Circus living…
10am - Wake up, cup of tea… Meeting with Jago about hiring a director in January to work with us on Anomalies. Set a budget, and prepared some prep info for the chosen director. Check email, send off ideas for a fire show in December to the girl I’m working with. Confirm booking for compering cabaret on the 20th of November. Check in on how things are going back in the Hangar. Help Jeanine set up her tribe account.

Noon - Swim in the pool. Work out in the Gym. Improve my tan. Spent a half hour playing with rings underwater.

1pm - Rehearsal. Review changes in 3 ball routine choreography, run it (and run it again, and run it again) Exhaust myself trying to sync a 3-beat 441 into a 4-4 rhythm structure.

3pm - Editing the show footage for the promo DVD. Look over In Isolation footage of Drew and Pich

4pm - Unicycling on the roof. Learning to ride backwards.

5pm - cook up some dinner. Pasta… because its easy.

6pm - Our driver arrives to take us to the Bahrain Shopping Center
7pm - Coffee at starbucks. Am exhausted.. nearly fall asleep on the comfy couch. Do some shopping, buy two pairs of new jeans.

8pm - get into costume, warm up on unicycle.

9pm - 50 minutes of unicycling in a packed shopping center. I am officially the greatest unicyclist ever; I didn’t kill anyone.

10pm - Break, meeting with agent, get into 2nd costume and makeup

10:15 - 45 minutes of walkabout juggling (read… dropping balls and making kids giggle and pick them up)

11:00 pm - Juice from the juice bar. Our driver arrives to take us back to the apartment

Midnight - Writing this blog entry. Feeling like i finally have this circus thing figured out.
Thu, October 27, 2005 - 2:26 PM — permalink - 2 comments - add a comment

Late nights.
The sun sets early in Bahrain… and it cools down enough to be able to juggle on the roof.

Jago and are are reworking our show in preparation for a gig back in England on the 10th of November. This means learning new choreography and running tricky sequences over and over till they are polished.

My head is a mess of 8 count steps and siteswaps.

”Anomalies” is becoming truly insane in its scope, and yet i’m just beginning to feel like we actually understand what we are doing with this show. Its a million times different from anything i’ve done before, and after a summer of just hating the damned thing, i think i’m finally seeing some good here. After a day rehearsing in a huge shaded tent on the beach, and an evening of refining new sequences and fitting them to the correct rhythm structure of ‘love bird’ by Susumu Yakota, it feels like we are getting somewhere good. I’m excited.. i need to write 8 bars of synced 3 ball material in the theme of ‘juxtaposition’… big to small, wide to compressed, and then teach it to Jago. This is the kind of thing I love… diving into, exploring and pulling out the little gems of technique to make sequences of movement.

Its an odd time. Jago, well into his thirties, is beginning the step into full time juggling, and here i am,the young one, with 2 years of professional British circus under my belt. We are both ”untrained” artists in circus… no 3 year degree to show for anything, just a lovely set of mills mess variations, some really tight isolations, and a shared drive to make people actually care about all this throwing/catching/rolling nonsense. Neither of us will ever carry around any kind of ‘best ever’ title, and to try to acheive that would be entirely pointless. I just want to be ”understood” as a performer and to have people share the same sense of beauty for simple aesthetics and dynamics.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with rings… largely because of Ilona’s solo. I’ve never spent much time with them before, but I’m really enjoying the process of starting fresh and just exploring a prop with no boundaries. I like taking them in the pool, diving underwater and watching them float to the surface. I like the way they can be hung on the body. I like that they are white. I like 4-2-3 variations with them.
Its all new to me, full of potential… and learning them reminds me just how stupidly difficult everything else i do in the show is.

Looking back at 2005
One week left in the studio, then a month in Bahrain (the middle east), a month of travelling in Europe, and a month or two in Canada.

I set out for all this next monday. I’m stupidly excited about the chance to finally travel. The presciption from friends to pull me out of the summer ‘obsessive working mode’ was to ‘get out of the house more,’ and now HERE I GO!

The five year plan is still on track. My unicycling skills aren’t quite up to standard, but it’ll get by…. My personal life is a complete mess, but at least it isn’t hurting anyone other than myself anymore. The company is coming together; six of the most exciting contact jugglers all working towards a common goal. I learned how to dance this year, and rounded out my circus skills with stilts and unicycling.

Its nice to remind myself of the good things. Admittedly, it is still a fantasy that I’m slowly shaping and creating in the real world. Its good for me to look back at what I’ve done and see it as a large work in progress. This is the end of my third season as a performer in circus and it has been quite a mad.

This year (2005) I created:

January:
- A short web video called “Tonks Big Ride” for a girl named Remy. Using puppetry and contact manipulation, it tells a story about finding love. It was passed around on the internet and shown at festivals in Canada and London. I was quite proud of it, and I think it fulfilled its purpose. She liked it
WATCH

March:
- A 10 minute documentary/live performance piece about robots, technology and how we give them human characteristics. Premiered at the Victoria Juggling festival, mainstage. It was wierd, but was the first time I focused as much on body movement and narrative context as I did on the actual technical manipulation of balls.

May:
- A new street show which I toured for 2 months at local festivals in England. Many thanks to Dawn for keeping me inspired not to completely give up on street performance.. hearing all about her enthusiasm and struggle kept me going.

- New manipulation material for “In Isolation”, a commercial contact juggling DVD being produced by our company and Beard Juggling equipment. Hoops, blocks and balls. 30% Michael Moschen, 10% Elsewhere, 60% me.

June:
- A complete reworking of my block and ball solo from ‘Anomalies.’ New music and choreography, resulting in a much more sophisticated routine.
WATCH

July:
- New material using elements of abstract/illusional dance to create a style of movement appropriate to isolation based contact. Presented it as web-video to members of the dance and juggling community. Got a lot of good feedback which gave me more focus to keep training in dance.
< web01.rkbaker.net/silver/ryanprac.mp4 >
- Began working as a stiltwalker, and fell in love with being really really tall.

July:
- A new short puppetry/juggling piece with clubs. Premiered it along with my street act and a 3 ball improvisation at the Jacksons Lane Theater in London. Still needs work, but I think its my best material so far.

August:
- Presented my new block and ball material at a major UK circus convention alongside Men in Coats, The Gandini Juggling project, Stretch People and other establised acts. Taught a masters class.
- Appeared on the BBC in “Hampstead Heath: The musical”
- Learnt how to ride a unicycle. Unicycling is more difficult and less fun than stiltwalking.

September:
- An improvisation based on “The A-Team;” presented at another showcase of new work at “Chat Palace” theater in London. More ‘rock star’ than ‘artist’… was much more fun, too.
- Expanded my techniques in abstract/illusion based dance to manipulation with blocks and clubs. Created a new web-video and presented to members of the juggling/dance community. Very few people saw it, but the response was really good.
- A new 1 ball improvisation/dance act with Jeanine Ebotner (Brussels). Premiered at Unity works cabaret in London. A continuation of the work I began last year with her… similar to contact dance, with a heaving emphasis on complex throws and sequences. Much more fun than isolations.