into Charlie, and he gave me a
handout with information on it about working in the UK as a
foreign student. Apparently I can work in this country as long as
my passport has "restricted" status stamped on it. The
restricted status was explained in the handout. I later found out
that my passport has been stamped in this manner, and that I can,
indeed work up to 20 hours a week in this country. After lunch, I
ran into Katrina, who I knew either works or had worked at a TGI
Friday's restaurant. I have a lot of experience waiting tables in
this kind of restaurant, so I thought I would ask her if she had
any advice about getting a job at one. There is a TGI Fridays
about a 20 minute walk from my house. She said that because I am
a juggler, and I am into magic, and because I have an American
accent (the restaurants are promoted as "American")
that I had a good chance of getting a job. I was excited about
this.
At 2:00 I headed over to Studio 2 for my E&M practice
session. Wednesdays are going to be nice, because my practice
session goes from 2:00 until 3:30, but I have the option to stay
through the second E&M practice session as well, which means
I could practice from 2:00 until 5:30. But today I decided to go
home early (around 4:00pm) because it was snowing, and I had
heard that London had already gotten about 3-6 inches of snow.
The E&M practice session today was good. I made a lot of
progress on my unicycle idling.
When I got home, I decided to work on my resume. I used to have a
nice one typed out, but I can't find a copy of it. Fortunately I
still remembered all the dates of all the places I have worked. I
will be trying to get my resume over to TGI Fridays in the next
couple of days. I went to bed around 9:00pm after lazily hanging
around the house watching TV and checking my email.
01/09/03 Day Fifty-nine: Got up, did my usual getting ready for
school, writing in my diary, etc. and headed up the hill on my
bike to school. It had snowed a little the previous night, so
there was a thin layer of snow all over the place, but this
didn't affect my ride at all. I understand that snow like this is
pretty rare in Bristol. London, apparently, had quite a bit of
snow. Rachel led the warm-up this morning. She started off with a
game of "Snake Tag." I kept my shoes on this time. No
blood. Next she had us play the "run screaming into a crash
mat that is propped against the wall" game, though she
changed the game a little this time. She split the class into
two, and had the two groups facing each other in a line (shoulder
to shoulder, each person reaching across with their arms and
placing their hands on the shoulders of the opposite person.)
This structure creates a tunnel (with bodies being the sides, and
the crossed arms being the top.) The person who is running
towards the mat has to run between the two groups of people. As
they approach the tunnel, at the last moment, each pair of arms
lifts up in cannon as the person runs through the two lines of
people, eventually running into the mat. Silly, but fun. When it
was time for Deniz to run, Fabian and I didn't even bother
lifting our arms. She ran right under them. After that game,
Rachel led us through a basic warm-up sequence.
At 9:30 it was time for the first E&M class. On Thursdays the
E&M class gets separated into two groups based on skill level
(each group being about 4 or 5 people each) The schedule has the
E&M sessions in the gym and the Conditioning Practice
sessions in Studio 2. Since there are only 4-5 people in each
E&M session, and for smaller groups, Studio 2 makes a better
juggling space, I suggested we switch, and it was agreed upon. I
imagine it will stay that way for the rest of the half-term.
I am in the second E&M group at 11:30, so between 9:30 and
11:00 I was in the Conditioning Practice session in the gym. It
was nice. Alex, a TT, led the class. He basically took us through
the sequence of exercises that Liz had assigned to us. I got a
good work-out, and felt nice and stretched out by the end. At
11:00 I took a short break.
At 11:30 it was time for E&M. I headed over to Studio 2. Rod
started the class by talking to us for about 15 minutes. He
discussed a little about what our focus should be for this term.
He said that this term is still about learning new skills. It
won't be until the last term that we basically turn our focus to
taking what skills we already had, and what skills we have
learned while at Circomedia and focusing on putting them in a
routine or two. He also asked us to make a list of tricks that
fall into three categories; tricks we know and have solid, tricks
we are working on, and advanced tricks that we want to learn but
haven't attempted yet. I am going to work on that list this
weekend. I will post it in my diary when I have it finished. For
the rest of the class, we worked on our own, and Rod came around
and spoke to us individually about what we are working on. Today
was exciting for me because I have been working on learning to
idle my unicycle, and I managed to make around 12 throws with 3
clubs while idling my unicycle. Towards the end of the class,
Oskar and I worked on the 321 or Popcorn passing pattern. We had
some nice runs of it. My main problem with that pattern is that
my triple tends to go too far out (like it wants to be a pass,
not a self,) but I seem to have fixed that problem.
After E&M class, it was time for lunch. I headed up to the
student room to catch my lunch. Charlie caught me on the way, and
said he had a letter for me (as one of the Student
Representatives) from the Kingswood foundation. I took the letter
and arriving at the student room, I found Phil there. I gave him
the letter, and had him read it first, and tell the people in the
student room what it was about. It was basically the Kingswood
foundation telling us about some changes in their office hours.
After lunch, I headed down to the South Wing to do some
stretching. I was also going to help Phil and Tamsen with their
act. Phil was in a bit of a grumpy mood (his juggling was not
coming along too well.) I explained to him that there are days
when juggling just does not happen, and you just have to accept
it, and leave it alone. As I was sitting there, stretching, and
watching Phil and Tam working, Polly and Deniz came in with a
couple of pairs of stilts. Deniz wanted to learn to walk on
stilts. Eventually Polly and Deniz asked for my help, and next
thing I knew I was taking the two of them for a walk outside in
the cold, holding on to Polly's hand as we walked (since she was
on the taller stilts, and not quite comfortable with them yet.)
Deniz had me go get her camera, and I took pictures of them on
their stilts, and then Deniz called Ashling out to take pictures
of me standing next to the two girls on their stilts. I told
Deniz that when she gets the pictures, to let me borrow them so I
can scan them into my website. After the stilts ordeal, I headed
up to the student room for a cup of tea. There, I did a couple of
magic tricks for Ashling, Polly and Deniz. Ashling had gotten a
coin magic trick for Christmas and we had been talking about coin
magic.
At 4:00pm it was time for Performance. I headed over to Studio 2.
This was going to be part 2 of the Stage Combat class. Bim had us
do a quick neck warm-up to start off with. Then he did a quick
warm-up of having our different body parts pushed around (e.g.
head, chest, back, hip, etc.) Then he had us get a partner and
review the different things we covered in the first class. Fabian
was standing next to me, so I asked him to be my partner. We
started working on the different slaps and punches and kicks. I
quickly realized that he hadn't done this before, and then I
remembered that he was not in the first Stage Combat class. So I
took things a little slower with him, and ran him through the
stages of learning each trick. Bim noticed that I was in essence
teaching him the moves, and never said anything to me (which must
mean he trusted me to do a good job of teaching it.) After we had
covered all the moves we had learned previously, we spent the
rest of the class just learning new moves. Eley and myself also
added a few moves that we had learned in other Stage Combat
classes. The first new move we learned was the head butt. To do
this, you practice first holding your hand out, palm facing your
forehead. Keeping the palm of your hand isolated, your ram your
forehead into it, getting a nice knap. Then to perform the move
on your victim, you hold one side of their head with your
downstage hand, while the upstage hand goes on the other side of
their head in the open position, ready to be struck with your
forehead. Then you basically just ram your head into your palm,
and from the audience perspective, it looks, and sounds like you
head-butted the person pretty hard-especially if they respond
properly. The next thing we covered was poking someone in the
eyes. I have done this move before in Jyl's classes. You just
poke them, with the soft part of the tip of your index and middle
finger right above their eyebrows. Done from the right angle, and
with the proper response from your victim, it can look rather
gruesome. We next covered stomping on someone's foot. We did this
differently from Jyl's technique, but it was just as affective.
I'm short of time this morning, so I will just write the
different things we covered in the class, then return and
describe them in more detail later:
Kicking the person in the stomach while they are laying on the
ground, stomping on their hand while they are laying on the
ground, kicking their face while laying on the ground, kicking a
person's face while they are on their hands and knees, walking
into a wall and hitting your face into the wall, being thrown
into the wall, pulling someone's hair/ear/nose, pulling someone
by the hair and tossing them into the wall, pulling someone by
the hair and slamming their head into the wall, pulling someone
by the hair and making them do a forward flip, kicking someone in
the chest, ( random bonus flourish that has nothing to do with
stage combat: doing a forward roll, holding onto a beverage tray
without spilling the contents of the tray,) weapon fighting with
sticks (5 defence and 5 strike positions,) back rollover, foot in
chest roll over.
After Stage Combat class, I hopped on my bike and headed home. It
was strange, Jeremiah, Merlin, Lyndall and myself were all
heading home on bikes at the same time, and we all were going in
the same direction. We were like a mini-critical mass, flying
down the roads of Bristol. I got to bed a little too early,
because I ended up waking up around midnight, and couldn't get to
sleep for an hour or so.
<Back to the top>
01/10/03 Day Sixty: Ahhh… Friday… I always know when
Friday has come. My body aches! Anyhow, I headed up to school on
my bike, no rain/snow, and it was a tiny bit warmer than it has
been, but still quite cold. The strange thing about today was
that according to the timetable there would be no warm-up for the
people in PT, because PT starts at 9:00am. I arrived about 8:45,
and hung out in the gym for a bit, teaching Charlotte how to do a
couple of tricks juggling tricks. Then just before 9:00, I headed
over to Studio 2 for my PT class.
Once everyone was gathered in Studio 2, Bim discussed changing
the schedule for next week. He apparently didn't enjoy getting up
this early. Many in the class agreed. I didn't care. I don't mind
getting up early. To get us warm-up up physically, and get us
into a playful mood, Bim told us he was going to put on some
music and we were to dance to it. He wanted us to have fun with
it, act silly, but not do any kind of parody of dance styles-just
make up stuff, and have fun. He turned on the music, and it was
"Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" by the Eurythmics. He
played the entire song, and we danced the entire time. It was
fun. Next Bim had us play the prisoner/prison guard game again.
This time, in the game, he had us verbally call out "I'm
Free!" whenever you got away from the prison guard. He
mentioned that we would come back to that. After that game, we
put the chairs away, and Bim had us do a quick warm-up of walking
around in the 3 clown states in tensions level 4 (amazement,
confusion, and fear.) Next Bim had us pick an object in the room,
and asked us to find a place for the object. I found a Frisbee
that was lying around, and picked it up. I walked over to one of
the crash mats and placed it on it. Phil came wandering over, and
placed his object, a piece of paper, on top of my Frisbee. It
didn't look right, so I put the Frisbee on top of his piece of
paper. Phil then picked up my Frisbee and wandered off with it,
leaving me with his piece of paper. So I decided to just go with
it. I took my new object, and started looking for a place to put
it. I decided to curl it up into a tube and slide it into some
rope that was hanging down along the wall. Bim came by, and I
showed him my object in its place, and he looked at it, and said,
"It's clever, but no, its not right." To this my
character responded, feeling disappointed, slowly pulling the
paper out. Bim suggested that I try something else. I eventually
found a new spot for my object, and next time Bim confronted me,
I gave him this huge proud smile that was screaming, "this
is the perfect spot for my object and I know it." It worked.
For the next exercise, Bim set up the two screens, creating a
stage. He then placed a chair behind each screen, and asked for a
person to sit in each chair, and a person to stand behind each
chair. Then he asked them to play the prisoner/prison guard game,
but that when the prisoner escaped, they should come out onto the
stage and share with the audience their freedom. The object was
to stay on stage as long as possible. Bim would talk to the
person as they came out, and give them instant feedback. This
exercise ended up taking up much of the class time. I was one of
the last ones to go. Bim mentioned something about Eley and I
having trouble with this exercise, because we are using methods
learned in previous acting classes. I'm not exactly sure what he
was looking for in this exercise. For the next exercise, Bim had
us get into pairs and told us that one person should be a high
status person and the other the low status person. The low status
person was to follow the high status person, and the high status
person was to turn now and then, and confront the low status
person by saying/asking, "Are you following me? Stop
following me!" or something to that effect. The objective of
the exercise was for the low status person to respond emotionally
to being yelled at and then gaining power by becoming
"loveable." Each person tried both roles. For the final
exercise of the class, Bim had us separate into two groups. The
first group sat down to watch as the other group stood up in
front. It was a choral exercise. The chorus had to answer
questions asked by Bim. For example, Bim asked where the first
group came from, and they replied, with much "Mmmm"ing
sound followed by some vowels, until they eventually came up with
the word "Mars." It was quite funny to watch. My group
ended up being "Performers" from "Venice"
singing songs of "Scarries" about "Fresh
Meat." Don't ask.
After PT, I basically had a break until 2:00pm. I spent a few
minutes writing down the details from PT class, then I went to
the student room to watch a video (some circus awards video in
German,) and eat my lunch, then eventually, Phil and I headed
over to Studio 2 and put together the beginnings of a sword
fighting routine, we hoped to use in the Stage Combat
presentations later that afternoon. Shortly before 2:00pm I
worked with Rachel (the TT) a bit on doing some passing, and then
I worked with her, letting her stand on my shoulders and juggle.
I also taught her how to do, what I later learned was called, the
"Rock and Roll." That is a move I learned with Jessi. I
had seen it done during a swing dance routine, and wanted to
learn it. I found out from Nikki later, that I was doing it the
hard way.
At 2:00pm I headed over to the Gym for my Acro for Idiots class.
It was a fun class. We mostly did acro-balance. I mostly worked
with Charlotte. She told me she liked working with me because I
make her feel like a little girl-something she hasn't felt in a
long time. I also helped Polly stand on my shoulders. She had
been scared about doing that before, but managed to do it quite
comfortably. I can imagine it must be pretty scary to stand on
someone as tall as me.
After Acro class, it was time for Devising. Bim showed up, giving
us the assignment. Phil and I teamed up with Oskar and Tom. We
told them that we were working on a sword fighting routine (using
the wooden dowels,) so Oskar and Tom went off to put together a
fighting routine of their own. 25 minutes later, they had one
roughed out, and showed it to us. We also showed them ours. Our
next challenge was to figure out a way to put the two together.
We wanted it to be silly, and funny, so we decided that we would
be a pair of couples. Phil and I were the men, and Oskar and Tom
were our wives. The premise, set in the 16th-17th century, went
like this: Oskar, my wife (who we named Lucy) and myself (who we
named Henry,) are out for a walk in the park and we run into Tom
(Guenever) and Phil (Henry-as well.) The two Henrys go off to
talk while the focus falls on the two women who for some reason
get into a fight. The two Henrys watch in amusement, "Oh,
look, the girls are fighting again, aren't they cute."
"Oh, that is not very lady-like!" and the sorts, in an
old English accent. After Lucy kills Guenevere, I decide we
should probably leave. Phil's character calls me out and I turn
and we sword fight, using some very cheesy lines: "You fight
like a woman!" "Your mother was a woman!" etc. It
ends with me killing Phil's character, and walking off with Lucy,
telling her to go call the gardener to clean up the mess. It was
all very silly.
Around 4:45 we set up to perform our Stage Combat routines. My
group went second, and received lots of good hearty laughs. All
the routines were fun to watch. They were mostly funny, mostly
because we know these people, and its hard to imagine them really
fighting. Bim gave feedback on the pieces, as well as Helen.
After feedback, Bim gave us the end of the week notes.
After things finished up, and most people went home, I stayed in
the gym to work on my unicycling. Pascal was still in the gym and
I asked him when he wanted to work on the hat routine. I should
pause here and explain what hat routine I am talking about. Back
during the 3 month presentations, the other E&M group put
together a routine that was very successful, and made it into the
3 month show. Annette has been making plans to re-perform the
routine in the upcoming variety show at the Albany Centre, but
Oskar doesn't want to perform it again. So I have volunteered to
cover his part. So Pascal is teaching me all the hat tricks I
need to know. Anyhow, shortly after I asked Pascal about it, he
and I were working on the tricks. I was able to learn them all
rather quickly, and it is just a matter of some practice (I have
2 weeks,) to get them solid.
