Modern London release thread on contactjuggling.org

In recent years, a new style of contact juggling has emerged which combines techniques from bodypopping and mime arts to create an ‘illusion based’ type of performance. Ryan Mellors released Modern London at www.contactjuggling.org in 2005, and it has proved to be an influential videos in the further development of the Modern contact juggling scene.

Quote: Colin

[Manipulation] …its not juggling, in nature its more subtle, so theres no big 5 club 3up piroettes. Theres still crazy skill and is well thought out but its working on a different asthetic.

Ryan Mellors - Modern/London (2005)
Ministry of Manipulation video production.

Click me.

Minimalist contact manipulation - isolations and bodypopping with balls and clubs from Ryan. This has been sneaked out in some places, so some of you may have seen this before, but today marks our official release.
Enjoy
Drew

The Ministry of Manipulation
Hello.
My name is Ryan Mellors

I dont know how closely some of you have trolled through my blog info, but you might have noticed an image in my tribe.net gallery called ”my schedule: on paper” and on it, something about setting up a company for media and performance.
Well, I did that. And its ready. You can have a look.
www.ministryofmanipulation.com

Its my new little home on the web; sort of a virtual version of the real life I live.
I hope to move this blog there soon.
Some fun videos on the site.. worth a look. My friend Will was (wierdly enough) in a Kaiser Cheifs music video called Modern Way. Jea9 has a lovely promo in there. Drew has some wierd stuff, and i’ve got a lot of my older videos.
At the very least, watch Hangar Fun again. You love it, I know. Its special.

The big news is that Drew is writing the new contact juggling books. I’ve read them and they are good. Much more complete than Ernests old-school manifesto… Drew is the right person to be doing this; he has seen the last 10 years of London contact come and go and he’s actually pretty good at it!
Oh.. and its not called contact juggling anymore. The term ‘contact juggling’ was a lie created by James Ernest to make everyone into a moschen clone and to give everyone bad posture. I’m not sure what its called anymore, but I’ll let you know when drew decides.

Oooh. And I’m stating a juggling night at the hangar on thursday. So if you are ever bored, just hop on a plane and get here for 7pm. I’ll make you a cup of tea.

See you then
Ryan

I still think this is the best web-video i’ve made so far.

The story behind the video

Bound for Budapest
i’ve given up on balls; blocks are an interesting challenge, but hoops… thats where my heart lies.

I am going to budapest on Tuesday to work with the lovely miss Anna Harazti (dancer and manipulation artist.) She has come to London many times over the last few years to visit my studio, and now its her time to play host. I’m excited.. never been to budapest.

Anna and i have been obsessed by hoops since we met at the British Contact Juggling convention 3 years ago. The first time she came to London, we spent 2 days searching every corner of the city for hula-hoops that we could modify into mirrored circles. I remember the story of the day i finally found them.. in a pound shop in Camden. I spent the afternoon taping them up with reflective circus tape, and met Anna that night to see Cirque Eloize at the Barbican. I brought her back to my place after the show, and surprised her with two new hoops. We ran to the park… a summer night in London, and played in the moonlight.

The next year we met up north.. walked through forests and fields to the Beard Juggling Factory to purchase new hoops and balls. We returned to London with shiny new equiptment and spent a week together developing new material. This is where the plan began to make a piece for performance at weddings… Her and I, hoops, and a narrative about love and discovery. Sadly, the plan never came together, we both moved onto other project in the winter, and I couldn’t find funding. But we met again this year, spent another week together, and now I am heading out to her part of the world… its due time she plays host, and we’ve got unfinished work to do.

Hoops, by the way, are brilliant. And I don’t mean hula-hooping.
I mean manipulation… Michael Moschens mid-80’s ”Circles” routine.

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.

The Most Beautiful Moment
I’ve ever seen on TV.
I was just flicking though the British TV stations… filled with all the usual crap: Hotel Reps misbehaving, crime dramas, etc, and I stop for a moment on a documentary program of some sort that catches my eye.

……..oooooooo00OO[][][][]OO00ooooooo……..

An old woman is leading an old man into a church. This man was a great director of classical music, and this is the first time he has been back in this church since he directed an orchestra there to play a particular requiem many years ago. They stand in the center, silent for a moment, and begin to reminice about the particular sound of that church.. the old man talks about how he remembers the echo of the space.

