The Juggling Equipment Blog

So…… we were walking to the opening show…
and walking……
and walking……
and, yes you guessed it – walking some more.

The Opening Show

The opening show was held at the city center – about a lot of walking time for me (and probably for the others as well) and took place in a wide square, which was good and not good.

It was good because you can get thousands of people into it. Not good because many people are sitting far away from the stage and it’s hard to see small details and generally details from that kind of length.

Well, you could have guessed I was sitting quite far, not the most, but far enough to make me get bored pretty fast if something wasn’t extremely interesting. You can see me here on the right side of the picture (taken by Luke Burrage). I guess we could have set a little closer to begin with…

The show itself was… a bit exhausting for me – some parts where too long, e.g. The trapeze girl and the high fly multiplex clubbers – le mouvement alerte, which were interesting to begin with, but after a while throwing a lot of clubs together in the air again and again and again is not enough to hold your attention.
I could notice some audience walking away in the middle (they were mostly non-jugglers, but still)… The mimic guy was really good and stood out from the rest of the performers in my opinion.

Anyhow, we got through this one and took that opportunity and went to the local supermarket to buy some stuff.
I was surprised by the whole buying procedure, I felt cool for weighting my own food and taping tags on it, almost like on facebook – ori roth tagged a tomato in the local supermarket

This might be a good opportunity to write a little something about the whole food issue in the convention, and I do hope there are some Norwegians reading this for next year:

The convention’s food:

I think it wasn’t that great, especially compared to previous years.

On the first couple of days most of the stands weren’t so organized and in some of them you should have made your own food (and pay for it!).
From what I tasted I can say that the Falafel wasn’t really well done, and that the pasta was good. Ohh also all the bread was very good (which was actually a baguette). It shouldn’t be surprising, since it seems that the Spaniards eat everything on top of a slice of bread.

Not only that, it was also quite expensive and as the days went by the owners just kept raising the prices for some reasons. All of the above led me to one conclusion – PIZZA! (and supermarket..).. more information on the next episode(s).

The next show I saw was the first open stage. I guess that Priam (the open stages stage manager) did his best, but I have to admit that the first one was quite disappointing for me. It had about 6 acts and it looked like most of them were too long and not technically high enough (excluding Priam’s own show which was good). As the days passed by the level got up, but still, the conditions for watching the show at that bar tent weren’t optimal:
If you were sitting on the sides you couldn’t see like 50% of the stage because of the big speakers that were on it. There were maybe 3 short benches in the back. Ohh right, it was also a bar tent so the bar itself took some space so that the sound and lightning controls where in the center of the tent….. and standing for more than 30 minutes isn’t very fun…. Ohh well…

At least the big show hall was all seated and watchable (maybe not quite from the seats in the back). Obviously the shows in it were better (and more comfortable to watch)….

More about the shows, workshops, pizzas and highlights in the next chapter….

and if you missed out on the fist couple of chapters:

Chapter one – getting there

Chapter two – Bilbao, Taibolo and Orka Balls

We left our story of the EJC at the first day of the convention. That morning while people were waiting in the info tent to enter the event we were busy looking at the other traders setting up their stalls and thinking how nice it would have been if the customs would have released our juggling equipment in time. With nothing better to do that day we got into the car and headed to Bilbao, about an hour away from Vitoria to take 5 packages of Taibolos that were waiting there for us.

The ride was beautiful, the green and lush surrounding of northern Spain filled our hearts with joy. I was looking forward to have some equipment in my hands and more then that to get a glimpse on the architectural masterpiece of the city – the Guggenheim museum created by the architect Frank O. Gehry. With the taibolos safely tucked in the back of the car and after a stop in the local grocery store we headed of in search of the museum.

Just to be sure we stopped and asked a local person to get the direction, he was thinking about it for about a minute and trying to think of the best way to get there – and then he said: “Hm… well, the best way is to take the first right you have and then straight all the way and then you’re there”. Hm…, I wonder what he was thinking about all that minute to get to the complex description he just gave us.