After that I went home. I ended up going to bed fairly early
because my body was tired, and all my muscles ached.
<Back to the top>
01/11/03 Saturday: Didn't do much today. Woke up, the house was quite cold. Found out eventually from Mandy that the heater is not working and won't be fixed until Monday. Around 2:00pm I headed over to drop off my resume at TGI Fridays. Unfortunately, they let me know they had just hired some people and don't need anyone at the moment. In the evening, Mandy made brownies, and she and I watched "Billy Elliot." I went to bed shortly after that.
01/12/03 Sunday: I did very little worth mentioning today. Watched a lot of Star Trek. Mandy was on the computer for a rather long stretch this afternoon, and when she got off, I had a message on the phone from TGI Fridays wanting me to come in for an interview. It seems my resume and application has intrigued them. I say this, because they initially told me that they had just hired two people, and that I was third down in a stack of applications. That usually does not involve an interview. We shall see.
01/13/03 Day Sixty-one: Woke up this morning, and did my usual
to-dos and got ready for school. I noticed that it was much
warmer than usual. I rode my bike up the hill to school, arriving
earlier than usual. I arrived around 8:20am. I got to work right
away on the hat tricks I need to learn, which is a shame, because
I found out later in the day that because Annette's hand is still
out of commission, she decided against doing the show at the
Albany Centre. Javier arrived around 8:40, and he and I did some
club passing, getting up to passing 8 clubs on a 2 count. It was
a little shaky. I miss passing with Will. He makes an 8-club
pattern feel like 7 clubs. However, Javier is still one of my
favourite people to pass clubs with. Javier led the warm-up this
morning. He didn't have us play any games; he just went straight
into the warm-up.
At 9:30, it was time for E&M. I suggested to Rod that we play
a game of Combat for the warm-up. He agreed. I keep forgetting
however, that they don't call it Combat over here they call it
Gladiators. We played several rounds, of which I didn't win any.
Then Rod separated the class in half, and had half the class
Combat each other, and then he had the other half of the class
combat each other. Then he had the two winners of those matches
combat it out for the "Combat Champion of the Week!"
title. I won that title. The final match was against Javier. I
took him out with a clean strike. For the next ½ hour of the
class, Rod wanted us to pick 3 items from out list of tricks we
are working on (the ones in the centre column,) and spend 10
minutes on each trick, ten intensive minutes where you are
completely focused on just that ONE trick. I chose my 3 club
flash pirouette, my one-handed cigar box trick, and juggling 3
clubs in a cascade while idling on the unicycle. After those 30
minutes of intensive focused work on three separate tricks, Rod
had us come together, and show each other what we were working
on. He also wanted us to speak specifically about what we
discovered about the trick while working on it. I first
demonstrated the three club flash pirouette. I showed them that I
can do a nice clean 3-club flash in triple spins, but the moment
I add my pirouette, the clubs go all over the place. Usually the
first club goes fine, but the other two tend to travel out and
away from me, making them impossible to catch. Rod came and stood
beside me and asked me to do it again, and then he mentioned to
me that part of my problem was that my pirouette is sending me a
half a step backwards. So apparently I need to work on my
pirouettes some more, and make sure I don't travel backwards. For
the next trick, I showed them my cigar box trick that I am
working on. This trick is a one handed trick. I balance two cigar
boxes one on top of the other, vertically, on top of the cigar
box in my hand. I then toss the entire stack upwards just a
little, my right hand releasing the bottom box, travels up to
grab the top box, pulling it off the stack, then moving it in an
arc around the other two boxes, down, catching the two boxes on
top. So in essence, with one hand, I transfer the top box to the
bottom. This is a very difficult trick, in my opinion. In the 10
minutes that I worked on it, I only did it successfully 5 times.
I do believe, however, I can get it down to 1 out of every 2
tries (which, for a trick of that difficulty level, would be
acceptable to put in a show.) What I discovered, and what I
shared with the class when discussing the trick, was that the key
to making this trick work is making sure that the toss is
perfectly vertical and level. Because of the way our arms work,
if you just make an up and down motion with your arm (even with
the arm bent,) the motion tends to be in a slight arc. So to
compensate for that, I am using my entire body (bending at the
knees,) to create a more perfect up and down motion. For the
final trick that I demonstrated, and discussed with the class, I
brought out my unicycle. I made various attempts, and managed to
do about 5-6 catches with 3 clubs while idling on the unicycle. I
explained to the class that my main problem was ambition. I
should get my idling down solid before I pick up the clubs. My
other, obvious problem is that the moment the unicycle starts to
turn, I loose control of the clubs. It was interesting watching
everyone else demonstrate their 3 tricks, and talk about them.
The only thing I didn't like about this part of the class is that
it took up a lot of time. For the last section of class, Rod had
us work on a stealing pattern. He had us work on the 3-club
leapfrog steal pattern. No one managed to land it successfully,
but there were several close ones. The amusing thing about this
is that this morning, I got an email from my friend Jen, in
Arcata, and she was all excited, because she had seen a couple of
jugglers on a cruise ship she was on, and her most exciting
moment about the show was that very trick.
My next class at 11:30am was Performance. Last week in
Performance, we covered Stage Combat. This week, the subject is
"Working With Objects." For the entire class, we worked
with the sticks that we used last week in Stage Combat. Each
person in the class grabbed a stick, and then he had us spread
out. For the first exercise, Bim asked us to come up with as many
ways to hold the stick. I won't bother listing all the ones I
came up with, mostly because there are so many, and also I
wouldn't remember them all. But it is interesting to explore how
many ways you can come up with. The focus of the exercise was not
so much to find a million ways to hold a stick, but to find
interesting images through the shape of our bodies in relation to
the stick. For the next exercise, Bim asked us to come up with as
many ways to use the stick to support your weight. I quickly
realized that the stick would never be able to support my entire
weight. Bim explained shortly after that we didn't need to
support all of our weight, but just part of it. The images
created through this exercise were ones of weakness, or
dependency. The next exercise involved moving around the room,
using the stick as a form of locomotion. This exercise created
images of disabled people. Imagine a bunch of people, hobbling
around, using the stick for support. I found some ways, however,
to use the stick to push my feet around, instead of using the
stick as a form of support. So in essence I was still moving
around the room, by using the stick. The next exercise was
similar in that we needed to move across the room using the
stick, but this time we were to work with a partner, which means
that you now have 4 legs, 4 arms, and two sticks, to come up with
as many interesting options as possible. Phil and I came up with
some pretty bizarre combinations I couldn't even begin to
describe. For the next exercise, we got into groups of 4. The
exercise required that the group work out a way to carry one of
the persons in the group, using the sticks as support. The
imagery in this, for the person being carried, varied from high
to low status, depending on how they were being lifted, and
carried. Someone exalted, sitting upright on a triangle of poles
that are resting on the shoulders of three people, can look very
high status like, but having someone hanging from some poles,
looking like they are about to be roasted over a fire, can lower
their status. Despite my size, the people in my group managed to
pick me up using just 3 sticks, and it wasn't even painful (which
I imagined it would be.) For the next exercise, Bim had us go off
on our own and explore how many different sounds the sticks could
make. I found this exercise difficult to do because with everyone
else in the room banging their sticks on the floor, you couldn't
listen to the subtle differences in your own stick. After that,
Bim had us stand in a circle, and share with each other the
different sounds that we had discovered. For the final exercises
of the class, Bim had us separate into groups of 4, and using our
bodies, and the sticks, we were to create images that represented
water, and then images that represented light. The water one was
difficult, because you have to break through the fact that sticks
are hard, stiff, thin, and linear, not soft, and flowy like
water. When we worked on the light one, we, as a joke, had Shani
stand in front, then had the sticks flourish out from behind her
head, like rays of the sun around her head. We asked the class
why they think we put Shani in front, and when they didn't know
the answer, we told her that we put her there because she was
"Shaning." I know, I know… horrible pun, but it
was funny at the time.
After Performance, I headed up to the student room to eat my
lunch. I stopped into the office to talk to Judith and Charlie
about the cleaning job. Because Yam is leaving, I will get the
cleaning job, which means that I will be making about £13 a
week, doing the cleaning. This money can easily pay for my weekly
groceries. While talking to Charlie, he mentioned that he has
been reading my diary, and he came across a funny typo. He said
that somewhere I mentioned that I was "heading off to Drip
Notes." Presumably, I meant to say Dip Notes. I am using a
spell checker right now when typing up this diary, but because I
spend about 2 hours of my morning, typing, and its difficult to
even find that much time to work on this, it is hard for me to
double check my work. So, just to warn those of you following
along with my diary, you may encounter some funny typo's like
that. This reminds me of a silly poem that I read once:
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
Anonymous
At 2:00pm it was
time for Dip Notes. I headed off to Studio 2. Today Bim would be
talking about "How to get work." Before the class
started, I made an announcement to the entire class, that as
Student Representative, I would be setting up a meeting next
Monday at 1:30 in Studio 2, and that anyone wanting to discuss
issues about school should come to that meeting. Then after my
announcement, Bim started his lecture. I found that this lecture
about how to find work in the circus arts world mostly applied to
English people, because the methods are quite different in the
USA. Regardless, here are the notes I took:
How To Get Work:
-Good to have lot of tricks in your bag
- Important to have a solid solo piece.
- Good to have time variations (e.g. a 10 minute version, a 20 minute version, etc.)
- Good to have an adjustable act according to your audience (language, subject matter, etc.) Different audiences = different markets.
- Jobs aside from performance: rigging, design, teaching, directing, management, stage management, extra work, choreography, walk-about, kids parties,
- How to get work in a "Walk-about": Self Promotion, get an agent in contact with festivals
- Busking: easy to get work, free, easy, can work whenever you want. Have to have permits in some areas.
Circus Industry:
How to join:
- Have an act that they will want.
- You don't join the circus, you sell them your act
- Send them a video of your act
- Check circus arts forums
- Create publicity material, postcards, etc.
Make your own circus:
- Keep small at first
- Not particularly the best people who succeed, but the most organized
Physical Theatre:
- Not expected to have an act
- Identify which groups you would like to work for
- Contact them to see if they are doing any workshops
- Workshops are sometimes like auditions
Funding:
- RALP (Regional Arts Lottery Program)
- NTP (National Touring Program)
After Dip Notes, I
headed over to the public phone to call TGI Fridays. They set me
up with an interview tomorrow at 7:00pm.
Next I headed over to Studio 2 with the plans to practice my
juggling from 3:45 until 4:45, but right as I was getting
started, Michel came looking for me, because I had the video tape
that we were supposed to watch during PT practice session (from
5:00-6:00pm.) Bim had given me the tape. Michel told me that
there was a group of PT people wanting to watch the video early.
So I decided to join them, and watch the video first, and then I
could either continue to juggle, or just head home. The video was
hilarious. It was a Rowan Atkinson production. He played this
professor character who was teaching about "Visual
Comedy." It was very fun to watch, and despite its
silliness, it was quite educational. I highly suggest it. Rowan
Atkinson is one of my favourite physical comedians.
After watching the video, I headed back to Studio 2 for a while,
and hung out, and watched Phil and Tam working on their piece.
Their show is on Wednesday. After hanging out there for a while,
I headed over to the gym to do some juggling. I stayed in the gym
until about 6:30 working on various tricks. Alex was in there
working on his spring loaded stilts. It's interesting to watch
him.
After my session in the gym, I headed home. I went to bed fairly
early, probably around 8:30.
<Back to the top>
01/14/03 Day Sixty-two: This will most likely be a short entry. I
started my day as usual, getting ready for school, and heading up
the hill on my bike. No rain/snow, it was cold, but not that
cold. I arrived shortly before 9:00am. Alex led the warm-up. He
started with a game of elbow tag, and then he did the zigzag race
game. After that he did a basic warm-up.
From 9:30 until 11:30 I had free time to do whatever I needed to
do. I spent most of that time working with Pascal. I taught him
several 2 person 3 object patterns including steals,
walk-arounds, etc. Because Annette cannot perform for the show at
the Albany Centre, I am hoping Pascal and I, and possibly Ashling
can put together a simple club passing routine.
At 11:30 I headed over to Studio 2 for my conditioning class. It
was pretty much the same as usual.
At 1:00pm I had my lunch.
At 1:50 I headed over to the gym for the Contact Dance class. Liz
started the class out by doing the same warm-up we did last week.
Then after the warm-up, she had us get with a partner, and review
rolling across the floor. I picked Ellen for my partner. After we
rolled across the gym floor twice, Liz had us pick a new partner.
I chose Lyndall for my next partner. In the next exercise, Liz
had us review the leaning into each other positions, including
finding ways to get down to the floor and back up. After a few
minutes of that, she gave us an assignment to choreograph a piece
with our partner that had around 8 moves in it, and that we were
to start from the floor. Lyndall and I worked well together, and
we quickly came up with a piece that moved nicely from one
position to another, eventually putting us back in the position
where we started from. After everyone had choreographed their
piece, we demonstrated them in 4-5 pairs at a time, to the class.
For the next exercise, Liz had us get with a partner who was
similar in size. I chose Jeremiah. He is the next largest person
in the school. Liz demonstrated this exercise with Alex. Its
difficult to describe, but I will give it a go. Alex started on
his hands and knees, then Liz gets on her hands and knees, in
front of Alex, perpendicular to him. Next, Alex lowers his head
and shoulders while Liz rolls onto her back on top of his back.
Then from that position, Liz, with some help from Alex (by
lowering one side of his back,) kicks her feet over the top, as
he head and hands lower down to the floor (her body still
perpendicular to Alex's.) As she comes over the top, her hands
catch herself, then her feet slowly come over the top until she
is in a hands and knees position. At this point, Alex is in the
position that Liz was in, when it all started. I gave this a go
with Jeremiah, but came nowhere close to being able to do it. It
falls into the category of doing hand/head stands, and I have
never been able to do that. Plus I have this paranoia about
breaking my neck. Liz doesn't seem to understand why I have this
fear. My thoughts are these: She has a neck that holds up a head.
I have a neck that holds up a head that may be a little heavier
than her head, but not that much heavier. Therefore, it is
reasonable to assume that the my neck is only slightly stronger
than her neck. However, if I fall on my head, my body is more
than twice her weight. Anyhow, for the next two exercises, I
stayed with Jeremiah as my partner. The first exercise was fairly
easy. Jeremiah would be on his hands and knees, and I would place
myself on my hands and knees right next to him. Then I would roll
up onto my back, on top of his back, and then roll over onto the
other side. I had some success with this one. For the final one
that we did in class, we did basically the same move, but
instead, the person on the bottom would be standing up, slightly
bent over, while the other person rolls over their back (on their
own back.) I again, had minimal success with this one. But I
could see it getting easier. After that last exercise, Liz took
us through a cool down session, ending the class with some roll
downs.
At 3:30 Body Awareness started. This class was almost identical
to last weeks. We all huddled around on the floor, chatting with
Helen. She asked us about our assignment that she had given us to
practice visualization. We took turns discussing the experiences
we had had. I confess, I did not do any actual focused
visualization, but I have noticed that right before I do certain
tricks I visualize what it will look like. After the discussion,
Helen had us lay down with our eyes closed and then took us
through her basic body awareness routine, followed by some guided
visualization. I worked on trying to visualize this particular
cigar box trick I am working on. We explored 4 levels of
visualization. The first was seeing ourselves doing a trick at
the opposite end of the gym. Then seeing ourselves doing the
trick from about half the distance of the gym. Then seeing
ourselves doing the trick right up close. And for the final one,
the more kinaesthetic one, being inside our own body and doing
the trick. I found the last one most effective. After the
visualization exercise was over, we sat around and talked about
what worked and what didn't. To end the class, Helen asked us to
do the same this week, and find at least two times during the
week, where we can practice some visualization.
