Bear blog

Blogspirit has been good to me (kind of), but it's time to leave.

 

Go to   Clurb.net   for more.

 

/blog

 

 

The show, I have to admit, was a disappointment. But really only because I've come to expect so much from a Durham show. It still had a lot of stuff going for it though. A decent space with social seating, cheapo bar and absence of whizzy, poppy, bangy things (+1). I've never seen the compere before but I haven't been missing much. He did the standard compere routine complete with orchestrated clapping and wooping (-1) which really didn't go down well. I think everyone is tiring of this now. On the positive side, he appeared to be wearing hideous amounts of blusher. And if he wasn't then he just has a very funny looking face. (+1)

 

The first act being Dreamstate Circus was probably a good plan. They were their usual bouncy happy selves which serves well to get the audience a bit geed up (+1) but they were their usual bouncy happy selves doing their usual act. Which doesn't suit a stage. (-1) Presenting a street act to a bunch of jaded, sarcastic jugglers, the majority of whom have seen it at least once before anyway, and then acting surprised that no one was interested, is insanely stupid and incredibly tedious. Oh, and doing six club four count on stage is on a par with two small girls spinning round and round on unicycles for five minutes (-1). To their credit, Dreamstate's acro bit was a lot better than the last time I saw it (+1). They appeared more controlled and I found that I wasn't fearing for their necks quite so much as the last time I saw them, but I still think an audience of jugglers would get more pleasure out of watching a slowed down version of the routine done well, with control and style, than the whizzy look-what-we-can-do street act version. I don't know whether to award or take away points for this, but during the acro bit, the girl's breastage was incredibly secure. Like rocks, they were.

 

I'd been looking forward to seeing Pete do some diablo since BYJOTY and he lived up to my expectations. (+1) He managed to pull out quite a few tricks I haven't seen before (or at least presented them in a way that actually made me pay attention) (+1). His style was fluid and he'd obviously grasped an understanding of using his space (+1). I liked. A lot.  

 

Zillan was generally hurried and unfinished (-1) which is understandable given the amount of time he had to prepare (+1) but was still disappointing. I felt like he didn't do himself any favours by trying to stuff too much into his time though and would have appreciated cutting down the number of tricks to give the remaining stuff the time and build up it warranted (-1). To be fair though, Zillan has made remarkable progress since the last time I saw him perform, in terms of his stage presence and choice of music (+1).

 

The Vodka and Orange staff thing that ended the first half I have no idea about. What was it supposed to be? It had the feel of an embarrassingly under-rehersed and poorly performed school play (-1). The acting was appalling, they struggled through every bit of speech and movement about the stage that they attempted (-1) and completely wasted my time. I had no idea what they were saying, couldn't guess at any of the jokes and by the time they got round to doing some, quite frankly dull, staff stuff I'd lost all interest. Oh, and synchronised routines only work when you actually do them at the same time as each other (-1). The dead stage before the end, whilst the confusing and completely pointless voiceover bit was going on was excrutiating too(-1).

 

The interval was very interval shaped. It wasn't overly long, but nor was it particularly short. The raffle, however, was relatively brief (+1).

 

Edward Muir was utterly fantastic. I've never seen anyone do chinese pole at a little convention before (+1) and it new and exciting and made me say 'wow' and 'ooh' several times. (+1). The whole thing was only marginally spoilt by the brief and unnecessary attempt at hats (-1). Me likee ridiculously strong men though (+1).

 

Megan was back on (-1) for yet more twirly staff stuff. Twirly staff stuff that I've seen before and wasn't particularly impressed with the first time (-1). I suppose it was ok as staff goes, but my problem with this sort of stuff is that I feel like one minute into the act I've already seen everything that's coming (-1). After the fiasco of the first half, I wasn't in the mood to be generous about it either (-1).

 

Josh Turner did his usual stuff and was suitably good at it (+1) but yet again spoilt it with crap music (-1). His routine was alright, but I felt like there was the opportunity there to spice it all up with something in between the siteswaps (-1). Maybe next time. On the positive side, I did notice him at least attempt to engage the audience once or twice, with his tongue if nothing else (+1).

 

Ady was energetic and youthful, and did some fast-paced entertaining stuff very nicely (+1) with good use of the stage and even better use of the music (+1) but there was a definite influence of Visionbot and Norbi in there. (-1) The boy's like a sponge, we should be careful what he's exposed to.  

 

I was disappointed that the last act was Ture. Again, everyone in the audience had seen this routine at least once (-1), and it's not really the kind of thing that stands up to more than two viewings (-1). I think I quite liked it the first time I saw it, but this time it was rather long-winded and felt like a let down after Ady's energy (-1). He still moves nicely and does a couple of nice tricks (+1), but he's not final act material. Very deflating. 

 

It's a shame, but a couple of drop-outs and Durham's show really couldn't meet its high standards.

 

Durham scores: -2

Durham's new venue is really very good. Compared to the old one, at least. Big bright hall (made even better by the general absence of people all weekend), smaller smelly hall for unicyclists to get them out from under foot, canteen (which I'll admit to not venturing into, although I hear good things), grass and good weather for outside games, sit-and-watch-tv area for juggling vids, showers, 24 hour space. Kind of.

 

We got up at ridiculous o'clock in the morning to get up there at a decent hour because we were in Philip. It didn't take too long, considering the stops for poos and petrol. Lizzah was handily riding around the carpark looking like she needed a task when we got to site so she carted all our stuff into the hall for us. The Peats had ponced out and got a hotel room for the weekend. I was not impressed.

 

Alby and I cracked on and got some honest to goodness practice done. It's so nice to be able to juggle again after the summer break but the backs of my thighs aren't half feeling it. Eight clubs worked well, and we even managed to get a couple of reasonable video clips of it working which I may or may not post somewhere for people to criticise. The pattern looks better than it feels although I'm still gurning my way through it all.

 

During the games, whilst no one was watching, we tried again with seven club ultimates. Taking on board all the wonderful constructive criticism we've had over the past year ('floaty, like' and 'throw more accurately, and be better at catching') we finally got a semblence of a pattern going. It's still ugly and very very short, and Alby is desperately trying to keep his face out of harm's way, but it's infinitely better than it was on Monday.

 

We got our best ever run of six clubs back-to-back as well. A whole five (possibly six) catches. Unbelievable. The Durham air is obviously terribly beneficial to this sort of activity. 

 

In amongst the pwnage, we enjoyed the company of Tom and Dr Helen, Alby went mental on hammering people's backs for them, I used my unicycle (much to Barnesy's amusement as I wobbled my way round the hall), Miark threw things at me, I spectacularly failed to be good at four clubs but managed to acquire an impressive bruise for my troubles, I met The Missus who turned out to be very nice, and we went for a wander around the world's most shut town. The chippy didn't even open until 6.30. I mean honestly! We ended up having to descend on some poor woman's tiny little restaurant and watch her flap her way through more orders than I'm sure she'd previously taken in a year.

 

(To be continued. I'm going to bed.)