We got to the museum, took the must have picture of been there done that in a special juggler style. Asaf Bar sela, as seen here doing the handstand and me went briefly into the museum since time was of the essence and then we drove back to the convention site.

Once there we met Dekel Azulay, one of the most interesting diabolo players around today, and the only one I know who can do a decent 3 diabolo shuffle. He helped us to assemble the taibolos, a simple task overall, but still a little time consuming if you need to assemble 100 of them… We made it a real assembly line, each one of us doing some of the work and after a couple of hours we got them all.

Here we are – Dekel and ofir “buyoom” sela (manufacturer of our favourite juggling balls – the Orka cubes), and me behind the camera…

So enough work for the day, a jump to the bar for a drink and day one as well as chapter 2  is over. in the next chapter – Ori roth goes to the opening show.

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first entry in this online juggling blog.

Today I came back from four days worth of gospel music festival, more precisely MiG Tautra, located on the island of Tautra outside of Trondheim, Norway. The festival hosted – amongst others – the Snåsa Man, (you can read a blog entry about Joralf Gjerstad here ) Norwegian writer Karsten Isaksen, and singer Lynda Randle. Plus myself.

At the festival, I hosted workshops for basic juggling skills on 3 balls, and some more advanced technique for those attendants that could juggle from before. To my surprise, there were several people there that had been practicing quite a bit from before, for instance Iver Nesbø, Ola Græsli, Ola Løvrød, and more. The turnout was great, and people learned pretty quickly – moreover, juggling seemed to become very popular at the festival, as almost all the kids appeared to be trying it. I am sure I had more than a total of 40 young ones attempting the 3 ball cascade or more. There were some adults giving it a go too. Of these, most had learned 3 before.

I am working on having my performance edited into a watchable video, but for the time being I don’t have a computer on which to do so. I will need to get back to it after I move in about 3 weeks from now. Maybe I will find some pictures though! But by this you know I am doing what I can to show juggling to people and spread the interest in it as much as I can!

That’s it for now, I hope you will all keep tuning in to the juggling blog here on Jugglingequipment.com!

Now go juggle!

Sondre

First diabolo video for the video of the week!

The french diabolist, Nicolas Pires, has made a beautiful video where he’s diaboloing around the world.
At the beginning it reminded me the Where the Hell is Matt videos.

The technical level is not among the highest in the world, but combining it with the wonderful sights and locations of Portugal, Brazil, Hungary, England makes it very interesting.
Other than the previous countries, most of the footage was done in his home country France, and more specifically – Paris.

So once again – great effort, and I hope to see more places and tricks in his next videos!

like it? please let us know what you think – comment…

Getting there

After many months of waiting and preparations the time of the annual EJC has come. We packed out stuff, some with us and most went by plane a week before and made our way to Spain. We landed in Madrid a day before the convention started. With 10 hours to kill we made our way into town.

There is nothing extraordinary to write about those 10 hours but we did manage to visit some of the cities beautiful sites and shoot some nice videos that once edited will appear here on the last post of the EJC2009. I did manage to spend a few years of my life studying Architecture, so seeing the layers of the city was a real treat for me. There were just so many interesting sites this city has to offer, and combined with juggling I assume it will make some nice scenes in that video to come.

In the evening we boarded a plane to Vitoria. We thought that we were extremely lucky to have found a plane that flies all the way to the town of the convention – that is, until we saw the plane. You might have seen a similar plane once in an exhibition, but we never thought we would board one. The flight was actually quite fun since most of the time we made jokes about the plane – the stewardess for example had gloves on her hand and we assumed they were meant to protect here hands while she turns the propellers to get the engine going.

We landed in Vitoria late in the evening and were stopped by two officers of the customs who must have heared that there is a juggling convention in the city and there for it was important to check whether we had any drugs or other illegal materials in our belongings. We then took a couple of taxis to the site of the convention where we were greeted by the busy manager of the whole event – Alex. We went ahead to the top of the hill to set up our tents, which was not an easy task as the sky were already dark. And so, after a long day with two flights, 10 hours in Madrid, a scary plane and a few tents we all went to sleep.

