It seems that not only is Fushigi’s marketing campaign highly misleading, but the product itself is of very poor quality as well. Not horribly surprising, but it’s another reason to stick with standard acrylics. Great to see videos like this online to keep the public informed.
I had the pleasure of attending the 2010 Cascade Juggler’s Festival this past Saturday in Renton, WA.
On Friday, the juggling space opened up for a few hours and there was apparently a Renegade Show later that night. I was, however, unable to make it to the Festival until Saturday.
The Festival took place at the Renton Community Center, which is in the South-East side of the Seattle metropolitan area. There were about 40 or so jugglers in attendance at the open space on Saturday, and one vendor, who was selling chain mail juggling balls and fashion accessories. A few workshops were listed for the day, though they were rather spontaneous and did not seem to follow the posted schedule. The workshops I observed included multiplex theory and knot throwing. One of the more interesting moments for me came when one of the festival attendees demonstrated an unusual pattern I had not seen before that he called the “Peruvian Mess”, which involved adding an inward arm fold into a mess pattern. The juggling energy in the community center was really strong, and there was lot of really active juggling, especially club passing. I was however, a little taken by the steep price of the event, given its relatively small size ($25 just to get into the small practice space, not including the additional $10-$15 for the juggling show).
The festival’s Cascade of Jugglers Show took place at Hale’s Palladium in Ballard, which oddly enough, was more than 20 miles away from where the festival itself was held. Despite the long distance, the venue was a very good space for a juggling show, with a vintage-looking stage, plenty of seating, and good lighting. The acts ranged from generic club passing and silent vaudevillian humor to more exotic acts such as break dancing and hoop isolations. Some of the standouts included a Canadian duo executing a choreographed club swinging/takeouts dance number, and a juggling contractor doing an original routine he called “flair drywall” which involved the manipulation of a drywall knife and trough while he applied drywall mud and tape to a wall.
As a whole, I had a good time. Though I thought the price of the festival was a little much, and the planning could have been a little better. Nonetheless, I met some cool people, and saw some cool juggling, so it was fun.
The WJF competitions themselves started on Friday, around noon. There were a slew of different categories that first day ranging from beginner, intermediate, advanced, juniors, endurance, 360s, etc. The competitions ran a little long Friday (pretty much the entire day) and they actually had to cancel some of the workshops so they could get all the competitions done. Highlights include Doug Sayers executing a flash of six club backcrosses, Jon Brady casually juggling five clubs at head level, and Lauge Benjaminsen spinning like a top under just about everything he threw. One of the more interesting moments came during the endurance ring competition when Pavel Evsukevich decided to make his last few attempts in ring numbers juggling while also bouncing a ball on his head just for the heck of it. As a whole, the juggling on Friday was extremely impressive, but a little overwhelming in terms of overall run time.
Saturday was ‘Maximum Overdrive’ which was where the top competitors came out and unleashed some of the most intense moves they could muster, even if it took multiple attempts. For most of this show, jugglers came out in threes and did their own seperate tricks. This worked really well in terms of compressing the run time and giving the audience a very extreme visual presentation, so it definitely lived up to its name. Shortly thereafter, they had the Major League Combat championships. There were four types of games during the championships: Zombie Combat, Kill the King, Sumo Combat, and 360s Combat. To my understanding, most (if not all) of these versions of combat are new and were devised specifically for MLC. They went over very well in execution. Team Play ended up winning the championship.
The final day of the convention featured the Battle for the WJF Presidency as well as the long program. As cool as pure single prop based sport juggling competitions are, the long program was a welcomed addition, as it presented more show-oriented routines which added more diversity to the stage. Pavel Evsukevich won the long program with a routine involving juggling 4 and 5 giant balls, and some intense ring juggling. Throughout the show, there were a couple of exhibition performances: a two and three ball “Falcontrol” juggling routine by Falco Scheffler, and a video game-themed performance by diaboloist Ofek Shilton, who worked his way all the way up to four diabolos. Doug Sayers and Josh Horton also performed a very impressive sports-themed team routine that utilized several different props, including tennis balls and a racket. The Battle for the WJF Presidency was interesting to say the least. Noah Malone took on Jason Garfield in a rather hilarious competition with various rounds that ranged from juggling jousting to three club dance moves, with the competition climaxing in a finale of speed balloon sculpturing. It was a very comical and entertaining way to end the convention, with the only disappointment being that Garfield did not actually perform any serious juggling during the performance. Noah Malone ended up sweeping most of the battle rounds to become the new WJF President for a year. It is currently unknown what Malone’s duties as WJF President will entail, but I’m sure the WJF will make an announcement regarding this soon.