“Thats right” the woman says. “You cleared out everything when you were here.. all the pews and furniture, and directed the orchestra in the most beautiful requiem. For the few people in the room, it moved them. They were in tears.”

It is like something awakens deep inside the old man… he goes quiet.

The woman continues, “That performance was broadcast to 5 countries. People all over the world were moved by your music.”

And then this old man; this brilliant direcor of music, in the face of such loving praise, started to cry and shook his head silently. “No.” he muttered to himself.

The woman is insistent “What you did was beautiful! Everyone was in tears”

He continued to shake his head. “I can’t believe you” he said “when you say these things.”

……..oooooooo00OO[][][][]OO00oooooooo……..

And that was it… that one moment was enough to haul me out of bed at midnight and run into the kitchen to tell people about what I had just seen! I felt i had just witnessed a great truth. The artist, in the face of praise, can only feel a strange sense of remorse; an understanding of ones own limitations mixed with the true beauty of human potential.

Merce Cunninham on Dancing
You must love the daily work.

Merce Cunningham on Dancing:

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.

I was looking out the window one morning and there were several children out there. They were skipping and running about playing like, little kids, and I suddenly realised they were dancing, you could call it dancing, and yet it wasn’t dancing; I thought it was marvellous. There was no music.

Joy, love, fear, anger humour, all can be “made clear” by images familiar to our eyes. And all are grand or meagre depending on the eye of the beholder. What to some is splendid entertainment to others is merely tedium and fidgets; what to some seems barren, to others is the very essence of heroic. And the art is not the better of the worse.

Clarity is the lowest form of poetry, and language. Like all else in our lives is always changing. Our emotions are constantly being propelled by some new face in the sky, some new rocket to the moon, some new sound to the ear, but they are the same emotions.

I am very busy
… and will be for the next 4 months.

I am working on two books and a commercial video for release in December.
I am training in mime and dance.
I am dealing with a broken heart.
I teach a weekly class in London.
I am preparing a dance/block manipulation piece for a major UK circus convention in a few weeks.
I am hosting several other jugglers this month who are coming to London to train.

To top it off, I have a unicycling gig in october that is paying me $5000 (canadian) and I can’t ride the damn thing yet.

I know me. It is entirely likely that I will spend the next month going out of my studio for only 2 reasons: (A) to take the boat out and buy food, or (B) to travel to a gig.

No partying, no dating, no travelling, no socializing, just work work work.
Please remind me occasionally that I ‘DO’ actually enjoy this, and that I am very lucky to be where I am. Otherwise I’ll forget and go mad.

So few ever get here. Most quit early or don’t have the courage to take the nececcary steps. They can’t make the sacrifice, I guess. Different priorities.
I need to be here. There is too much work to be done that can’t be done anywhere else.

5 years from now, when I can afford that castle, I’ll finally be able to step away, marry that simple country girl in France (note: watch “The Hairdressers Husband”), and look back at what I’ve done.

Till then…
I will have a cigarrette and turn up the music.

Today
was a good day.

I awoke to the sun streaming in through the small town B&B bedroom window.
Downstairs awaited a full-english breakfast…

I strolled into the town of Ludlow… near north Wales in England, and was greeted with a performers area offering (MORE) food. I ate sweets and drank tea.

For three small slots in the afternoon, performed a new street act for the people gathered in the town square. It was sunny and magical.

People came up to me and said nice things, which was especially nice.

Caught train home, read Kerouac’s “On the Road”

Got back to my studio. It was empty, so I sat and had a cigarrete and thought about the day.

Checked my email.

Sean Ghandini is looking for a few contact jugglers to perform at a “Harry Potter” book release on the 16th. Yay. I rush off to the phone and send emails. Have to cancel a juggling convention workshop/performance on the 16th, but this is worth it (sorry bill)

I enjoy a quiet night juggling at home. I stretch for an hour, then shower and drink a beer.

It’s 1am… just finishing computer work now… and I need to sleep.
It all starts again tommorow.
This is going to be a busy month.

ryan

oh and then I read this : www.gandinijuggling.com/merce.htm