Ever since the dawn of online circus video, two projects stand out for their level of quality, fresh perspective, visual style and high production values. The first was GIOCOLERIA.ORG’s series of high-quality releases including the astounding full-length Imperfect Cirquel and Emispheres.

The second project is from VisionBot. Entitled VSNBT MNPLTN SRS, this series of high-quality short films feature some astoundingly original ideas in modern juggling and manipulation. This stuff utterly floored me… my mouth has been hanging open in amazement for the past few days.

From the Site:
Visionbots latest film project is a series of art/manipulation short films called VSNBT MNPLTN SRS. We are going to release four parts. They will all be released here free to download. Each piece is a collaboration between one juggler, one filmmaker and one musician. Showing one performer with a certain prop in each film (Elias Hedlund with clubs for example) All the ideas are discovered at the locations and after editing the music has been specially written. Our purpose with this project is to inspire the new scene of object manipulation. Enjoy!

Currently there are 3 high-quality downloads in the series. If you are at all interested in funky new material, this series is a must see. VisionBot gets a standing ovation from me.

I think i’m going to have to go out an buy their 9-1 Nordic Objects DVD now.

lumen_trailer_07
Nico from Compagnie Lumen (Switzerland) mailed MoM to tell us of their new show.
Juggling, Manipulation, Swinging, Diabolo, Contact, Multiball, Balls Clubs, Movement, Glow and cool music too!

The skill level is high, including the club juggling of Mariano a phenomenally smooth freestyle club juggler.

More Videos and photos on their site, including this cool, Contact Show which is my current candidate for a best online video to answer the question “What is Contact Juggling?”

This was posted over on Jugglingdb and i think it deserves a bit more publicity.
Jon Solberg has created 2 DVD’s of vintage juggling and manipulation available free to download as torrents.
pirate bay link for torrent 10gb! a Goldmine.
If you need software to get torrents, try: utorrent
Thanks to Jon Solberg for encoding making and sharing his collection.
More review, when I’ve seen it… 11% and counting.

I will be performing on the renegade stage at Oregon State University on Saturday March 31st. I will also be teaching an advanced contact juggling workshop (balls and other props) at the Pacific Northwest Juggling Convention.

A cartoon monster attacks a city.

More details soon… I hope to meet some of the American contact jugglers there!
Click here for convention details

The Ministry has gotten really active again with the return of Drew!
Rather than a video from me, I’m posting a bit of reading for the week from Jay Gilligan. This clip from his blog about Michael Moschen and the difference between European and American technique is interesting:

What I really wanted to talk about is something I find to be an extremely (Xtreme!) curious difference between American and European juggling cultures. I’ve noticed that in general, American jugglers tend to think in terms of patterns that repeat, usually on both sides, and Europeans have a more asymmetrical style. Maybe this doesn’t seem like such a big crisis but I know that in my own work it’s a constant battle. And I think its also super interesting that this trend continues quite strongly even today, as compared to when I started juggling about 20 years ago. Once I started looking, examples are all over the place.

I was trying to think why this difference in cultures existed and only have a few guesses. First, perhaps the culture in Europe is more geared twords performing and in America its more of a hobby, or dare I say, sport. This could mean in Europe people are more concerned with whole routines rather than just individual tricks. They might then spend more time looking at the larger picture, putting only a tiny bit of one trick in as it helps the flow. American culture might focus more on each pattern as there is no need to worry about an audience getting bored quickly. One thing I know for sure growing up is that I was always taught to learn things on both sides. I got this advice from everyone I met. If you could start 5 clubs from your left hand, learn to start it from your right. This might be considered more of a sport mentality, since the best juggler could obviously do everything with both hands. Indeed, its this idea of practicing the ‘pure’ art of juggling technique untouched by performance concerns, that led me to focus on running patterns for X (yes, X, but in this case not Xtreme) amount of catches and repititions. Try to watch any IJA competition video with a vocal and snide Scandanavian juggler and the first thing you’ll hear about is how much the juggler is repeating patterns and being boring by doing too many catches (ok, maybe not the first thing, but it will come up eventually).

Interesting to consider. Dive back into the blog and look at some of the recent juggling videos. You can see what he means.

Vladik Miagkostoupov juggling Act
We’ve had a complaint that we’ve not been posting enough Juggling recently, which is true. So here’s one.
Reminiscent of “Viktor Key”, but not as well choreographed.
Then again Key’s Dralion act is mindblowing, and the fact that we’re even that we’re mentally comparing this to Key, shows thats it’s good.
My complaints about this routine are more about the choreography and the dance style, than the skill level, which is clearly huge.
Not the *best* of this style of juggling, but definitely worth watching.

Watch it on YouTube

Contact club from Sander. Need I say more?
Arty club juggling is so amazing. Watch for the rolls, wraps and lego sequences. Great stuff.

Some astounding technical skills from Malabrarismo.cl

Thanks to Koke Petit (staff at malabrismo) for writing to us and sending the link. Excellent work!

Addicted.. one of the first web virals that showed up online featuring the 3 ball work of Morgan (the really dark shots… he is sitting in a chair in this video)
His solo at EJC2006 rocked.
So does all the contact club in the vid.

Megathanks to Arnar for the link.

Watch on YouTube

Awesome contact club from Sander (watch for the rolls, lego sequences and wrist traps)
Loads of other good juggling too.
I love that first track.
Its snowing out.
Need to juggle.

Before MoM I had another video blog! well thats a bit of a grand term, its really just a thread on home of poi.
It now has links to over 400 (mostly juggling and manipulation) videos.
The original aim of that listing was to post the highest quality manipulation with an emphasis on staff and poi - well it is HOP.
But soon, it became, any high quality online manipulation videos.
Then it became any high quality online videos that I liked.
Now its decayed into a free for all, so now it seems everyone posts anything that slightly amused them.
and then they have mock arguments about it… Ahh bless, love them all to pieces.
If you want to kill some time, a lot of time and see some great videos, head over to HOP.
(Tip: for a long time I used 3 angel smilies so that it was easy to find my posts with video links while scrolling the thread.)

Short Review: Buy it.

Longer Review:
Buy it, it’s brilliant.
Lots of atmosphere, lots of high skills in both juggling and manipulation, lots of fun, lots of shows, lots of ideas, high quality filming, great editing and 4 hours long (2 disks). Totally raised our expectations of how good an event DVD can be, best EJC video ever. If you are into Juggling or Manipulation I recommend this for your Christmas wish list.
Computer game style review: 97.2%
Enjoy watching these 2 online 2 sample clips.
You can buy it online at juggling.tv for £16 + p+p.
Howie and Jen made it Howie Bailey - video PRODUCTION.

Phew, got through the whole post without mentioning PEGS!