At 4:30 I headed over to Studio 2 for my E&M practice
session. During this session, I worked alone. I focused on four
basic things; idling my unicycle, my cigar box trick, 5 club
cascade, and my four club splits. Around 5:20, I headed home
(about 10 minutes earlier than I was supposed to,) so that I
could get ready for my interview.
When I arrived home, Mandy told me that she and I had been
invited to have dinner with Rachel at 8:00pm over at Tarim's
house. I told her about my appointment at 7:00pm, so Mandy and I
made plans to meet outside TGI Friday's at 7:30.
After getting ready for my interview, I walked over to TGI
Friday's at the Avon Meads Shopping area. It took me about 20
minutes to walk there. The interview lasted about 15 minutes. I
was basically told by the guy interviewing me that I would be
perfect for the job if it were not for the fact that I can only
work Saturdays and Sundays, and because I am leaving in mid-July.
So, basically, I am not getting that job. I still have the job
offer at the take-out place, but that will not start for a while
yet.
At 7:30, Mandy picked me up, and we headed over to Tarim's.
Arriving there, I hung out with Deniz in her room, chatting. She
showed me some pictures, which I have posted in the gallery.
Dinner was nice. After dinner, we all hung out in the living room
and chatted. It was a nice evening. Unfortunately, I didn't get
to bed until about 11:45pm.
01/15/03 Day Sixty-three: It was raining this morning as I headed
out to school on my bike. It wasn't a hard rain, so I didn't
bother putting on my rain pants. I knew I wouldn't get that wet
from it. I arrived at the school around 8:50am. Alex led the
warm-up this morning. He was a few minutes late. I thought there
wouldn't be a warm-up leader, and I was enjoying the juggling I
was doing. But once he showed up, we started the warm-up. Alex
started with a game of Snake Tag. No blood was shed today.
After the warm-up, at 9:30, it was time for Movement class with
Helen. Helen ended up being about 10-15 minutes late. Apparently
she was at a radio interview that had run later than they had
told her. So I used the time to practice my visualization. I
noticed through my visualization practice that I have a hard time
creating a actual image of more than two objects being
manipulated. For example, if I were to try to visualize a 5 ball
cascade, I can see the balls that are in my hands right before I
catch them up to the point where they leave my hand, but I can't
see the other balls. Very strange. I did some visualizing of
single hat tricks. That, I found easiest to visualize.
When Helen arrived, we started the movement class. She had us
review briefly what we had covered last week. Then she told us
that we would be continuing to cover status this week, but
focusing more on the lower body parts (where as last week we
covered the upper body/face/eyes.) Helen started us out with a
warm-up of getting into a very grounded position, and walking
around the room, using as much weight in our walking as possible.
This position tends to be with the knees bent outward, loud, hard
thumping sounds as you walk (imagine a sumo wrestler.) As we
walked around the room, she had us approach people (who are doing
the same,) and share a kind of dance with the person, maintaining
eye contact. For the next section of the warm-up, we walked
around in the opposite of what we had just done. For this, Helen
had us imagine that the floor was getting hotter and hotter, and
we were to walk around imagining the floor being very hot, and
not wanting to put much weight down on the floor (almost hopping
around.) As we moved around in this method, she had us do the
same and dance around with people, keeping eye contact with them
as we did. After exploring this two ways of moving around, Helen
had us discuss how these make us feel, and how it affects the
level of our status. For the next exercise Helen had us do, she
had us separate into two groups, so that each person in the group
was across the room from another person in the other group. Helen
then explained that the people in the group that I was not in
would be border guards, and the people on the other end would be
people wanting to cross the border. The border guards have
instructions to never let anyone pass unless they have papers.
The people wanting to cross (myself included,) do not have the
papers they need. Helen then had us approach the border guards
twice doing improvisation dialogue of trying to get across. The
first time the border guards were to be grounded, and heavy (like
in the warm-up exercise,) and I had to approach the guards in the
opposite stance (the light footed one.) Helen walked around as we
improvised, giving us help on pushing the limits of the status of
our character (be it up or down.) After that exercise, we
discussed it, and then did it again, but reversing the status of
each character so that this time the border guards were light on
their feet, and we were heavy and grounded. I didn't make it
across the border during the time given to us, but it was obvious
that I would have had a better chance of getting across if when
my character was in heavy mode. Next Helen had us do the same
exercise again, but with a different scenario. The next scenario
involved an employee in a Hi-Fi shop that sells audio equipment,
and a dissatisfied customer. I played the roll of the employee in
this session. Like the previous improvisation, we discovered that
the more grounded person usually had a higher status, and was
more in control. For the next exercise, Helen had us all walk
over to one end of the gym, where all the crash mats were. She
had all of us but one sit down on the crash mats. I ended up
being the first for this next exercise. For this next exercise,
she had the rest of the class give me two words. They came up
with "horse," and "honey." And I was supposed
to tell a story involving those two words. And as I tell my
story, Helen would tell me what level of status I should be
telling the story. She started me off at a low status, and then
kept pushing me further and further up. Then eventually she
brought me back down. Then Helen had the class discuss my
performance, and she had them analyse what kind of body language
I used to demonstrate those different status levels. After I was
done, I sat down and watched others from the class do the same
exercise. It was interesting to observe how the slightest
adjustment in one's posture can completely change their status
level. For example, the moment someone leans their weight more on
one leg than the other, they start looking relaxed, and their
status level goes up. After me went Annette, and Deniz. Helen
said that everyone would have a chance to do this exercise over
the next class. For the final exercise of the class, Helen had us
get a partner. I partnered up with Deniz. The instructions for
this next exercise were to have a physical conversation with our
partners. The idea is, that one person makes a physical gesture,
then the other person responds with a gestured response, but
either taking it just slightly up or down a status level. We
started out by going from medium status to up as high as possible
status (where at this point, Deniz and I practically had our
backs to each other,) then we came down to as low as possible
status. After this, Helen discussed what she had observed,
telling us that we could have pushed it a lot further. For our
homework assignment, Helen told us to go somewhere where it is
busy, and there are lots of people and try walking around in the
two status extremes and see how people respond to us. She warned
us not to get in any fights. I found this thought amusing. It
reminded me of the scene from the movie Fight Club.
After movement class was over, I had a 15 minute break before my
PT class. I spent that time up in the student room, eating a
little bit of my lunch.
At 11:30 it was time for PT class. I headed over to Studio 2. Now
I am running into a problem at this point in my diary because I
didn't have a chance to write down my notes right after class
like I usually do, because of my meeting with Bim and Helen. So I
have a big blank spot in my brain about a part of the class. So
for now, I am going to copy the brief notes I have from my
notebook, then come back to this later and finish it up when I
can fill in the blank spots.
(Jan 20th… coming back a few days late to finish this entry.
Some of the details will be lost, but I remember enough to write
on it:)
Bim started the class off with the prisoner game. I had to be a
little more careful this time because the last time I played this
game, I ended up with bruises on my knees from dropping to the
hard floor while trying to get away from the prison guard. After
a few rounds of the game, Bim had us move on to the first
exercise of the class. Bim had us get together with a partner,
and gave each pair of people one juggling ball. I teamed up with
Pascal. The assignment was that we were to toss the ball back and
forth between each other, and every time we catch the ball, our
clown character was to respond to the ball, and the event of
catching the ball in one of the three stages (amazement,
confusion and fear,) though instead of fear, he wanted us to make
it more of pain. After a few rounds of tossing the ball back and
forth, Bim added a new state of being for when we catch the ball,
and this new one was a state of pretentiousness. In other words,
whenever we caught the ball, we KNEW about beanbags, we were
experts at beanbags, nobody knows beanbags like we do. After a
few more rounds of that, we moved on to the next exercise. For
this exercise, Bim had us get into different pairs and put on
noses. Because of the odd number of people in the class, I ended
up in a trio. It was Eley, Polly, and myself. Our instructions
were that we were world class folk dancers, and we needed to come
up with a folk dance routine that we would be performing at a
later time. So between the three of us, we managed to come up
with a short dance routine that involved putting our elbows
together, followed by some spinning around, followed by some knee
slapping, clapping and other things that our clown sudo-folk
dance consisted of. After we had a chance to choreograph the
routine, each pair (or in our case, trio) had a chance to perform
their routine in front of the class. As with many of our clown
performances, Bim is giving us constant verbal feedback and
direction. The scene was that we are competing at some huge folk
dance competition in front of the Queen, and millions of
television viewers. This of course, creates a little stress for
our clown characters, but we are folk dancing experts, and we
don't let it show. After performing our routine, we were judged
on a scale of 1-10 by the judges (the other students and Bim,)
then given our final score right before we leave. Bim announced
the our score of 12, then added a brief pause, letting us
respond-which we did, quite positively hearing our score until he
added, "out of 100," to which we responded again. After
everyone had a chance to perform their routine, and be judged Bim
had us do the exercise again, but this time, he had us go up with
a different partner, and the idea was that the two clown
characters step onto stage, thinking they are going on with their
partner, when they eventually realize that it is not their
partner, but some other person. Trying to save face, the two
performers try to perform a folk dance routine, but of course
their routines don't match up. This was quite funny. I didn't end
up doing this exercise (because of the odd number of people in
the class, but I enjoyed watching the others do this part.) After
this exercise Bim had us stand in a circle, explaining that this
was a film post-production studio and that we had been brought in
because we were all experts at sound effects, and that this was
an audition to see who could do the best sound effects for the
film they were working on. The sound effects we needed to make
were those of a pig who comes running up to the fence, thinking
it is about to be fed, but then slowly realizing that it is not
going to be fed, and becoming very sad. This was absolutely
hilarious, watching people, wearing these silly noses, making pig
sounds, and trying to, in their clown character, be serious about
the sadness of the pig. There were moments when we couldn't stop
laughing. After that exercise, we all sat down for the final
exercise of the class. Bim brought out a big grey bag that was
full of objects. For this exercise, Bim wanted us to take the bag
from him (with the instructions NOT to open the bag, or look in
it, or take anything out of it,) and take care of it for 5
minutes. Of course our clown characters were to give into
temptation and eventually reach into the bag and pull out an
object. The exercise then becomes an exercise of this stupid
clown, who knows nothing, and is completely naïve and innocent,
exploring this object. This can create some endearing moments,
some funny moments. Sometimes, though the exercise got a little
boring. Eley and Tom were the only ones to do the exercise before
we ran out of time. Eley pulled out a feather duster (that had a
spring dog toy stuck to it-so he actually got to work with two
objects,) and Tom pulled out one of those ducks that you push on
a stick that has wheels and leather feet that flap around when
the wheels roll. It was interesting watching them, and seeing
what each of them did with the object while exploring it. I found
myself wondering what my character would do.
After PT class, I headed up to the office for my meeting with Bim
and Helen about the video. The meeting went about as I expected
it would. They didn't seem interested in my proposal, but they
said they would think it over a bit, and talk to me later.
After lunch I headed over to Studio 2 where I spent the rest of
my day doing E&M stuff. Eventually Pascal and Ashling and I
went through the hat routine. Seems we are doing the show after
all. We did a couple of run throughs with the music, and it went
fairly well. I'm looking forward to doing this show at the Albany
Centre.
Around 5:30 I headed home. Once at home, I went to Lidl and did
some shopping for food. I crashed in bed around 8:30pm.
01/16/03 Day Sixty-four: I'm not exactly sure, but for some
reason, I was feeling rather lazy on this morning, and I didn't
actually leave for school until 11:00am. It didn't create a
problem, however, because the only thing I missed was the group
warm-up and the scheduled conditioning practice session,
considering my first class, E&M, started at 11:30.
Arriving at the school shortly before 11:30, I headed over to
Studio 2 for E&M. Rod started the class off by telling us
what we would be working on today. Basically, he had us spend
until around 12:30 focusing on two things. Then at that time, we
would show the class what we had worked on. I spent a short
amount of that time working on my one handed 3 cigar box trick,
and I spent the majority of the time working on a sequence of 4
transitions while juggling 4 clubs. The transitions I was working
on were going from 4 club a-sync fountain into a "53"
or "Triple Single" pattern using my right hand to throw
the triples, and from there back to an a-sync fountain pattern,
and from that pattern throwing a triple with my right hand
putting me into a sync fountain pattern, and finally, from there,
going into my 4 club splits. I managed the entire 4 transitions
only once during that time. While we were working on stuff, Rod
came around and had a look at the juggling tricks sheets he had
asked us to put together. He took a look at mine, and we
discussed it briefly. The sheet I put together is just for club
tricks. He then asked me to put together a similar one for cigar
box tricks. At 12:30, we took turns showing each other the tricks
we had worked on. I nailed my cigar box trick on the first try,
but the 4-club sequence didn't go too well in front of the class.
After everyone showed what they had been working on for the past
hour, Rod wanted us to work on some passing. Oskar and I spent a
while passing 8 clubs on double spin passes using a right handed
2 count pattern. We did a little passing with triple spins as
well. The class ended with myself feeding Pascal and Rod.
At 1:00 I headed up to the student room to hang out and eat my
lunch. I met up with Phil there, and we eventually headed over to
the South Wing. We spent some time there working on PT stuff. He
had missed class the day before, because he was performing his
routine at the school (apparently it went rather well.) So since
he missed the last PT class, I went over my notes with him and we
did a couple of the exercises that we covered in class. After
that, Phil and I spent some time doing stretches there on the
floor in the South Wing.
At 4:00pm I headed over to Studio 2 for Performance class. Tilly
was teaching this class. Tilly explained that we would be working
around using skills in a theatrical way. She started us up with a
couple of warm-ups first. First she had us get into groups of 3-4
people each and play word association. We just stood in a circle
and each person in their turn, calls out a word-the first word
that comes to their mind. Next she had us do it again, but this
time she had us do it with our eyes closed. I found doing it with
my eyes closed more difficult. For the next warm-up we did
something similar, but instead of word association, it was
gesture association. In other words, each person would make a
gesture, or movement in response to the previous gesture or
movement. After that exercise was over, Tilly split us up into
groups depending on what skill people wanted to work on. I of
course went over to the juggling group. She then told us to
either work in groups or solo, using our skill to create
theatrical images. For this exercise I worked with Ashling and
Deniz. The three of us came up with a factory scene. The two of
them were machines, and I was a factory worker. Our scene started
with me walking into the factory where they stand. I clock in,
then go over and turn them on, giving them a few cranks each
until the two of them are starting to juggle 3 balls in a cascade
pattern. Then my job, working at the factory is to pluck balls
out of their pattern, and put them back in at the right spot (in
space and time.) Eventually, the lunch whistle would blow, and
that ended the routine. The nice thing about this routine was
that if a machine dropped a ball. I would have to pick up the
ball, put it back in place, perhaps give the machine a little
oil, etc. After we put together that, performed it, and watched
all the other groups do their thing, Tilly gave us our next and
final assignment. For the next exercise she wanted us to focus on
integrating character and skill. I worked alone on this one. I
decided to create an old man character and use him to work with
cigar boxes. I found this difficult because an old man moves very
slowly, and would shake a little. Two things that do not go well
with cigar box tricks. Mostly I worked on the character part. For
the routine, I had the old man approach the boxes that were lying
on the floor. First I had him pick up one box, and then the
other. Then I had him want to pick up the third box, but
realizing he didn't have a third arm, he figures out eventually,
how to pick up the third box with the other two boxes (taking him
into the starting position of any cigar box routine.) From there,
I turned the boxes vertically and balanced them on my finger, and
made them spin on my fingertip. At this point, the old man image
was lost, because it was obvious that it took a lot more skill
than the old man would have to do that trick. I don't know if the
old man and cigar boxes would go well together.