This past week I had the pleasure of attending WJF 6 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. It was a very memorable experience.
My flight arrived late on Wednesday, so unfortunately I missed out on a couple of the workshops, but I still made it down to the pavilion before it started to clear out. The turnout itself was a little sparse, but there were a fairly large number of international jugglers in attendance, which was very cool to see. There were several vendors there, the main one, of course being the WJF table itself who was selling balls, clubs, rings, t-shirts, and DVDs. Sportco and Juggling Fashion also had tables briefly set up with items for sale.
For the workshops, Falco Scheffler taught mess patterns and box patterns. For the mess workshop, he spent time breaking down and teaching Burke’s Barrage, and Rubenstein’s Revenge as well as a couple others. With the Box workshop, he demonstrated and instructed on the diagonal box, upside down box, the swap box, and a few others that made my brain hurt. Pavel Evsukevich gave several fairly straightforward workshops on ring balance, kicks, and head bounce. Jason Garfield himself taught beginning juggling, backcrosses, overheads, and a few other techniques.
The practice space was well utilized with jugglers training, breaking world records (ring and ball passing), and hanging out well into the wee hours of the morning.
Tune in tomorrow for part 2: The Competitions.
This past Saturday was the 2010 Ann Arbor Juggling Arts Festival held at the Wide World Sports Center in Ann Arbor, MI.
The attendance this year was easily one of the strongest showings in recent years, most likely at least partially due to an article published in the Detroit News promoting the festival. On site vendors this year included Gballz, Wunderground, Jolly Lama, and Zeemo the Magnificent. There were also free copies of Scott Anthony’s ‘Juggling and Comedy for Entertaining Children’ book available to all those who came.
Unlike the past few years, there were a couple workshops this time around. The two I noticed being held were four ball juggling and seven club passing. There was no formal juggling show, which may be a festival turnoff for some jugglers, but the festival really shinned when it came to its organized games. The games tended to lean more towards the novelty side of juggling with events such as quarter juggling, soap juggling, and squirt gun juggling. Though, they did have a couple technical events such as five ball endurance and a seven club passing competition. One of the highlights of the day came with the best trick competition, where a variety of creative and technical tricks were presented to a very attentive audience with the winning trick being a five ball three up 720.
On a personal level, I really enjoyed meeting jugglers from all over the Midwest, learning some new four ball and cigar box moves, getting wrecked at combat, and finally buying a copy of the Charlie Dancey’s ‘Encyclopaedia of Ball Juggling’. Overall, I had an enjoyable time, and it was a solid festival.
Fushigi
A new infomercial has popped up, you can check it out on youtube by just typing in “fushigi’ and “ball”. I refuse to try and post the video here. What fushigi actually is:
It is hard to put to words how I feel about fushigi. Honestly the guys over at contactjuggling.org have pretty much summed up how I’ve felt since seeing the video. You can follow the thread over at:
http://www.contactjuggling.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7708
I am disappointed that this is happening to the art form that sparked my passion and career in object manipulation. I’m upset fo the most part at two things: first is the rebranding of contact juggling as “fushigi” and second the crushing blow to the spirit of cjing. There has also been some talk about the jugglers that where in the commercial; whether or not they were sell outs. I ain’t going to touch that one.
Now the whole rebranding thing really pisses me off. If it had been a company named “Fushigi” presenting an “acrylic ball” (putting this in the smallest type face possible) that was “perfect for a new craze hitting the world by storm, CJing! Look at the magical amazingness that you can do with the Fushigi ball.” But it wasn’t. In fact they named the ball itself fushigi and went so far as to try to give it the tag line The Magic Gravity Ball. To be far according to the voice of Fushigi over at the forums they are trying to move away from the magic gravity ball thing, but it’s still plastered every where on thei site. Any way the rebranding only has as much power as Fushigi has popularity. At present the likelihood of a child coming up to me and squealing “Mommy! Mommy! He’s Fushigi’ing! I seed that on T.V.” are slim to not. So I’ll reserve myself on this till the future.
But the very spirit of contact juggling has been attacked by Fushigi. There has always been a fine line when using acrylics. From my understanding Micheal Moschen created the routine “light” to honored the passing of a friend. The art form of contact juggling was uniquely created to give a physical representation of life. Till now I had always seen some underlying respect for cjing shared by every single juggler I have met. Fushigi breaks this bond I felt we all had. It isn’t about the commercialization of acrylics; every juggling site and store sells acrylics now. It is about respect and honor which Fushigi is completely lacking. They have made an effort by going on to the forums and speaking with the community, but it looks hollow to me. Their websites even warns you to beware of imitators; like all other acrylic balls are knock-offs of Fushigi.