The next day started early. The convention site was still quite empty and silent, and the only place where you could actually see real people was the food tent where the lovely pack of volunteers gathered for their breakfast before the extremely busy first day of the convention. It was also a good opportunity to make some “before” pictures.

info tent - soon it will be filled with people

traders tent

Unicycle Trial area

The first day of the convention is a setup day, also in the traders tent. In the morning all of the traders received their allocated spaces and went to work constructing their stands. Unfortunately for us, all our goods got delayed in customs and so for the first two days. We were lucky enough though, to have some of our products shipped from Taiwan – all about it in the upcoming chapter 2: Bilbao, Taibolo and orka-balls.

Yet another great clubs juggling video.

This time it’s Santi from Argentina. I think that’s his first solo video after making several videos with Tavo a couple of years ago.

In the video he’s showing us some great technique alongside many manipulations from 3 to 5 clubs.

This urban video has lots of good shots and camera angles. All that together with the music and the overall strong colors, camera movement and small effects (which I guess was done on After Effects) gives us 3 minutes of joy.

like it? please let us know what you think – comment…

It’s morning in Spain, and all Jugglers are sleeping. Most of them have probably gone off to bed at 6 AM after a night of juggling or friendly gatherings. Some of the jugglers are probably dreaming right now in their quiet tent about new juggling props and some are wishing that fairys and dwarfs would come at night and fix their broken equipment.

And the EJC is the place where dreams do come true. It is quiet here in the traders area, no one is around until opening time at 13:00 and all the stands are waiting silently for sellers and customers.

Only one stand is busy, busy busy (besides me writing…) and that is the Henry’s stand. 3 people are siletly working and mending clubs, some of them with a broken knob, some of them came too close to a burning torch. whatever the reason, Henry’s want you to enjoy their clubs for life and so they will fix your broken clubs for free at the European convention. The 3 man team is quietly orchestrated by Henry Pekarsky, each club is looked at carefuly and then attended to.

Here’s Henry Pekarsky screwing the knob into place – the club will now go over to Heiko Meier for the finishing touches.

Here you see Heiko finishing the repair of the club. If you look closly at the hammer you will see that this is not an ordinary hammer – it is a convention hammer, and indeed everything in the Henry stand shows the professional german approach to Juggling equipment manufacturing.

Sometimes it would take less time to make a new club then to fix a broken one Henry says, but the smile on the jugglers face when he gets his old club back is worth it all.

Here is the club all stripped of its pieces waiting to be re-assembeld – it might just be your club in the picture…

I wanted to write this post from my small tent perched on top of the hill overlooking the splendid area of the EJC in vitoria. But WI-FI didn’t reach all the way up the steep hill and so I have to write instead a day later at noon sitting in the park surrounded by jugglers and beautiful weather. If they tell you life is hard – get over to the EJC, here it’s not.

We arrived the night before the convention starts after a fast flight from Madrid, which was a little scary because the plane seemed a little outdated, but we used the 50 minutes flight to make jokes about old planes, so that was OK.

After a few hours of sleep I woke up in the morning and went for a little walk around the convention area.

As you can see It was as empty and cal as it gets before the storm. Afterwards we spent the morning getting angry at the spanish customs who didn’t realese our products in time – and we do hope it all works out on monday when they get back to work so that we can do what we came here for- showcase our products.

We were lucky enough though that the shippment of taibolos got here last week so we drove all the way over to Bilbao to get them and as we had some time to spare now that the booth was not going to get constructed we drove over to the Guggenheim museum  by Frank Gehry (I studied architecture so not going there would be a major sin)

now since this is a blog about juggling equipment – her’s some breaking news – next to me the is a nice guy named vizaak, who came to the convention all the way from Mexico and has brought with him a few  fire articles he manufactures, like the fire ring staff you can see in the picture. you can also see it in action at this youtube video- He has a dance fire group called Art4Dance and the pruducts he makes are known under the name of  Art4Play – if you are interested in know him or his produts more you can drop him an e-mail –  art4dance[at]hotmail.com