After this class, I headed home. There was a PT practice session
scheduled, but Bim had not given us an assignment to do.
Later that evening, I ended up going to see a film called Donnie
Darko with Mandy, Rachel, and Tim. I thought it was quite good
actually. I would like to see it again. After the film, I headed
off to bed.
01/17/03 Day Sixty-five: Because my first class didn't start
until 11:15am, I decided to be lazy again and skip the group
warm-up. I arrived at school shortly before 11:00am.
At 11:15, PT started. Usually Bim starts PT with some kind of
game, but today he went right into the lesson. He brought out the
box of noses, and had us each pick a nose. Once I had picked out
a nose, and put it on, Bim opened the mirrors and let us see what
we looked like with our noses, giving us running verbal
instructions and feedback while we did so. Then after having a
good look in the mirror, Bim had us do the exercise where we walk
around the room in the level 4 tension using the 3 different
states (amazement, confusion, & fear.) He asked us to be sure
to respond to not only our environment, but to things that were
happing around us. At this point he started dropping bouncing
balls, and throwing things across the room, and rolling things
across the floor. For the next exercise, Bim put on some music
(the same song we danced to last time,) and instructed us to
dance. First Bim had us dancing alone, and then as the song
progressed, he had us dance with someone of the opposite sex.
There were more boys in the class today, so that created an
interesting dilemma. We responded in our clown characters to the
situation. Next Bim separated us into boys and girls. He then
focused on the boys first, and told us that we were in a
"boy band," and that we had arrived for our photo
shoot. A "boy band" showing up for their photo shoot is
silly enough in the real world, but this is clowning. Needless to
say, it was funny. After several silly poses, with us looking as
cool as we possibly could (in a stupid kind of way,) Bim put on
some music, and asked us to dance to it, or I should say, perform
to it. We were cool, we were hot, we were sexy! After a while he
asked us to dance in sync. This of course made it even funnier.
We were stupid clown like characters who believed they were the
coolest people alive, trying to dance a synchronized dance
routine to some cheesy music. Eventually the music changed, and
it became more romantic sounding music (but still quite
bad/cheesy.) Bim then had us go into a kind of karaoke
improvisation style, trying to show how cool and romantic we were
in our boy band. It was all rather silly, but created a good
laugh. After that exercise, we got to stand and watch the girls
go through the same exercise. They were, of course, the Spice
Girls. It was hilarious. After that exercise, Bim had us all sit
down and he brought out the mystery bag. This time Pascal and Yam
were the ones to go up and investigate the mystery bag. It was
interesting to watch. There were some funny moments, but it
became a little slow at times. The idea of the exercise is that
the clown/character is supposed to pick out an object from the
bag and explore it as though they have never seen anything like
this in their life. The objects are common objects that usually
do something. Pascal picked out a music box, and Yam picked out
one of those plastic tubes that has ridges on it, and when you
swing it around it makes a moaning/whistling sound. For the last
bit of the class, we did the same exercise as before where Bim
gathers us in a circle, pretending that he works for a post
production film company and is wanting to hire us as sound
effects specialists. The sound he needed us to make today was the
sound of an auk bird crying for its lost mate. It was very, very
funny.
PT ended around 1:15. After that I headed up to the student room
to eat my lunch. Shortly before 2:00pm I headed over to the gym
for my Acro for Idiots class.
Today Nikki was not there, but instead her acrobatics partner,
Richard, was there, and was going to be teaching us Chinese Pole.
He started the class off with a quick warm-up. Then he headed us
over to the two poles, and started showing us some basic moves. I
quickly realized that I didn't have the right shoes for this
class. They had some special shoes that I could have borrowed if
it weren't for the fact that my feet are so big (I wear a 13.5 in
UK sizes, and 15 in USA sizes.) I had the option to do the
exercises in my bare feet or socks, but I declined since the cut
on my foot was still bothering me a little. So at this point,
there was not much I could do but sit out. So I just sat down and
watched. It looks like fun, but it also looks like you need an
incredible amount of upper body strength-something I don't have.
After Acro class, we had a short break. At 3:30 Bim showed up
with instructions on what we should devise for the presentations
that afternoon. The subject of the presentation would be working
with objects. He presented us with several groups of objects.
There were a group of objects consisting of pipes of various
lengths and diameters (for example, two of them were parts to a
rola-bola,) there were a group of long tube like things (I think
they were pipe insulation foam pieces,) there was a couple of
ladders, a bed (that came apart into several pieces, and had
wheels-though no one used it,) there was a huge, huge, huge piece
of fabric (rectangular shaped that took up more than half the
gym,) and there were these two hoop skirts that were huge (they
stood at least 12 feet tall. I teamed up with Phil and Fabian,
and the three of us used the pipes of various lengths. Our
instructions were to come up with images using these objects. So
basically the there of us brainstormed for about 45 minutes on
what kinds of images we could come up with using these objects.
These are the images we came up with, listed in the order we
presented them: 1. Each of us rolling on the floor with a tube
rolling next to us, 2. Spinning the tube on the floor 3. Stacking
them from smallest to biggest to form a telescope 4. Using them
to create a race-car (that I drove,) 5. Using them as musical
instruments 6. Using two of them as toilets, and a small one as a
roll of toilet paper (Phil was sitting in the stall next to me
and bangs on the wall-I then roll the toilet paper under the wall
over to him,) and finally we used the tubes to create the
smoke-stacks of the Titanic while Fabian was the captain, and
Phil held my waist while I hung over the front of the ship with
my arms extended. After we came up with this sequence of images
we practiced 2 or 3 times, and then we were ready for
presentations.
Presentations started around 4:30. We were the second from last
group to go. It was interesting and fun watching all the
different things that people came up with. The group that had the
enormous piece of fabric went last, and they ended their
presentation by having all of us go up and hold an edge of the
fabric. They then gave us instructions to lift the edges up as
high as possible, then lower them, while running inward, and then
finally going under the fabric and sitting down on the floor with
the edge under our butts. This action created a huge pocket of
air under the fabric that got trapped under it when we all sat
down. It was very cool. Because the fabric was air tight, we were
all sitting in a semi-circle under what was like a small circus
tent. I imagined it would be fun to have a piece of fabric like
this and get your audience to participate in setting up like we
had just done, and then doing some ball juggling inside (as there
was enough room to stand up.) The only problem however, was that
after about 20 minutes of us sitting under there, talking, we
noticed that the air was starting to get a little thin and stale.
After presentations, Bim gave us the end of the week notes. Eager
to go home, I hopped on my bike and headed out the school onto
the bike path. Not 20 yards from the school down the path I ran
into something in the dark that got tangled up in my front wheel.
I thought it was branches or something that I ran into, but upon
further investigation, I discovered it was barbed wire. It was as
if some kids had placed that there as a booby trap. I was
annoyed. I walked my bike back to the school, and fortunately I
ran into Merlin as he was on his way out. I asked him if he had
any patches. He did. Merlin was awesome, he patched my tire up
real quick, and I was on my way home once again-this time
avoiding the dark bike path, and sticking to the roads. Thanks
Merlin.
Once arriving at home, I just stayed in for the night.
01/18/03 Saturday: Did little worth mentioning today. I got my homework for Dip Notes done--that took about an hour or so. In the afternoon, while watching some Star Trek, I had a nice long stretching session. In the evening I went to Michel's birthday party. Unfortunately I got into a conversation with a couple of people there and it put me in a bad mood. At this point I decided to go home.
01/19/03 Sunday: Today I spent a good chunk of my day cleaning up my room and organizing my stuff. I did a little more stretching today, again while watching Star Trek. In the evening I stayed in. I was about to head to bed early when I noticed that "12 Monkeys" was playing. So I stayed up to watch that. So basically, it was just a day of rest.
01/20/03 Day Sixty-six: I woke up this morning to the sound of
the wind howling and rain beating against the windows. I knew it
would be a day to break out the rain pants. My ride to school
wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Yes it was raining, and
yes it was windy, but, except for a few moments and a few angles,
the wind was to my back, and it was not bad. I arrived at school
about 8:45, and spent a few minutes doing some stretching.
Charlotte, the TT, led the warm-up this morning. She started with
a game similar to elbow tag but instead of two people being
linked at the elbow, they stood, one behind the other with
everyone in a circle facing inward. If the "mouse"
wants to find a safe place to hide, they must stand in front of
one of the pairs of people. At this point the person on the
outside becomes the new "mouse." The idea of this is
that the inside of the circle gets smaller and smaller, and the
game ends when there is no more room inside the circle. Charlotte
failed to mention that part, and we kept making small adjustments
to keep the circle wide enough. Eventually she told us not to
make the small adjustments, and sure enough the inside of the
circle slowly caved in. We, being the massage addicts that we
are, added the element of "massage the person in front of
you while you wait to become a mouse." After that game,
Charlotte led a basic warm-up.
At 9:30 it was time for E&M. Rod started the class with the
red ball game. We again sucked at it today, but finally after
several pathetic attempts made our high score of the day of about
60 hits. We have come nowhere near the high score of 194 we did
last term. Rod had us spend the first 45 minutes of class working
on our own. He asked us to find one or two things to focus on,
and he would walk around the room talking to us. I started out
with 4 clubs, focusing a lot of time on the transition from 4
club a-sync fountain into a "53" pattern (throwing the
5s with my right hand,) and back into the fountain again. I
actually made some good progress on this, and even started
working on my left sided "53" pattern. If I keep this
up, I should have the "534" pattern soon. After
spending a fair amount of time working with that, I picked up a
fifth club and started working on my 5-club cascade. It was
shortly after this that Rod came by to talk to me about what I
was working on. He asked to see my five-club pattern. So I showed
him a run of about 50 catches. I told him I was feeling
frustrated about my pattern because mostly I feel solid about it,
but there are times when the pattern just seems to fall apart
(throws go too low and wide.) Rod at this point asked me if I had
ever tried to do a under the leg throw out of a five club
cascade. I told him I had tried a backcross but had little
success with it. Rod then explained that he thought I should work
on doing a under the leg throw out of 5 clubs for two reasons.
The first reason he told me was because it is an impressive trick
for an audience, especially if you talk it up before you do it.
The second reason he wanted me to work on it was because he said
that if my concern and focus goes towards doing a trick instead
of trying to maintain the pattern, then I will make keeping the
pattern up less an issue, and thus I will feel more relaxed about
it, and it will feel more natural. This made sense in a
theoretical sense. So I put it into practice, and sure enough, it
helped. After several attempts, I was even able to do two under
the leg throws, and continue juggling after catching it. And it
did help me focus less on the pattern, and let the natural side
of me kick in (I'm not sure if any of this is making sense…)
After the 45 minutes of each of us working on our own, Rod called
us together and told us he wanted us to work on some partner
stuff. I got together with Fabian, since he had asked me earlier
on if he and I could work together on the leapfrog some more. Rod
then had us learn how to crawl between someone's legs and steal
the pattern from underneath. It is like the reverse of the
leapfrog. This ended up being easier than I thought. The person
on top doesn't actually get the clubs stolen from them; however,
they just let them drop down into the person's hands below them.
I was having trouble catching Fabian's catches at first, but
after telling him to make the throws under-spun (so that when
they fell down to my level, they would be the correct spin
instead of over-spun,) I was able to catch them fine. The nice
part about this pattern is that as soon as your partner has
caught the clubs, you can take a step back, and immediately go
down on your knees, and as soon as they stand up, you can dive
between their legs, and steal the clubs again. I imagine with
enough practice, the pattern could get pretty quick. After that
trick, with what time was left in the class, Rod had us pull out
the long gymnastics mats and work on the leapfrog steal. As we
started working on it, Rod announced that there would be
chocolate for the first pair of people to successfully land the
trick. At that point, it became a race. Despite Fabian and my
efforts and several close attempts, Phil and Pascal were the
first to get it. We spent the rest of the class time (which was
only a few minutes,) working on the leapfrog steal. Class ended
at 11:20, which gave me a 10-minute break before my next class.
Performance started at 11:30 in Studio 2. Today's lesson was a
continuation of working with objects. Bim had us start out the
class with a warm-up game of "Corners" using the shoes
on the floor. He had us, as usual, start out fast, and move on to
slow. After that game was over, Bim had us do a flocking exercise
with 4 other people in our game group (my group consisted of
Michelle, Phil, Fabian, Ellen, and myself.) The flocking was
pretty basic. Everyone stand close together, and listen to Bob,
and try to figure out what direction Bob wants to go in. It
cracks me up that the reference to "Bob" has become a
regular thing with Bim now. I gave Bob his name back at the
beginning of the course, when Bim was describing the invisible
person standing in the middle of the flock. I named him
"Bob," because back in my hacky-sack days, whenever the
hack went flying off in a direction where there was nobody
standing, we would always say, "I sent that one to
Bob." After warming up our flocking, Bim gave us
instructions to let Bob go find an object in the room. Our Bob
eventually found one of the screens, and we picked it up, and
started manipulating it, and moving around with it. For the next
flocking exercise, Bim had us do what he called "Flocking
Speech." This was similar, if not identical, to what we did
in PT the other day. We all stood in our flock, facing the class,
and Bim asked us, "So what did you guys do this
weekend." And we, as a flock, try to sound out words without
actually having any one person leading. While we did this, the
other groups watched us from the bench. After each flock had had
a chance to doing their flocking speech, Bim had us pick a
partner. I chose Ellen, since she was sitting there next to me.
With our partner, Bim had us flock around as a pair, and
eventually he had us go find an object. At this point, Bim had
littered the floor with objects like juggling rings, cigar boxes,
and spinning plates. He asked each pair's Bob to find an object.
Ellen and I eventually stopped in front of a pink juggling ring.
At this point, Bim wanted us to explore the object using Bob as
our guide and discover what different things the object could do.
After a few minutes of exploring this juggling ring with Ellen,
Bim had everyone separate from their partner, and walk around the
room and find another object (different from the one they had
just explored with their partner.) Once finding our object, Bim
had us spend a little time on our own, doing the same as we had
done with a partner, and exploring what the object could do. The
object I chose was an orange spinning plate. After spending some
time exploring the new object, Bim had us find a partner, and
take turns showing the partner what the object could do. He was
specific about making sure that after we showed our partner what
the object could do, that after each time, we make eye contact
with our partner. He wanted us to show pleasure or pride in what
we were doing with the object. The partner I chose was Tina. And
it just so happened that we both had chosen plastic spinning
plates as our objects. I don't think Tina and I really followed
the directions exactly as we were supposed to, because we ended
up just playing with the object, and continuing to explore what
it could do. We did, however, add the eye contact thing, so we
were somewhat doing what we had been told. The next and final
thing Bim had us do was, one by one, he had the entire class go
up to the front of the class, using the two screens as the
entrance of the stage, and present our object and two things that
it could do. I think the most valuable thing Bim said to us
during this was that at any given moment on stage, the person on
stage should be engaged in a relationship with either the
audience, an object, or another person on stage (a partner.)
Otherwise, the action on the stage is dead.
