{"id":1175,"date":"2010-12-09T23:40:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T22:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/?p=1175"},"modified":"2010-12-09T23:40:28","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T22:40:28","slug":"juggling-workshop-creating-a-routine-part-1-the-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/archives\/1175","title":{"rendered":"Juggling Workshop: creating a routine part 1 &#8211; The idea."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/qmtd6o6sqZ0?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/qmtd6o6sqZ0?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>I thought I&#8217;d write a bit about how I work as a juggler. I do hour-long shows, which mix creative and technical juggling with physical and spoken comedy. It&#8217;s taken me 10 years of practice to get to where I am now, which is a whole lot of work, so the least I can do is share some of my methods here, in case any aspiring juggler wants to follow in my footsteps. <\/p>\n<p>As an example, I thought I&#8217;d look at my ring juggling routine. My process follows these steps:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Creating<\/i>\n<li>Choreographing<\/li>\n<li>Practicing<\/li>\n<li>Refining<\/li>\n<li>Performing<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then I repeat steps three, four and five, over and over. Step three is where I put in most of the work, and it&#8217;s always a struggle. But let&#8217;s take these in order, in a series workshop.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Creating.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>First you have no act, and then, after this step, you have an act, even if it only exists in your head. There has to be a reason for the act to exist, as I&#8217;m a big believer in Cause and Effect in juggling. Here were my criteria.<\/p>\n<p>The act must:<br \/>\n&#8211; be self contained<br \/>\n&#8211; only use any props I already carry in my case<br \/>\n&#8211; fun for a general audience<br \/>\n&#8211; not rely on any spoken introduction, in case I need to perform it in a gala show<br \/>\n&#8211; technically impressive<br \/>\n&#8211; last about 4 or 5 minutes<\/p>\n<p>Bonus:<br \/>\n&#8211; I can also perform it at a juggling convention, if the need arises. <\/p>\n<p>I decided to make a ring routine, as I carried 7 rings in my case, and only ever used them for about a minute at the start of a Rings-Balls-Club routine. First I actually choreographed an extra minute of ball juggling to, and made that three-prop routine into a two-prop routine.<\/p>\n<p>I use rings that are red on one side and white on the other. This is so I can make them change colour as I juggle, from the point of view of the audience. It&#8217;s a really great effect! <\/p>\n<p>But last year I got a bit obsessed my three ring juggling, and worked out as many tricks and patterns as I could where, from the point of view of the audience, the rings DIDN&#8217;T change colour. <\/p>\n<p>This, I realized, could be the basis of a fun routine. I could start with a minute of juggling, and do all kinds of interesting tricks with three white rings, and then BAM &#8211; the rings are red. Up until that point I wouldn&#8217;t stop, and wouldn&#8217;t want or expect any applause from the audience, but from then on they would always be wondering what might happen next.<\/p>\n<p>However, I didn&#8217;t think just doing colour changing, or non-colour changing, tricks would be enough to sustain an entire routine. <\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, during my long history of ring juggling, I&#8217;d also developed many ideas about spinning rings around different axis of rotation, especially with pancake throws. I knew I&#8217;d want to put these in the routine too.<\/p>\n<p>Technically, I wanted to show off with some numbers juggling, so I knew I&#8217;d finish with six or seven rings. I&#8217;m pretty good with rings, so I knew this wouldn&#8217;t be a problem.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I knew I&#8217;d be able to stretch out what is normally, for me, the boring numbers juggling part of the routine, if needed, with a comedy bit I do which involves explaining a juggling trick while holding a prop in my mouth. It&#8217;s completely stupid, but handy because I don&#8217;t actually have to write any jokes, I just keep making stupid noises until either the audience stops laughing, or STARTS laughing. <\/p>\n<p>And so the idea was there. I&#8217;ve actually practiced putting together routines many times in the past, so knew I what I was getting into from the start. The way I currently introduce this routine is like this:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Unlike the juggling ball, which is just a point moving in space, the juggling ring is unique in that is can turn, flip, and rotate through all three spacial dimensions. and I&#8217;m going to add another dimension into my ring juggling tonight, and that is the dimension of colour. Colour? Just watch closely as I juggle these three white rings\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And then I begin!<\/p>\n<p>Next up I&#8217;ll talk about choreography. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d write a bit about how I work as a juggler. I do hour-long shows, which mix creative and technical juggling with physical and spoken comedy. It&#8217;s taken me 10 years of practice to get to where I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/archives\/1175\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51,9,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}