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Friday
I woke up at 10:49 and had to run a workshop on advanced numbers juggling at 11. I rolled out of bed and managed to get there just in time to collapse into a chair and wait for people to turn up. Probably not the best state to try and demonstrate 9 ball juggling. Drink is bad for you, boys and girls, just say no. I didn't get any photos of my workshops but here is one of the poi workshop:
It had an attendance of all my workshops put together.
Little Paul juggling. See, he hasn't quit juggling at all.
A view of the main hall (of many). The guy with his back to the camera is Manu Laude having quite a good go at 6 clubs.
A spontaneous dice stacking workshop. LP, Mark Thomas, some bloke and Robbin Gunning.
Guy Heathcote showing us his prowess with the kendema. A few minutes earlier he was running three diabolos on the string but at the time I seemed to find this a much better photo opportunity. I have no idea why.
I noticed at the end of the day that my "new" renegade fathead juggling clubs were no longer new. Before I took them to the convention they had only ever been juggled over carpet and sand so were pretty clean and had hardly a scratch. I had only juggled them once or twice so far since I arrived in Cardiff but it seemed like every other Tom, Dick and Harry had juggled them. Now they are grubby, scratched and nicks in the wrapped handles. Boo hoo.
Some time in the evening was the Circomedia and Circus Space student showcase. I wanted to see it. I went along to the first showing in the No Fit State Circus tent and couldn't get in because it was full up. I then came back for the second show and it was full up for a second time so again I didn't get in to see it. Oh well, no picture or review for you. Sorry.
Thanks to all of you who recognised me and introduced yourself because you've spent way to much time looking at my website. It was really great. For the first dozen or so people. After that it got a bit annoying so I'm sorry if I sort of just walked off when you mentioned it, nothing personal, you understand. Hmmm ...
The fire show
This is where lots of people do stuff with burning props while lots of hippies drum their hearts out. Most people use long camera exposures to make fire props look really good but I'm not going to do that.
There.
Ok, I cant resist...
 
And here is a big BJC2001 logo burning thingy:
I was very impressed with the fire show this year. We even had a safety barrier to stand behind. And they waited for it to get dark before they started, unlike last year. I loved the fire spitting spinning wheels and the big burning sculptures.
Friday Renegade.
Peewee compered again, full of crap as usual but very funny crap.
Owen and Lulu. A trapeze act that arrived on stage bouncing on space hoppers and did their routine to a compiliation of children's tv show themes. The Muppet Show, Sessame Street, Inspector Gadget, Catch the Pigeon, etc. The stuff they did on the trapeze was almost as cool as their soundtrack. But not quite.
And then, out of nowhere, a clown appeared on stage. I'm not the biggest fan of clowns as a serious form of entertainment. I know you're all thinking "But they're not meant to be serious." I say they should stick to scaring kids at birthday parties. In my opinion they have absolutely no connection to juggling at all, apart from maybe some of them can juggle but if you use that argument while don't we have computer technicians on the renegade stage doing their job. It astounds me how much they just blatantly steal each other's material. I go to the circus as often as there is a new one in town and in every one the clowns do the same lazzi over and over. Some call it tradition, I call it lame. Even at the Cirque du Soliel the clowns were, well, shite. You would have thought for the money spent to get in you'd get something decent or unique in the way of clowns but nooooo. At one point near the end, just after a quite moving act, the stage went dark and I thought to myself "If a clown pops up onto that there stage now I'm going to fecking scream!" and sure enough, out pop the clowns, one walks over to one side and shouts "EEEEHHHOOOoooo...." and waits for the response, then repeats the process at the other side, then the front, then all three again... Is this all clowns do? 35 quid and I get two guys with face paint saying hello to us as though we were four years old? Give me a break! Clowns are just the lowest form of entertainment ever.