After Performance, it was lunchtime. The student meeting was
scheduled at 1:30, and because I needed to cook my lunch, I
didn't have enough time to eat before the student meeting. So I
went and took care of a couple of things and then headed back to
Studio 2, ate my orange, and waited for the students to arrive
for the meeting. Not many students arrived for the meeting (as I
suspected,) and the ones that arrived were anywhere from 5-15
minutes late (except Jeremiah who had never left Studio 2 after
performance class.) I started off the meeting by asking if anyone
had anything they wanted the student representatives to address
the next time they met with the directors. A few issues were
brought up, and I wrote them down. Mostly, there was a complaint
about one of the aerial bars, and a request for a new, extra
aerial bar to be hung in the South Wing. There was also a
suggestion that in the Aerial classes it would be better if they
didn't do Conditioning with Jackie, but focused more on the
lesson, and by doing the conditioning on their own, they would
have more time with the Jackie learning new skills. There was
also a complaint about the heating in the South Wing, and a
request that if when possible to have Aerial class in Studio 2.
After taking comments, and complaints, and suggestions, and
writing them all down, I mentioned an idea that I have. I want to
put together a "wish list" of videos and books we as
students would like to see in the library and present it to the
directors. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to get everything
on the list, or any of them at all, but at least it would give
the directors an idea of what things would be appreciated and
used by the students. I also planted the idea of hiring a
professional videographer to video our end of the year show.
After the meeting, we headed over to the gym for Dip Notes.
Usually Dip Notes is held in Studio 2, but the TT were doing an
exercise in Studio 2. Today, in Dip Notes, Rod, after collecting
the homework we had been assigned, handed out the latest
Knowledge Questionnaire. This one was titled, "Devising and
Selecting." Rod is absolutely amazing when it comes to
writing the questions that are on these questionnaires. Flash
forward to the evening, when Phil and I are sitting in my living
room chatting, and laughing like crazy because of talking about
these questions that he writes. Phil described them as Rod taking
a dictionary, tossing it into a blender, and then pouring it out
onto a page. Here is the first question he asked on the form: 1.
How do you develop and use criteria that are appropriate to all
types of ideas where they may be options? Phil pointed out that
the question practically reads the same ways backwards and
forwards. Here is the question written backwards: Options be may
they where ideas of types all to appropriate are that criteria
use and develop you do how? Amazing. Anyhow, we work in groups in
during these sessions, and I was the only native English speaking
person in my group. So everyone was looking at me to translate
these questions. I did my best.
After Dip Notes, I had a brief meeting with the people I am doing
the show at the Albany Centre with this weekend. We set up
rehearsal times, and made plans for costumes, and the
transportation of props, and other things.
At this point, around 3:45, I was very hungry, so I went up to
the student room to cook my potato and eat my lunch. Microwaved
potato with beans is not the most exciting lunch, but I didn't
have time to cook this morning.
After I ate my lunch, Michel and I headed down to Studio 2 to do
our PT practice homework assignment. Basically the assignment was
to have two people walk around. One person was showing a house
(like they are trying to sell it,) and the other person plays the
idiot clown who doesn't know what anything is-as if they came
from mars. Michel and I tried both roles. I definitely worked out
better when I played the dumb character. After doing that for a
while, we quit. Phil brought out his bow and arrows (the arrows
have rubber ends instead of sharp points,) and he taught me how
to catch flying arrows. I was able to catch some of the slower
arrows, but not the fast ones. Its something I would love to
develop. I just think it looks cool catching arrows that are shot
at you.
After playing with that for a while, it was time for us to
practice the juggling piece we are performing this weekend. We
spent about an hour and a half working on it, and made a
significant amount of progress. Assuming we keep to the schedule
we have set up for ourselves, there should be no problem with it
this weekend. My main focus will be to learn my tricks
solid-especially bouncing 5 balls while standing on a table top.
After rehearsal I went home. It wasn't raining when I left, so I
didn't bother putting the rain pants back on. But about a ½ a
mile from my house, it started dumping rain. I got a little wet.
Arriving at home, I quickly cooked dinner and ate it. Phil came
over after I was done eating, and he and I headed into town for a
walk. We were working on our homework for Movement class. Helen
had assigned some homework that involved walking around in public
places in either high or low status and seeing how people
responded to you. It was an interesting experience trying the
different statuses. One moment that was classic happened when we
decided that instead of just walking past people in high or low
status, we would take turns going up to people and asking the
time in either high or low status. The result of the first person
I approached in high status, and asked the time, was that she
smiled at me, and quickly looked at her watch and told me the
time. The second person I approached, in low status, my voice low
and mumbled, my chest sunk in, my head slightly bowed, avoiding
eye contact. When I asked her the time, she started to look at
her watch, then stopped, gave me this, "You're an
idiot" look and pointed to the clock on a building behind me
and said "Half Eight," and walked off. It was classic!
After our long walk, Phil and I hung out in my living room
chatting, and having a good laugh at various things. Around
10:15, Phil headed home, and I went straight to bed.
<Back to the top>
01/21/03 Day Sixty-seven: Today should be one of those short
entry days. I headed up to school in the morning, in the rain,
arriving around 8:50. I did some quick stretching before warm-ups
started. Charlotte, the TT, led the warm-ups, no games, just
straight into the warm-up. She actually does a good job of it.
She seemed a little disorganized when she first started doing
warm-ups, but she has gotten much better.
From 9:30 until 11:30 I had a nice long 2-hour break. I used most
of that time to practice 5-ball bouncing, and the various hat
tricks I need to have solid for the performance this Saturday at
the Albany Centre. I also spent a short amount of time passing 8
clubs with Oskar.
From 11:30 until 1:00 we had conditioning class. It was pretty
much as usual.
At 1:00, I went up to the student room to eat my lunch. Shortly
after eating my lunch, I headed over to the gym where people were
hanging out, and a very fun impromptu game of Combat (Gladiators)
started. I hope we do more of that during our lunch breaks.
At 1:50, Movement Technique, or Contact Dance started. Liz
started the class off with the usual warm-up, followed by having
half the class roll on the floor to one side of the gym, and then
the other half roll to their side. Then she had the entire class
roll back, to the opposite side of the gym (which meant that you
had to roll over people to get there.) Somewhere in there, Pascal
hurt his neck, and had to step out for a moment. He was okay, and
jumped back in to class after a few minutes. For the next
exercise, we got together with a partner and rolled together with
them across the gym floor and then back. My partner for this
exercise was Tina. After rolling across the floor twice, Liz
wanted us to go over the things we had learned in the last couple
of lessons. For this I couldn't work with Tina, because she is
too small (or I am too large-or actually, our body sizes are just
too different.) So at this point I switched with Lyndal. He was
not feeling well today, so we did very little in the class, which
was fine for me because I am not that excited about Contact Dance
at this point. Too much of it requires that the person you are
working with be the same size, and that both of you be a bit on
the small and limber side. At some point, I needed to go to the
bathroom, so I stepped out. When I returned, I stepped into the
classroom, and Liz was standing there right in front of me. When
she saw me walk in, she asked me if I would go get some ice for
Phil (who had apparently hurt his foot.) So I headed over to the
student room to get the ice pack out of the freezer. Upon
returning, and giving the ice pack to Phil, I noticed that Lyndal
had found another partner. So at this point, I just sat down with
Phil, and we watched the class and chatted in a low voice.
At 3:30 it was time for Body Awareness. Helen started the class
as she has in the past few lessons, by having us sit around her
on mats on the floor, and discuss our experiences over the week
of working on our visualization. I mentioned to her that I have a
hard time visualizing more than 2 balls, and that my
visualization is better at the kinaesthetic level. She then said
that this seems to be a common theme with jugglers, where the
jugglers are more into kinaesthetic visualizing and Acrobatics
and Aerialists are more into imagery visualizing. I found this
interesting. The rest of the class was spent on her taking us
through a visualization exercise where she creates a story for
us, and we fill in the details. I really enjoy this class,
partially because it is nice to just lay on the floor in the gym
and listen to her voice, but also because it allows me to explore
my mind and body. The story was about a performance, and the
audience, and the time before the show, during the show, and
after the show. I won't go into details about my story. After the
exercise, Helen had us get together with a partner and discuss
the experience and the details of each of our stories. Then after
that, we discussed it as a class. Our homework this week is to
spend a few moments right as we wake up visualizing that we will
have a successful day in our rehearsal and practice.
After Body Awareness, I headed over to Studio 2 for my E&M
practice session from 4:30 to 5:30. I spent most of that time
working on my five-ball bouncing pattern. In this show, I have to
bounce 5 balls on top of a table, while standing on the table
(which means I have very limited surface space to bounce on.) I
am making progress. My goal is to get my average bounces up to
about 40, so that I can perform about 30 bounces (before I pick
up the balls and go into a toss pattern with the five-something I
can keep up for as long as I need, after that.) I also spent a
small amount of that time working on my "534" patterns
with four clubs. I am making progress with this. I can now do a
couple of throws of a left handed "53." My next goal is
to do a "53534" with 4 clubs. That way I end up doing a
"53" twice on each side.
From 6:00 until 6:30 Annette, Fabian, Ashling, Pascal and I
worked on the piece we are performing this Saturday. We made a
lot of progress, and are feeling confident about doing well.
Apparently we are the only juggling piece in this Cabaret show. I
believe we will do rather well. From 6:30 until 7:00, I continued
practicing my 5 ball bounce pattern. I did a few runs that took
me up into the 30s.
At 7:00 I rode my bike home. Jeremiah rode with me (until the
point where I turn off.) By 7:30, I was sitting in my room, doing
some stretching, and by 8:00 I was tucked away in my bed reading
Harry Potter.
For anyone who knows me, and wants a good laugh, check out this parody article from The Onion: Skeptic Pitied
01/22/03 Day Sixty-eight: (I've gotten a day behind in my
writing, so I may be conservative with my details.) I arrived at
school around 9:02, thinking I was late. But when I got there,
there was no TT there to lead the warm-up, and none ever showed
up. I noticed all the TTs gathering over in front of the South
Wing when I arrived on my bike, so I imagine they were involved
in some project. Not having a structured warm-up was fine with
me. This gave me a chance to do a little juggling for fun.
Sometimes you have to set aside your big projects, and those hard
tricks you are trying to learn, and just juggle for fun.
At 9:30 Movement class started. Helen started the class off by
having us gather around and discuss our experiences in the
homework assignment. Phil and I told of our adventures of walking
around in downtown Bristol at night in the rain. After we, and
others talked about our experiences with the status homework,
Helen had us start off with a review of the four usages of space.
We had covered this in class way back in the beginnings of the
first term. Helen had us wander around the room, and had walk
calling out the 4 usages of space (flexible, direct, disturbing
space, & w/out disturbing space.) Then she had us add a
handshake and verbal greeting as we walked passed people in the
four usages of space as well. After that warm-up, Helen separated
the class into two groups of 5. My group consisted of Charlotte,
Annette, Deniz, Polly, and myself. For the first exercise, Helen
had one of the five stand in a neutral status state at one end of
the gym while the other people, one at a time, approached this
person in order to give them an object (in our case it was a soft
fluffy hat.) The idea of this assignment was to give the person
the object and try to lower their status as much as possible. As
an example, when I approached Deniz with the object, I was
scowling at her, and when I got close enough, I tossed the object
in her face, giving her one last nasty look before I turned and
walked away. Helen felt the need before this exercise started to
assure people that this is just an acting exercise. She did this,
I believe for the people who were having their status lowered (so
they wouldn't feel bad.) Each of us in the group had a chance to
try the position of having their status lowered, and was
responsible for telling the other 4 people what they did that was
affective in lowering their status. After this exercise Helen had
us form new groups for the next exercise. My new group consisted
of Charlotte, Catalina, and myself. For this exercise we did the
direct opposite. The object of the exercise was to approach the
person (who is standing is neutral status) and raise their status
as much as possible, while bringing them an object. Since I had
two chances to try it, for the first one, I acted as if I was
infatuated with Charlotte as I approached her, showing how shy I
felt when getting close to her, and how much I admired her. For
the one with Catalina, I approached, as though she were royalty,
keeping my head lowered as I approached. Basically, I lowered my
own status in an attempt to boost their status. Something Helen
pointed out, in the discussion afterwards, was that if you
approach the person with a high status, and show them respect, or
honour, or something like that, then that would raise their
status even more. I hadn't thought of that. Helen also discussed
how the different uses of space were used in each of those two
exercises. I found that direct and disturbing the space usages
were used for lowering the persons status, and that flexible, and
without disturbing the space were used for raising the status. Of
course, that is not written in stone. I could see examples using
the opposite, and it would still work. After that exercise, Helen
had us do the exercise that we had done last week where one
person tells a story (based on two objects suggested by the
audience) and Helen dictates what status level they should tell
the story. Today Michel and Pascal went. It was interesting when
Pascal told his story because by my suggestion, he told his story
in French. My idea was that it would be interesting to just judge
his status by his physical gestures, and not by the content of
his story. And since I don't speak a word of French, this was
possible for me-though apparently not possible for others who
seemed to laugh at Pascal for no apparent reason other than
something he might have been saying in his story. One of the
things that Pascal was using, that Helen pointed out, was tempo.
When Helen asked him to raise his status, he slowed down.
Basically it told us, "I am in control here, and I will
speak as slowly as I want, because you WANT to get every word I
have to say." It was an interesting observation. The final
exercise was an improvisation of a headmaster/student scene. Tom
played the headmaster of a high school, and Annette played the
student. The scene involved Tom calling Annette to his office
(Helen set up two chairs and a "desk") because he had
heard reports of her doing graffiti on the walls of the school.
For the first scene, Helen had Tom play high status, and Annette
play low status. For the second scene, Helen had Tom play low
status, and Annette play high status (apparently Annette's father
contributes a lot of needed money to the school.) And for the
final exercise, Helen had each of them play high status
(apparently Tom just found out that the school receive a huge
grant, and they no longer need Annette's father's money.) This
final scene was the most challenging, especially for Tom. There
was a moment, when Tom had Annette sit down in the chair in his
office, then made her wait while he got on the phone. This
gesture was presumably saying, "I am in control here, and I
am going to make you wait there, while I casually make a phone
call that I need to make." But Annette cleverly responded by
falling asleep in her chair. It was vicious.
After Movement class, I had a short break before heading over to
Studio 2 for my PT class. Today Bim was out, but he had given us
an assignment on Monday that we were to work on during the class
time. The assignment reads: "Duos or Trios with clear
status. 5 mins max. An act or presentation that goes wrong. The
problem (or reaction to problem must build. Try to hide problems
from public but don't ignore them. Problems can be with objects,
with body, with understanding etc Whatever happens in performance
respond to what is happening. Try to demonstrate visible though
process, interesting solutions, moments of hope/success but
awareness of that disaster that can approach tragic. Try to
demonstrate pleasure, confusion and suffering. Use real objects
not mime." Phil and I decided to work on this project
together. I had an idea, and Phil agreed with it. So we spent the
majority of the time brainstorming on the piece. The idea is that
I am a "snake-oil vendor" hawking "Dr. Bealies
Cure All, Ancient Asian Elixer." Bealies, of course being a
play on my surname. Phil's character would be my stooge that I
pull from the audience "at random" to help demonstrate
the wonders of my snake-oil. The idea is good, but it still needs
a lot of work. And it will be hard to keep it around 5 minutes
long. Though I have rarely seen people keep their in class
exercises under the time limit. Most go over. Because of hunger,
Phil and I left the PT class at 12:30 to go eat our lunches.
At 2:00pm I headed over to Studio 2 for my E&M practice
session. I practiced my juggling from 2:00-3:00pm. I worked on a
few things, and eventually spent some time passing with Javier.
Somewhere around 3:15, Phil and I headed up to the quiet room to
work on our PT piece some more (to make up for the time we
skipped out of class early.) We made some significant progress,
and did some improvisation work to try to come up with some
clever dialogue.