I don’t feel like I can ever use acrylics again and I am currently trying to get rid of mine. I’m not going to stop contact juggling; I can’t! I love juggling, it’s become my life. But I can’t pick up an acrylic. Fushigi has sucked the dignity out of acrylic contact juggling in hopes to siphon money off of uninformed people to create a new fad. The art has become a damned SHAM-WOW or a bloody Showtime Rotisserie, “Just Set It and Forget It!”. Fushigi “Magic Gravity Ball!” I for one am going over to firetoys and getting their cj stage ball.
Press Start is a series intended for the juggler looking to find the best value for their new purchase. What should you look out for? What’s value for money? What is best in the long term? We tell you. If you have suggestions on props you would like reviewed please drop an email here.
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For this very first edition I will cover what I know best – Poi.
If you are just beginning on poi, a pair of tube socks with a ball in each (I prefer lacrosse balls) works best as rough-and-tumble practice sets. Those with a bit of cash in their pockets, read on.
Now there are a lot of options out there for poi, and every website will tell you it has the best quality props. However, I have been impressed particularly by Home of Poi. They have a wonderful selection of Glow and Fire equipment, as well as hardware to assemble your own. They offer discounts for repeat customers, and they have a very short delivery time relative to location (for instance, 2 weeks from Australia to U.S.).
Plenty of other sites sell cheaper products but I have found that with props that you plan on performing with, it is better to spend some money on quality equipment that will last rather than having to replace cheap equipment that breaks constantly.
I have found that Flowlights with Crystal cases are the BEST glow poi hands down. The lights are very bright and look great, and the cases amplify this somewhat as well as giving a nice weight perfect for spinning. Here’s a video review by Nick from PlayPoi if you’re interested to see how they work -
Monkey fist hyper-super-power-dynamo wicks!
For fire poi, you’ll do well with a set of cathedral or monkey fist wicks with twisted oval steel link chain and double loop handles. The set I bought comes with everything including quick links and swivels. The ball chain may be a lot easier to use but it breaks in time. The oval steel link chain I suggested is much more durable especially when you will be using them a lot. Get the longer set of chain because you’ll be able to shorten them to a comfortable length when you get them.
Be square and get cathedral wicks.
That concludes this first post. Have something better to suggest? Drop us some feedback in the comments below!
Enter the referral code StreetJuggling and recieve a 15% discount on your entire order at Home of Poi!
Here’s what was talked about in this post.
Best Catches is a sifter for the unplugged, the lazy, and the busy. It’s a weekly roundup of the freshest juggling videos, forum topics, and blog posts – in short, it does a lot of work so you don’t have to.
:: Early in the week Chilean juggler Alvaro Palominos put out a pretty comprehensive video of his skills, ranging from cool stuff to impressive numbers juggling.
:: A fine “non-juggling” video made it to the forum this week. Watch Boyanka Angelova and her one-ball rhythmic gymnastics routine. Previous rhythmic gymnastics on the web: (1) and (2).
:: Anthony Gatto makes some sort of point; also juggles.
:: Contribute to a discussion on the worst stage names.
:: Ania Belley raises a few things in forum talk. You decide.
:: Luke Burrage discusses double-ended clubs, then plays with them and with friends. Worth a glance at least, maybe at most.
:: And in a busy web juggling week, a few more worth mentioning: cool new Norbi tricks; CJ Smith 5-club Mill’s Mess; Shoebox Tour Finland trailer (jugglers not juggling), and more jugglers doing some juggling and a lot of dancing in a Turbo Fest 2009 vid.
For the price of one, you get TWO colors with these rings.
Read more after the jump
Best Catches is a sifter for the unplugged, the lazy, and the busy. It’s a weekly roundup of the freshest juggling videos, forum topics, and blog posts – in short, it does a lot of work so you don’t have to.
:: Last week we saw Danny Hodge. Now comes Chris Hodge with a mind boggler and a three-ball vid with tons of slams and shuffles.
:: Kit Summers asks if anyone can do seven ball Mills Mess, Eaker answers yes. He isn’t alone, as responses to Kit’s thread show.
:: Ben Thompson can catch really high throws. And he’s promising more. Highlights in this montage: a three-club whirlwind+, club on club balances, double pirouette under five clubs, and an eight-club flash.
:: Ori Roth’s newest video has some of the most startling and refreshing tricks of anything he’s put out, thanks in part to three-clubber Noam. Noam appropriates tricks not traditionally done with clubs into his work (head rolls, Bramson-ring-style-rolls) and, in general, orients his clubs in weird ways. He’s in control. Ori does some new bbb work and keeps on keepin’ on with body combos. Read the rest of this entry »