Maybe I'm being a bit too opinionated, though it's not like I own a "KILL ALL CLOWNS" tshirt. I want one though. Talking of tshirts and my view that juggling tshirts, after clown costumes, are the lowest form of fashion, there was this one guy wearing an AnthonyGatto.com tshirt. Sure, Anthony Gatto wore one at last years British but that doesn't make them cool in any way. I was informed that the same guy who wore that tshirt spent all Saturday in a jester's outfit, maybe that puts his dress sense into perspective. I dunno. The best tshirt I saw at the convention belonged to Little Paul and had "Dave Barnes" across the front. You know, in the style of Madona's "Kylie" and "Birtney" tshirts. I thought it was funny.
Ok, where was I? Oh yes, there was a clown on stage, confirming my low opinion of them, so I had to get up there and disrupt it as much as possible. Queue my own slapstick falling off buckets comedy stage debut. I was ushered off after a while so the clown was free to go on to do trick I've participated in myself at two circuses before and seen at another. It isn't worth describing.
Next a magician had his turn on stage. He was hilarious. He swallowed
swords then hypnotised and tortured people. Just what we love to see.
Aquick musical interlude by two young guys with guitar and
sax playing "the house of the raisin bun."
Haggis did his hat act. I'd seen it before, as had most people, but it was still very slick and impressive. Not sure what else I can say. I'll put an ebay type seller reference: VERY PLEASANT DOING BUSINESS WITH HIM, FAST PAYMENT, WILL BUY AGAIN A+++++++++++++...
Dave Barnes did his loop diabolo/popcorn act. I've seen this so many times on stage and while he has practiced it that I can't remember if it is meant to be hard and impressive or not. Oh well. It is still amusing to see him cock up that last trick on every single attempt. Not that I can talk.
John tried doing a trick with a tictac up his nose on a unicycle but I can't remember if he managed it or not. And this was the sensible unicycle trick of the evening.
A guy got on stage (Gary?) and offered to dance any dance we could name. I groaned when I heard the premise of his act but in the end I was really enjoying it. It was an act that could have fallen flat on it's face but he actually pulled it off. Body popping, riverdance, cossack dancing, ballet, morris dancing, rave and even lap dancing with Mini, this guy was an expert at it all. And after a technical glitch in a real dancers act he came back and did animal impressions for three and a half minutes.
Um, the dancer.
Will and his amazing daredevil unicycle pogostick hybrid seat
jumping seat breaking feat of skill. Hopping up the seats. He made it past half way.
Devilstick Pete, contrary to what his name suggests, did some silly things with pingpong balls, advertised his Albanian juggling school then did a bit of contact juggling.
Someone swung fire poi and danced. Nice.
Bubbles on the renegade stage? Can't be done! Diabolo worked better. If I remember rightly, this guy was called Zanzibar. Not sure though. He did hard tricks but Dave Barnes did them before without sticks. I think after this Donald Grant left while being mocked about the fact that he was one of the leading diabolists in the world but still uses sticks, the looser.
Wait a second...
"Best Bollocks?"
"Chicken!"
Sorry about that.
Bryn did something with a glowing prop. It wasn't exactly Feeding the Fish. More like flogging the dead donkey.
Then Nico, the last act on stage, did some terrible stuff with diabolo. I think mini went up with a pen knife to cut his string off the sticks. Sticks are just soooo last century. Anyway, Nico accused us of being a "hard audience" but up to that point he had only done the "see how high I can throw a diabolo" routine which doesn't really impress jugglers much. And he was wearing pyjamas, which didn't help. He did some even worse stuff with a whip and a drunk volunteer so I put my camera away. Then he tried doing acrobatic stuff with the volnteer who was still drunk. It could have been funny but instead it was embarrassing. Everyone started leaving. Then surprisingly, Nico picked up some clubs and did some pretty hard and original tricks which were really good. He should have just done them. Some people don't learn. Just remember: anything can work on the renegade stage if you do it quickly enough.
Looking back on this nights renegade, I seem to write much more about the bad acts than the good. So if your act isn't mentioned much here, that is a good sign. I think.
Saturday at the games.
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