At 4:00pm I headed back to Studio 2 to rehearse the juggling
piece we are performing this Saturday at the Albany Centre. We
ran the piece of a couple of times before Dave intervened and
mentioned that the stage (which none of us had seen yet) was less
than half the size of the space we were using at the moment. At
this point, we realized that we had to re-block a bunch of the
movement. Dave helped us out by placing mats on the floor marking
how large the stage was. It is going to be very difficult to
perform. We didn't know the stage was so small. There was some
building tension and frustration at finding out how small the
stage is, but I have confidence that we can do it. We ran the
piece one more time (using the small stage) and Phil videotaped
it for us. There is no doubt that the video is hilarious, because
we made several mistakes. After that, Annette, and Fabian spent
some time running their bounce routine, tightening it up. I spent
the rest of my time, until 6:00pm, working on my five ball
bouncing on the table. It's still quite shaky, but I should be
able to do a short run before going up into a five ball toss
pattern.
At 6:00 I headed home. My intention was to go shopping for
groceries, but I never made it. I ended up spending the evening
at home, not doing much of anything productive. I went to bed
around 10:00pm.
01/23/03 Day Sixty-nine: (Jan 27th. I'm a few days late writing
this… details will be minimal) For some reason, this day
turned out to be a real crappy day. I started out by being lazy
and skipping the group warm-up, and the 9:30-11:00 Conditioning
Practice session. I arrived at school around 11:00, and
eventually headed over to Studio 2 for my E&M class at 11:30.
This ended up being probably my worst ever E&M class. I was
in a bad mood, and I couldn't do anything right. Rod wanted us to
pick something to work on from 11:30 until 12:10, and then show
it to the class. I started working on my 53534 pattern, and was
having trouble with it. When Rod came by and watched me, he
explained to me that my triple spins were too low (they are about
the height of his double spins.) So he gave me instructions to
work on my doubles and triples, within those patterns I was
working on, and make them higher. He explained that for an
audience, it makes sense to do high lofty throws instead of fast
spinning throws that stay low. He basically said that if my
triples look like doubles, people would think they are doubles.
He said that most layman can't count the number of spins a club
makes while it is in the air. So I sent the rest of that time
working on just doing a basic 4-club fountain with really high,
slow double spins. It was frustrating, and it was adding to my
already bad mood. At 12:10, Rod had us demonstrate the things we
were working on. I of course, didn't have much to show the class,
other than that I was feeling frustrated. It must be that time of
the month! After that, Rod had us work on passing. He basically
spent the time asking us to demonstrate various body throws. It
seems he was just taking inventory at this point, trying to get
an idea of what skills we already had, so that he can give us
things to work on. I enjoyed the passing more than the first part
of the class. Rod ended the class by having us doing a passing
pattern that involved the entire class. It was your basic two
lines of people facing each other with all feeding except the two
on the outside of each row.
After E&M I had my lunch. Then Phil and I went looking for a
place to practice our PT piece. We were not having any luck
finding a place, and we had until 4:00pm before our next class,
so we decided to hop into his car, and head down the road, and
practice at his house. We hung out at Phil's house until about
3:45 practicing our piece. I was having trouble with accents, and
having trouble coming up with lines for my character. Overall, I
was just feeling frustrated, and annoyed. Phil could tell I was
in a bad mood. We unfortunately made little progress on the
piece.
We arrived back at school just before 4:00pm for our Performance
class. Unfortunately I don't have any written notes on that
class, so I am going to have to go ask Deniz, or someone else who
is good at taking notes, what we covered in that class. I will
come back and post that information when I get it.
After Performance class was over, I was supposed to practice PT
with Phil some more, but my juggling show group wanted to
practice the routine for Saturday night. It was frustrating, not
being able to do both. But Phil understood, and he even helped us
by watching us and giving us feedback as we did a couple of
run-throughs.
At some point, probably around 7:00pm, I headed home, glad to be
done with what had been an all out frustrating day.
01/24/03 Day Seventy: (Jan 27th. I'm a few days late writing
this.) I arrived at school around 9:00am. I headed into the gym
to explain to Charlotte, the TT, that I would not be attending
her warm-up because I would be over in Studio 2 practicing the
juggling routine we would be performing at the Albany Centre the
next day. Once in Studio 2, we spent until 11:15 practicing our
routine. We managed to get about 3-4 run throughs before PT class
started. We spent some of that time taking care of costume needs,
and watching past performances on video and discussing how we
could make it better. All in all we made pretty good use of the
time, though I felt we could have run it a couple more times (had
we managed our time better.)
At 11:15, it was time for PT class to start. Bim started the
class with the tail game, but playing it in clown mode. In this
game, he wanted us to really work the excitement of winning, and
getting someone's tail, and the disappointment in having your
tail taken. He started us off in pairs, and then had us switch
partners a few times, and then eventually he had the entire class
play together. After a few minutes of having the whole class
together, he instructed us to leave our tail out (when it was
pulled,) and continue pulling other people's tails. Eventually
everyone had lost his or her tail. Bim pointed out that we were
all losers to which we responded, in clown mode. So giving us
another opportunity to win, he set up another competition, a
singing competition. For this he set up the screens, and we each
had to make an entrance and sing one line of a song. This was
awkward. I have a pretty deep voice, and it is hard for me to
sing very well. But I did my best, and sang a line from one of my
favourite songs that goes like this: "I spent last night,
dreaming of your eyes, but your hair kept getting in the
way…" Bim gave us feedback as each of us went up to
perform. He didn't give me much feedback, but he did ask me to
sing the line again, but with more feeling. It was a bizarre, and
interesting exercise. Now, next in my hand written notes I wrote
"objects 4 levels." I'm not exactly sure what that was
about, since my mind is blank, and I can't remember the details.
I imagine what happened at this point is that we did another
warm-up in walking around the room and looking at objects using
the 4 levels (amazement, confusion, fear/pain, and the new one,
pretentious.) After that, we spent the rest of the class doing
the "mystery bag" exercise. Bim wanted everyone to have
a crack at this exercise, so he shortened the exercise by just
having people approach and reach in to get the object (instead of
leaving them with the bag and instructing them not to open the
bag, and having that time of "temptation" to act out as
well.) The object I picked out was actually two objects stuck
together. One was a piece of string/wire stuff, tied together in
a loop with metal pipes on it. It was like a big necklace. It was
tangled up on a metal ring (about 9" in diameter, which had
3 or 4 spokes, and then a smaller ring in the middle. I'm not
sure what either object was, or what it was used for. But I
explored both of the objects. I mostly got a good response from
Bim in what I was doing. For this exercise, I tried to imagine
having no clue what the object was, and explored the many aspects
of it (e.g. what sounds it makes, what it tastes like, what it is
like to wear, etc.)
After PT class was over, it was lunchtime. I ate my sandwich, and
got this idea to go into Kingswood. I have been wanting to buy
some clippers to shave my head. So I headed over to Boots where I
found a fairly inexpensive pair of electric clippers for £15.00.
I returned to the school, and showed some girls who were out on
the grass eating their lunch (something I haven't seen in
months,) and Deniz suggested I cut my hair before the next class.
I thought it was a good idea, so I went looking for a bathroom
with a plug, but I couldn't find one. I was just about to give up
on the idea, when I convinced Deniz to cut my hair for me (since
I couldn't find an outlet with a mirror near it.) She had never
cut hair before, and was a little nervous about it. I assured her
that there wasn't too much damage she could do since I wanted it
all off anyway. So she and I headed into Studio 2, and plugged
the thing in. Shortly after that, I had a buzzed head. It feels
so nice to shave my head now and then. I'm glad I did it.
At 2:00pm, after cleaning up, the PT class started. Usually I
have Acro for Idiots at this time on Fridays, but because Bim was
out of town on Wednesday, he set up an extra hour for class
today. During this hour, we spent the time presenting the
projects that he had assigned us. I explained to Bim that Phil
and I were not exactly ready to present ours, but we could
present it as "a work in progress" if need be. As it
turned out, we ran out of time, and Phil and I didn't have to
present our projects yet. The other projects were alright. The
best one was the one that Yam and Annette did. They were news
broadcasters, Yam was speaking in her native tongue, and Annette
just sat there, while tons of things went wrong. It was quite
funny.
After PT, I had time to hang out before the Aerial presentations.
I did a bit of juggling in the gym with Oskar. At 4:15, we headed
over to the South Wing to watch the Aerial presentations. They
were fun to watch. They were group presentations. The first one
had a Elvis theme to it, the second one had a vampire theme to
it, and the final one had a synchronized swimmers theme to it.
They were all very good. After the presentations, we headed over
to Studio 2 to talk about the presentations, and then Helen gave
us our end of the week notes.
Around 5:30 we all headed over to the gym to watch Tilly present
her rope routine. Her routine shows the life of a woman. The
routine starts at birth and goes through various stages of her
life until she dies. It was about 25 minutes long. Very
beautiful, and her technical skill on a rope is amazing. I felt
it was a little muddled towards the end, but she came out and
said that she was having problems with that part. Overall,
though, I really enjoyed it.
After Tilly's show, I headed home on my bike. I arrived home, and
pretty much went to bed shortly after that. I hadn't planned on
going to bed so early, but Mandy was doing stuff in the living
room, so I retired to my room to read, and eventually fell
asleep.
01/25/03 Saturday: Today I went into town to do some shopping. I bought 4 new pairs of sweat pants, 3 t-shirts, 6 pairs of socks, and a new pair of shoes. I blew a lot of money, but it is all stuff that I need for school. Now I should be able to get through the entire week without having to do laundry. Oh boy! It was difficult finding the shoes. I wear a size 15 in US sizes, which translates to 13.5 in UK sizes. Most stores don't sell that size.
Around 5:20, Pascal picked me up and took me to the Albany Centre. The Albany Centre is basically an old church that has been converted into a practice space for circus arts people. There are ropes and trapezes all over the place, hanging down. The stage is small, but a little bigger than Dave had indicated, which was a relief. We had an opportunity to run a technical rehearsal once, and then it was just a matter of waiting around for the show to get started. We were slotted to go 2nd after the intermission. I spent much of that time before the show, practicing a couple of hat moves that I was having problems with. Around 7:30 the place started filling up. Apparently they turned away a huge crowd of people waiting to get in outside because they sold out. Among the people who were turned away were Mandy, Tarim, and a few other Bristol jugglers. There was so many turned away, that the Albany Centre decided to have a second showing the next night. Our group, however, collectively decided against performing the second night.
The show itself was amazing. There were some incredible acts. The best act, in my opinion, was Nikki and Richard's acro-balance routine. I had seen them rehearse it before, but watching a rehearsal was nothing like seeing them perform the piece. It was absolutely hilarious. The other pieces were very good as well. Lots of aerial pieces. Annette did her 3 ball routine as well. There was a couple playing the saw (something I have to learn at some point in my life,) and there was a bizzare stand up comic who smashed records, and tossed rice all over the stage. Our piece didn't go as well as we had hoped. Although I was behind the screen waiting for Pascal, Ashling, and my entrance and couldn't see it, apparently Annette and Fabian's ball bouncing routine had a few drops. What sucks about ball bouncing, is if you make a mistake, it can cause balls to go flying in random directions. My part in the routine went fairly well. I landed most of my tricks. Overall, the audience responded well. Its good that they were all circus lovers.
After the show, I caught a ride home from Phil. I went to bed by around 12:30am.
01/26/03 Sunday: Today I hung out with Phil. He came over around 11:00am and we started out by watching The Princess Bride. He had never seen it before, and I was eager for him to watch it. He enjoyed it. After that, we decided to go for a walk through Bristol. We actually went for a pretty long walk. We were out for almost 4 hours. We spent a lot of time watching people, and checking out the way they walk, and commenting on it. It was very interesting. It was a good exercise for exploring characters. We have out PT intensive week coming up starting Monday.
After our long walk, we headed back to my place and hung out watching TV. I cooked some dinner and we ate. Phil headed home around 7:30. I was pretty exhausted at that point. I did the dishes, then headed up to my room and crashed.
01/27/03 Day Seventy-one: (Day one of the "Clown
Intensive" week: ) Today starts our week of "Clown
Intensive." Basically this means that any and all practice
sessions become PT classes, so that our afternoons are basically
focusing on clowning. I arrived at school around 8:35, and did a
little juggling up until 9:05 when Alex started the warm-up. He
started with a game of zigzag, and then went into his basic
warm-up.
At 9:30 E&M class started. Every day, we don't know if Rod
will show up to teach because he is expecting a baby any day now.
As soon as the baby comes, we will be working with Haggis for a
while. Also next week is our "Juggling Intensive" week
with Sean Gandini. Rod started the class off by giving us a
couple of hand-outs to read about different training techniques.
Next he got us going with a game of Combat. I didn't win a single
match. Phil and Pascal were the finalists, and Pascal took my
title as "Gladiators Champion" Arrgg! I will take it
back, I swear!!! :) Rod had us work on our own, picking 3-4
things to focus on as he walked around talking to us about our
progress. I started out working on 4 clubs. My pattern was
looking a lot better now (since the last time, when I was getting
very frustrated.) I am getting comfortable with slowing it down,
and am able to go into a "53" pretty easily now and out
of it in the new, slower pattern. When Rod came by and chatted
with me, he asked me to try doing some backcrosses while juggling
4 clubs. After he left, I gave it a try. I started with a regular
4 club fountain, then tried to throw a "53," making my
5 a behind the back triple spin. I worked on this for a few
minutes, and then Rod came back by and told me to instead to get
a regular "53" going, and then toss one of the
"5s" behind the back. I tried this. It felt much
easier. I never succeeded in doing this trick, but I could see
that it would be possible in some time. Next I picked up some
hats, and did some hat juggling. I have never tried hat juggling,
but found it pretty easy. I quickly learned how to juggle 4 hats,
and had no trouble keeping it going. I also learned today how to
do a 3-hat shower. I worked on a few other one hat tricks as
well, such as the roll up the arm onto my head, and my
backcrosses onto the head. After working with hats, I picked up
my cigar boxes, and played around with them. I hadn't done any
cigar boxes in a while. I am struggling right now with which two
objects to focus on; cigar boxes and clubs, or hats and clubs.
After playing with boxes for a while I worked with Fabian briefly
in the leapfrog steal and the under the leg steal. Next I picked
up 3 clubs and started toying with the idea of starting to put
together a 3-club routine. Rod walked by and I asked him what is
the best way to get started on a 3-club routine. He gave me
several ideas. And we talked about what I could do. I will most
likely be doing something that involves clubs in my project next
half term. For the last 10 minutes of class, Rod asked us to find
a partner and work on numbers passing. I got together with Oskar.
We started with a 7-club popcorn pattern. Then we moved on to
eight clubs (right handed 2 count, double spin.) Then Rod came by
and wanted to teach us a trick. He stood between us facing me,
all three of us holding 3 clubs. Then he had me pass 6 clubs on a
very fast single spin 2 count with him while Oskar stands in the
back doing nothing. Then when I am ready, he had me start
throwing triple spins over him, over to Oskar. At that point,
Oskar starts passing to me (on triple spins,) and Rod continues
feeding out all of the clubs to me. Eventually (well, maybe a
second and a half later,) all nine clubs are being passed by
Oskar and myself in a triple spin right handed 2 count pattern.
Rod is standing empty handed under the archway of clubs. Well, in
a perfect world that is what would happen. We need to work on our
9 club-passing pattern first. But we did manage a couple of very
short runs of it.
After E&M, I had a short break before Performance class. I
sat down and ate most of my lunch during that break.
At 11:30 it was time for Performance class. Usually Bim teaches
the Monday morning Performance class, but today Tilly was
teaching it. She explained that she was not substituting for Bim,
but that they had switched and she was teaching her version of
"Performance." She also explained that this was her
last lesson in teaching the usage of skills in performance. Tilly
had us warm up with a rather bizarre warm-up. She wanted us to
warm up with a sort of dance where she would tell us two body
parts and we would alternate between trying to get those two body
parts as far from each other and as close to each other as
possible. Next she had us team up with a partner, and do the same
exercise, but have our partner tell us which two body parts (as
they watch,) and visa-versa. For this exercise, I worked with
Fabian. Next she had us get together with another partner
(someone who would be using the same skill as you.). For this
exercise, I worked with Oskar, since both of us had decided to
use juggling clubs for this class. The exercise involved having
one person performing their skill while the other person calls
out body parts. The person performing their skill has to listen
to the body part being called out, and accentuates that body part
(usually by drawing attention to it in some way.) I found this
exercise difficult, mostly because with juggling, you usually
find the stance most suited for the trick and any variation to
that can make the pattern unstable. I could see how with practice
you could choose a body part to accentuate, and then work the
pattern around it, but impromptu requests like that created a lot
of drops. Next she shifted the exercise and instead of having us
call out different body parts, we called out different styles
(e.g. symmetrical, floppy, wide, tall, short, sloppy,
sophisticated, etc.,) these also proved difficult, and created
lots of drops. Again, with practice, it could be perfected, but
any deviation from the standard stance and style of juggling
creates drops. Next she had us get together with a different
partner. I worked with Jeremiah on this next exercise. For this,
she called out various scenes and asked us to in our space
improvise each scene. The scenes she called out were about two
people usually with some kind of dialogue that revolves around a
typical social situation (e.g. fighting over who's turn it is to
do the washing up, young person telling their parent that they
are pregnant, teacher addressing a troublesome student, etc.)
After doing several of those scenes, she had us all sit down and
called up volunteers for the final part of the class. First
Avital and Eley went up. She had them do Acrobatics and
Acro-balance while doing the scene about the washing up. It was
interesting to watch, seeing two people arguing, but doing
acro-balance at the same time. There were a couple of moments
where the two worked well together. Next she had Oskar and I go
up and do a scene. Our scene involved the two of us at a party.
Oskar was my boss, and I am trying to get him to promote me (by
kissing up, or whatever.) We both arrived on the scene with 3
clubs, and eventually started passing. It was in a way silly,
because as we were passing, we used different throws to highlight
what we were saying in the conversation. For example, if there
was a drop while passing, I would pick it up and mention that I
am good under pressure, or if I went into multi-plex throws, I
would tell him I could handle multiple things at once, etc. The
class seemed to enjoy it. The next scene involved Annette and
Phil working with bouncing balls. Annette was Phil's mother, and
Phil was confronting his mother, telling her that he had gotten
some girl pregnant. And for the final scene of the class, Pascal
played a headmaster, who had called Ashling, a troublesome
student who secretly has a crush on her headmaster, into his
office to discipline her. Both scenes were rather amusing to
watch.
After Performance, I had an hour break. I ate the rest of my
lunch, and hung out in the quiet room chatting with various
people. Around 1:45, I headed over to Studio 2 to juggle for a
while before our Dip Notes started. Oskar was there, and we did a
bit of passing (mostly working on popcorn.)
At 2:00pm, Bim arrived and started the Dip Notes session. Today
he was talking about the projects that we will be having next
week. He started off by describing what the project is, and then
we talked about the process of putting together a project like
this. He gave us a hand-out that covers the details and
guidelines of the project. I will post that at a later time. Here
are the notes that I wrote down during that session:
Dip Notes w/ Bim: Projects 24th and 25th of March
We have 4 weeks to put together the project, and we perform it during the 5th week.
Don't participate in more than three projects (your own project, and two others.)
Pieces will be one of the following:
Exportable piece: something I want to carry away with me.
Research piece: experimental
Purpose of project: take responsibility for a piece of work.
Time: 3-8 minutes long, 3 minutes for skill based, longer for theatrical based
Start off with idea first then add skills as they fit
Steps to putting together project:
1. Wordstorm (apparently the PC version of "brainstorm")
2. Selection
3. Research (books, video, other performers, paintings, etc.)
4. Experiment
5. Feasibility check (skills, resources, etc.)
6. Conception
7. Planning: schedule, resources, structure
8. Devising (more experimenting)
9. Practice/Rehearsal
10. Feedback (from tutors, other students)
11. Evaluate feedback, make adjustments where needed
12. Performance
13. Evaluate (piece and process)
After discussing
the project, he announced some details about the end of the year
show. The topic of the show is "Midnight Summer Dream."
Which I thought was strange, because it will confuse a lot of
people into thinking they are coming to see a circus version of
"Midsummer Night's Dream." Anyhow, apparently the idea
is that the show will be a quest, and there will be an island,
and jungle, and some mythical beast. It will be interesting to
see how this all comes together. More details about it will come
out as we start to work on it.
After Dip Notes, I had a short break before our 2 hour PT
session. I used this time to do a little juggling.
At 3:45, Bim started the PT session there in Studio 2. He spent a
few minutes explaining what we would be doing over the next week
for our Intensive week. Then he brought out the box of noses. I
picked out a nose. He basically told us that we should be
narrowing down what nose we want to use from now on, and keep
coming back to that same nose. I am pretty content with the nose
I have now. It is a bulbous nose which makes my face look a lot
rounder than it is. It helps that I just shaved my head as well.
Next he opened the mirrors so we could have a look in the mirrors
at ourselves. We also spent a little time putting together a
costume of sorts. Some of the other students had brought in
clothing from home ("stuff they wouldn't be caught dead
in," was what Bim asked people to bring in.) Unfortunately I
don't have any random clothing objects like that laying around at
home. Its hard enough to find normal clothing that fits me, let
alone weird stuff like what a clown might wear. I ended up
borrowing Yam's big red sweater, rolling up the sleeves, and
rolling up my pant legs a little. I look rather helpless. After
having a look in the mirrors for a while, Bim started us off on
our first exercise set in our clown noses and costumes. The focus
of the lesson was confusion and uncertainty. First Bim had us in
our clown characters go looking for an object. He had set up a
shopping cart (trolly) full of weird objects. I found a crutch.
After everyone found an object, Bim came around asking each
person if they had the right object, asking us to focus on
confusion and uncertainty. After approaching us and asking about
our object, he sent us each out to find a place in the room to
place the object. Next he came by and told each person that they
had placed the object in the wrong place, and that their object
was supposed to be with someone else's object. Eventually I found
my way over to Deniz, and she balanced her big water bottle on
top of my crutch. Then one by one, Bim went around the room and
confronted each pair of clowns, asking them why they thought
their objects were supposed to be together. It was all rather
amusing. For the next exercise, Bim had everyone sit down, while
he pulled out a pile of cleaning supplies. Then he had people
come up in groups of three. One of the three people would be the
expert, someone who had held the cleaning job for years, and
years, and the other two were new on the job, and it was the
experts job to teach them how to use the cleaning products. This
exercise took the remainder of the class time. I had the
opportunity to go up twice, playing each of the two roles. The
object of this piece was that the expert clown needed to flaunt
their expertese with using cleaning products (which can be very
funny if done right,) and the other two characters needed to
demonstrate their confusion and uncertainty about the cleaning
products. It was all rather amusing to watch. I didn't feel my
scenes went that well, but it seemed hard for most people to do
it. At the end of PT class, Bim handed us a couple of videos he
wanted us to watch.
At 5:45 I headed over to the student room with several other students and we watched a documentary about Tommy Cooper, a bizzare comedian/magician. I had planned to watch the other video as well, but about 10 minutes into it (and I can't remember its title,) Helen came in (apparently she had been working late in the office,) and she told me that even though Bim had said it was alright to stay late watching videos, she was not okay with it, and that I should go home. Apparently she was concerned about health and safety issues. Understandable. Anyhow, I headed over to Studio 2 at this point, did some stretching, and then headed home about 8:00pm.
01/28/03 Day Seventy-two: (Day two of the "Clown
Intensive" week:) I arrived at school around 8:50am.
Charlotte was working on 3 ball juggling, and I went up and
taught her how to do Mills Mess. She learned it pretty quickly
because she had been working on the Fake Shower (or Windmill,)
that is basically half of a Mills Mess. She asked me to teach her
Rubenstein's Revenge and Burkes Barrage next (all the classics.)
Alex led the warm up this morning. He started with a weird game
of splitting the class in two and having everyone in each of the
two groups lay down on the floor in a row (the two rows side by
side ready for a race from one end of the gym to the other.) Then
the person on the back end of the row of bodies, places their
body on top of the other people, and they roll along the floor,
creating a conveyor belt to move the body to the front of the
line. After that person has gone across the row of bodies the
next person goes. The idea is that the entire line of bodies
moves down to the end of the gym floor. There is nothing like
rolling around on the dusty gym floor in the morning. After that
game, we played Snake Tag. After Snake Tag, Alex led us through
one of his basic warm-ups.
From 9:30 until 10:15 I cleaned the office, the bathroom, and the
hallway (including the stairs,) as the first part of my new
weekly cleaning job. This job should pay me about £14 a week
(which is just enough for my groceries for the week-if I shop
wisely.) I still have all the studios to clean next.
At 10:15 I headed over to the gym and spent a little time
studying for the test we were scheduled to have in Conditioning.
I confirmed we would be having the test when I was cleaning the
office and ran into Liz. She had apparently forgotten to bring
the test with her, and was having it faxed over to her at the
office. After spending some time studying the different parts of
the spine, and the different muscles in the legs and stomach, I
spent a little time juggling in the back part of the gym. Mostly
I worked on my 4 clubs stuff. And I spent some time working on my
"441" pattern, making my "1" go behind the
back.
At 11:30, I headed over to Studio 2 for my Conditioning class.
Liz started the test right away. The test was split into two. The
first part was the practical part. For this, she assigned us each
partners. I was working with Avital. Basically we each had to do
a certain number of exercises on the list while the other person
observed, critiqued, commented, and if necessary taught them-and
visa versa. After the practical part of the test, we went on to
the written part. I wasn't expecting to do too well on the
written part, but it wasn't too bad. I know I will at least pass
it. I have never been good at taking tests. I was the second
person in the class to finish the test (Avital was the first-for
some reason, our practical went much quicker than the others.) I
finished my test at 12:30, which was nice, because it gave me an
extra half-hour of lunch.
I headed over to the student room, and ate my lunch. After eating
my lunch, I headed over to the gym to spend the rest of my
lunchtime juggling.
At 1:50 it was time for Contact Dance. I'm starting to not enjoy
this class that much, but I do my best. The class started out as
it has the last couple of times, with Liz doing the warm-up of
rolling around on the floor, and stretching. Next she split the
class in half, and we each half rolled to its side of the gym.
There, she partnered us up with someone (Fabian was my partner,)
and we rolled across the floor with our partners. Today, Liz
added the extra challenge of having two groups of people rolling
towards each other, making it necessary for them to manoeuvre
around the other pairs of people. After this warm-up, she went on
to teach a couple of new things. First she had us do a trust
exercise with our partner. For this trust exercise, one person
would close their eyes, and the other person would lead them
around the room. The only physical contact allowed between the
two was a light touch of the wrists. The leader would take their
partner around the room, experimenting with changes in speed and
levels. After this exercise, she had us do a similar exercise,
but this time the partner with the closed eyes would stand in one
place, and the other person would push or pull, or swipe various
body parts with varying degrees of effort, and they would respond
(e.g. if I pushed Fabian at the hips, he would move forward a
step or two.) After each of us doing that exercise, she had us
each do it again with eyes open so that the person being led
could respond much more dramatically, and move about more in
space (without hitting anyone.) The next two exercises were
lifts. The first one you stood side by side with your partner,
holding on to them by the hip with your inside arm. Then you both
rock back and forth, bending at the knees a few times, and then
one person pulls harder, and the other person goes up into the
air for a moment as the person lifting goes up on one leg. Its
hard to describe. The next lift was a lot easier. It was just a
matter of the person jumping up into your arms with their body
straight as a board (either on their back or on their front.) The
class was still going at 3:20 (when it was supposed to end at
3:15.) I found this annoying because we had a 2 hour PT class
coming up at 3:30, which meant we were not going to get much of a
break. I informed Liz that I had a 2 hour PT class coming up, and
that I was going to take a break. She said that was fine. So I
grabbed my stuff and headed over to Studio 2.
A few minutes later, Bim started the PT class. Bim started as we
did last week by having us pick out our noses, and get into
costume, and check ourselves out in the mirror. After that Bim
decided to start the class with another sound FX job exercise. It
was just like the previous two exercises, but for this sound FX
we had to do three sounds; the sound of water lapping at on the
shores, the sound of footsteps in mud, and the crying of the Loch
Ness Monster. Usually this exercise has me in stitches, laughing
like crazy, and most of the other people in class were laughing
as well, but today I wasn't finding things that funny. Phil's
Loch Ness crying made me crack up, however. After doing the sound
FX exercise, we all sat down and Bim had Charlotte, Phil, and
Pascal come up for the cleaning exercise. They were the ones who
had played the cleaning experts before, and Bim wanted them to
have a chance at playing the dumb ones. So for this exercise, he
just introduced them to the cleaning supplies, and then left them
there on stage to do some cleaning. Not much cleaning was done.
The scene itself was rather slow, as Bim later pointed out. But
it was an interesting one to watch. After that exercise was over,
and we discussed it briefly, Bim explained that we would be
moving on to "problems with objects." For the exercise
in this area, Bim dumped a huge pile of junk onto the floor, and
when I say huge, there was tons of objects. Then he sent half the
class up and gave us instructions to pick up all the objects.
This of course becomes difficult for a regular human being, and
ten times harder for a not very intelligent clown. After much
struggling, trying to pick up all the stuff, Bim gave us
instructions to exchange objects with the person next to us
without dropping anything. This was amusing to say the least.
After the exercise was finished, the other half of the class went
up to do the same exercise. Bim changed their version of it a
little, and instead of having them exchange objects once they had
managed to pick them all up, Bim set up the two screens with very
little space between them, and asked them to go between the
screens and put all the objects on the other side. This created
quite a problem for them considering the width of the space
between the two screens. For the next exercise, Bim wanted to
address the relationship between the clown and his audience. For
this, Bim set up the two screens like the entrance to a stage,
and gave us instructions that we were stage hands working on a
huge set that was having a massive show for the queen. And that
our character would accidentally wander out onto the stage, being
lost, and suddenly realize they are on stage, and surrounded by
all these people watching them. Not wanting to miss out an
opportunity to perform, the character would then try to perform
something, and try to stay on stage as long as possible. After
giving us these instructions, nobody felt excited about getting
up there. It seemed like a tough exercise. Eventually people
started going up and doing the exercise. It was difficult, to say
the least. I haven't don the exercise yet, as several others have
not as well, but Bim said we would continue this exercise the
next day.
After PT, we had a scheduled hour E&M practice session just
for the people who have PT and E&M as their specializations.
I spent the hour teaching Pascal some passing patterns.
At 7:00, I headed home. I grabbed some dinner, checked my email,
and then headed off to bed to read Harry Potter until I fell
asleep.
01/29/03 Day Seventy-three: (Day three of the "Clown
Intensive" week:) With an hour and a half Movement class,
and just under 5 hours of Physical Theatre class, this diary
entry should be a pretty meaty one. With every good intention to
arrive at school early, I still managed to arrive just before
9:00am. Upon arriving, I noticed Charlotte was getting smoother
runs of Mills Mess. Alex led the warm-up. He was trying to think
of a game, and I suggested the version of dodge ball we play in
Jyl's class. For this version, everyone stands in a large circle
formation and there are two people in the middle of the person.
One of the people in the middle (person A) has to protect the
other (person B) from being hit with the ball. If person B gets
hit with the ball, then person A assumes person B's position, and
the person in the circle who made the hit assumes person A's
position. After playing this for a while, we moved on to play
Alex's version of dodge ball, where everyone runs around the room
and it starts out with two people being "it." The
people who are "it" try to hit the other people with
the ball. If a person gets hit by the ball, they become on of the
"its" until everyone has been hit with the ball. You
can pass the ball from one person to another, but you cannot run
with the ball in your hand. It was fun. After that game, Alex led
us through a basic warm-up.
At 9:30, Helen came over to the gym and started our movement
class. Helen started the class off by telling us that we would be
taking some "Movement Medicine." She had a list of
everyone in the class, and what kind of medicine they needed. She
apparently decided, after having watched us in various
performances, what element of our moving we needed to work on. So
our "medicine" involves having Helen identify a problem
and then focusing on it for 5 minutes at the beginning of class.
My problem was "points in space." Helen told me that I
am not aware of where my body is in relation to space, and it
shows. It sounded like a technical way of telling me I was
clumsy. Something I have always professed to being. Anyhow, she
wanted me to spend 5 minutes moving my extremities in various
areas of space, and be aware of where they are in relation to the
space around me, and to my body. After our "medicine"
session, we moved on to the real meat and potatoes of the class.
Continuing with status as the topic, Helen covered 3 areas: faces
and status, levels of status, and giving status to objects. First
we covered faces. Helen had us stand opposite someone in a line
with about a meter and a half between us. She then just had us
explore various head and eye positions. The various eye positions
included: head on, up, and down. The various head positions
included: head on, down, slightly up, slightly to the right, and
slightly to the left. We went through all the possible
combinations of these head and eye positions. With each one,
Helen asked us to observe how we felt (status wise) with each
position. She explained that each of these were gross
representations of the more subtle realistic head and eye
placements that we use in everyday life. Our homework in this
area is to observe our own head and eye placement in various
situations. For the next section of the class, we did an exercise
I am calling "Socks and Shipmates." For this, Helen had
half the class sit down to observe while the other half of the
class was instructed to grab a pair of socks and ball up one of
the socks and stuff it in the other-making a kind of
"whip" they could use to strike each other. Then she
assigned them all positions on the ship: Captain, First Mate,
Second Mate, and so on, down to Cabin Boy (who was not permitted
to carry a sock.) Next she gave the Captain an assignment, and
he/she needed to get their crew to do the task. The idea of the
exercise was to establish a chain of power. It didn't work very
smoothly the first couple of times it happened. Mostly everyone
but the Cabin Boy was running around hitting the people below
them with their socks, trying to complete the task. I eventually
pointed out that the flow of command would work out better if the
instructions went from vague to specific down the chain of
command, (e.g. Captain says to his first mate, "I want
things back to normal." The first mate says to the person
below him, "Put the table back over there, and the mats over
there." The person under the first mate tells the other two,
"You two, move the table over there, then come back and move
the mats over there!" and the person under the person under
the first mate says, "You, cabin boy, grab this end of the
table, now follow me!") Helen seemed to like my comment, so
she pulled me up into the exercise, making me first mate. This
was my second time in the exercise. The first time I was the
cabin boy, and spent most of my time being struck by a sock. This
final Socks and Shipmates went better than any of the others. For
the final exercise of the day, we started to address giving
objects status. Helen explained that it is important to be clear
what status an object has when an object is being used in a
piece. First she had half of the class sit down and watch while
the other half, one at a time, interacted with a chair that Helen
had placed in the centre of the gym. After we watched each person
interact with the chair, we commented on who had given the chair
the highest status, and who had given it the lowest status. It
was easy to point out who had given the chair the lowest status.
Tom walked up to the chair, and the only reason he sat down on it
briefly was to scratch an itch on his ankle. As I sat there
watching these, I tried to imagine what I would do to lower, or
raise the status of the chair. But sneaky Helen switched the
chair with a shoe when it was our turn; killing any ideas I was
cooking up. That's not the first time she has denied any
pre-conceived ideas. I guess that is a good thing, though. It
keeps us thinking. Helen ended the Movement class as she usually
does, by having us all sit around in a circle while she reminds
us what we covered in the class. The class ended at 11:00am,
giving us a 15-minute break before Physical Theatre.
At 11:00, the first 3 hours of the PT class started. Usually the
class runs until 1:15, but a few of us, myself included, didn't
get out until around 2:15. Bim started off the class explaining
that he wanted to go into the costume store so that we could find
the right costumes for our characters, but that there was some
kind of class going on in Studio 1 (where the costumes are
stored,) and we wouldn't be able to get in there until later. So
Bim had us start the class off by putting on our noses, and the
costumes we had so far (for me this was Yam's sweater, and
rolling my pant legs up a little.) We spent a few minutes with
the mirror, and then he closed up the mirror and got started with
the class. Bim explained that for the first part of the class, we
would be exploring different walks in order to find one that
works well with our character. He had us mill about the room,
walking as he gave us various styles to walk in. These styles
were somewhat based on the elements, but also based on leading
with certain parts of the body. Some examples: on toes, on heels,
knees, out, like air, like a puppet on strings. He also had us
experiment with various speeds of each one, and rhythms as well.
As we walked around in these various styles, Bim would walk
around the room, telling each person which movement worked best
for their character. Bim liked the one that I did when he covered
the "light as air" section. I moved, as if my head was
being pulled by a string at the top of it, my feet moving in soft
small steps. I'm not sure why Bim liked it, but I went with it.
After going through the various walks, Bim asked us to pick one
that worked best for us and focus on it for a while. Then he
asked us to present our walk to the class. After everyone had
presented his or her walk, Bim had us find a noise that we could
make that would go well with our walk. So we walked around, and
people found sounds that fit their walk. Then Bim had us get
together in groups of 2 or 3, and find a rhythm of walking. What
I mean by this is that first one person would walk forward, in
their walk, making their sound, then after a few steps, the next
person would walk towards them making their sound and walking
their walk, and then the third person (if there was one) would
follow. Then they would all repeat it. I worked with Annette. I
worked with her on getting a rhythm to our walk, and putting in
some good head turns and reactions to each other. Next everyone
presented their 2-3 person choreographed walk to the class. After
that was over with, we spent the rest of that session doing the
exercise we had started the day before. This was the exercise
where your clown character wanders, by mistake, onto a huge stage
in the middle of a show. Taking advantage of the situation,
he/she tries to do an impromptu act on the stage in the hope of
being accepted and loved. Everyone got a chance to try this. When
I went up, my character tried to do a stand up comedy act. It was
funny; I found my voice slipping into an Emo Phillips style of
comedy. I eventually got booed off the stage. Around 1:00 after
the exercise was over, we all headed into Studio 1, and pulled
out boxes and boxes of costumes, and we each found costumes for
our characters. It took a while to find the right thing for me,
but I eventually ended up with white shorts, a white shirt, a red
and brown and white patterned vest, a white jacket, a
red-stripped tie, and a weird white hat. It was about 2:10 before
we were finally done in there. Several people from the class had
left early and only a few of us remained to clean up all the
costumes.
At 2:00 I was supposed to be in an E&M practice session. But
I was hungry, and had not had a chance to eat anything yet, and I
had not brought anything with me to eat. So I had to hop on my
bike and head into Kingswood. When I got there, I went to the
Iceland store, and bought myself some food.
Arriving back at school, after eating, I went into my E&M
practice session and juggled from 2:30 until 3:30. I did a bit of
passing with Fabian, and later a bit of passing with Javier.
At 4:00 it was time for our next 2-hour session of PT. We started
the class off by having everyone get into their costumes (the
ones we put together before the break.) Then Bim had us stand
around in a circle so we could look at each other and comment on
each other. It was rather amusing seeing everyone dressed up like
that. Next Bim put us into "families" and other
categories based on what we looked like. I didn't really fit into
a category. Next Bim had us work on our walk some more. He wanted
us to work on it some more for a couple of reasons. One reason
being that the costumes (shoes especially for those suddenly
wearing high heels,) changed the way you moved. The other reason
was that he just wanted us to get it more defined. Again, he had
us work on our walk in groups of 2 or 3. I worked again with
Annette. This time, however, we didn't work with sounds-just the
walking part. Once we all had a chance to practice our walks
again, it was time to give our clowns names. This was a strange
way to do it. Bim had us come out, in our groups of 2-3, using
our walking, and then he warmed us up with asking each duo or
trio questions that they had to "flock" answer. After
warming us up with some questions, he proceeded to ask what each
character's name was, and we were required to answer him in
flocking mode. This was rather bizarre. Here are the names. I'm
not sure of the spelling, because flock speak is hard to
understand at times. Charlotte-"Mildred,"
Pascal-"Howard," Polly-"Alberta,"
Myself-"Fred," Annette-"Sophie,"
Phil-"Leon," Eley-"Boris,"
Tom-"Krisht," Yam-"Ely," and
Deniz-"Bebe" (which had Deniz cracking up because
apparently Bebe is Turkish for penis.) After each group had gone
up, and gotten their names, Bim ended the class by having a
session of what he called "Russians." For this
exercise, people went up in pairs, and had to arrive on stage in
the middle of a huge show, and cover for some Russians who had
not shown up, and had to pretend to do Russian performances. It
was an odd exercise, and it made me think of Jyl Hewston.
At 6:00, the class was over. I hung out for a bit, but headed
home shortly after that.
01/30/03 Day Seventy-four: (Day four of the "Clown
Intensive" week:)Despite the fact that we spent another 5
hours on Physical Theatre on this day, this entry will be rather
short. I decided this morning skip the 9:00 warm up, and the
9:30-11:00 Conditioning Practice session because I was feeling
tired. Instead, I stayed home, and did a little reading online,
and did about 30 minutes of good quality stretching. I arrived at
school around 11:25, ready for my E&M class. But when I
arrived, the first person I talked to was Rod, and he informed me
that apparently the schedule had changed, and my E&M session
was at 9:30-11:00 instead of Conditioning Practice, and that I
had PT at 11:30. I was bummed I missed my E&M class. I guess
that is what I get for being a bum, and for not checking the
schedule thoroughly during an Intensive week.
From 11:30 until 1:00, Bim left us to work on our own, saying he
had a meeting he couldn't miss, and that he would be back at 3:00
for our 3:00 to 6:00pm PT session. Phil and I used 11:30 until
1:00 to work on our piece. We were working on the Snake-Oil
Vendor piece. We managed several decent run throughs, and it was
feeling better.
At 1:00pm I went and had my lunch.
At 2:00pm, Phil and I met again, and worked on our piece until
3:00pm
At 3:00pm, everyone showed what we had to the class. And Bim gave
feedback on each piece after we presented them. This went on
until about 5:00ish. After the presentations, Bim wanted us to
work briefly on our voices. We spent the rest of the time doing a
voice exercise. Bim told us that he was doing a film about the
great British Aristocrats, and needed to get interviews of them.
He suggested that everyone knew that to have the perfect British
accent for a British aristocrat, all you needed to do is have a
stiff upper lip. So with our characters armed with this tip, we
were interviewed one person at a time. Bim asking us about our
country homes, and what we did for leisure, etc. Pascal
videotaped this session, and I definitely want to get a copy of
it. It was hilarious.
Shortly after class, I headed home, feeling rather tired.
01/31/03 Day Seventy-five: (Day five (final day) of the
"Clown Intensive" week:) This will be another short
entry. Feeling rather tired from a long week of "Clown
Intensive" I headed up to school for our last day of it. I
arrived at school around 8:45, and hung out until around 9:00
when Phil and I headed over to Studio 2 to begin rehearsal of our
piece. We spent from 9:00am until 11:15am flailing around, trying
to come up with ideas. It felt worthless. There is nothing like
being exhausted, and trying to find your muse. We spent some of
the time working on voices. That was about the most successful
part of it.
At 11:15, Bim started the regular class. He expressed concern
about our energy level, and told us that the focus of the class
would be Passion and Pace. Bim needed a stereo, but there wasn't
one in Studio 2, so he gave us instructions to warm up in tension
level 4 in our characters until he got back. When he got back, he
had half of us sit down while the other did this "Opera
Karaoke" warm-up exercise. This was the Passion part of the
class. It was rather hilarious, actually, seeing half the class
up there with their noses on, squelching out fake Italian
singing. Tom's character looked like he was about to burst into
tears-very passionate, very funny. The other half of the class,
including myself, did the same exercise after they were done. For
the next exercise, Bim had us do another sound FX job. This one
was funny because our characters were starting to complain to
Bim, because after each of these "auditions" he tells
us he will call us, but we never hear from him. So we were
confronting him. Also, there were some humorous moments, for as
the audition required us to do a hippopotamus's mating call,
there were several puns flying around (e.g. Hippo Porn, Hippo
Hormones, etc.) Bim could tell we were at the end of a long week.
We were having a hard time focusing. The exercise came off,
however, and it was as hilarious as the previous ones. For the
next exercise we worked on Pace. For this exercise, Bim set up
the screens and had half the class stand behind them. Our
instructions were that we were to come out two at a time and we
had to improvise at something/anything as long as we worked
together. Bim had a plastic water jug in his hands, and he told
us that if we slowed down and got boring, he would hit the jug
once. After hitting it three times, we were to leave the stage,
to make room for the next duo. I swear, I have no clue where I
got the energy to do some of the things we were doing on stage.
We got several laughs. After that, I got to sit down and watch
the other half of the class do the same exercise. One of the
funnier moments was when Phil was cleaning the floor with his
head (he has a huge mop of curly hair.) After this exercise, Bim
launched into another exercise. I honestly did not pay much
attention at this point, but the exercise had something to do
with James Bond. It started with Eley telling a James Bond story,
and Yam doing the mime for it. But Bim had Yam play stupid, and
then Eley had to interact with Yam to try to get her to mime
correctly. After that exercise, Bim did another exercise with
Deniz, Polly, and Tom. This one I found interesting. He had Deniz
tell a story in Turkish, and Polly and Tom (who are both English)
had to do the mime for the story. This made their character's
look dumb quite naturally since they didn't understand a word
that was being said.
At 1:15, it was time for lunch. I ate my lunch, and took a break
before the afternoon instalment of PT.
At 2:00, we all headed back to Studio 2. We all had from 2:00
until 4:30 to finish up our pieces. Phil and I went first in
showing our piece to Bim. He gave us some ideas, and notes on
certain aspects of it. He then went off to help the others. Phil
and I spent the 2.5 hours working on our piece, running it
several times. I was feeling tired, and not enjoying the piece
itself.
At 4:30, the rest of the school crowded into Studio 2, and we
presented our pieces. There were 7 pieces in all. Two of the
groups had 2 pieces each. Bim explained to the class that some of
the pieces may not work, and that we had a week less to work on
this project than he usually gives people. They were of course a
great audience. Phil and my piece went off without a hitch. It
didn't get as good a response as we hoped, but I wasn't feeling
that passionate about it anyway. After the show, Bim gave us
feedback on the pieces. Then we cleaned up, and it was time to go
home.
Looking back, I really enjoyed the lessons during the "Clown
Intensive" week, but I didn't have that great of an
experience with the project. It would have been nicer to have a
looser defined assignment, and more time to work on it. I felt
that we barely knew our characters enough to throw them into a
project like that. More time would have been good.
After getting home, Phil came by my house, and he and I went to
the nearby pub and had a pint. I ate some food at the pub (pub
food is dirt cheap!) Phil and I played a game of pool. The rules
are different for pool here. I scratched on the eight ball, and
assumed that I had lost, but I hadn't. If you scratch (at any
point in the game) the other player gets 2 shots. I was also
curious to find out from Phil the word they used for
"English" when playing pool. I assumed they didn't use
the word "English," and I was right. They use the word
backspin.
After dinner, a pint, and some pool, I headed home, and got to
bed nice and early.
Wow... another month gone by!
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