The Juggling Equipment Blog

We promised you a post every day during this week, and we intend to keep that promise, even if we have to stop the world from turning until we post.

And on a more serious note – this post is not our regular juggling related post. It is a extremly interesting document that describes the small tour that Le BoTrio made in Israel and Palestine during March and April of 2009. After the tour they have decided to write down what they have witnessed, and we are bringing you the full report, broken down into 3 pieces because of its length.

come and read PART 1/3

1. Intro

The first thing that one might wonder is: what is Le BoTrio? Well, we are a circus/streettheatre company that mixes trampoline, juggling and stupidity. If you want to know more about us you should check out our website at www.lebotrio.be

Somewhere in the middle of august 2008 we got a mail from Ori Roth, one of the organisers of the Israeli juggling convention. He had seen us on the European juggling convention in Karlsruhe and he proposed to let us come to the convention that was taking place in april of 2009. Of course we were very interested and we were free on the days he proposed. But there were some questions that we asked ourselves from the beginning. First question was that it would cost too much to bring our trampoline over, so we would have to find one in Israel. Another question was if it was worth such a big trip to perform only once. And then we thougth that if we would go to Israel it would be stupid to go to a country that’s in a war not to see both sides and perform for both cultures.

After a lot of mails about the trampoline and saying no to a couple of garden trampolines, Ori showed us a picture that looked ok on photo. He also told us that it would probably be possible to perform at another festival in Tel Aviv. When we asked him about performing in Palestine, we were glad to hear that the convention was not against it and that even His father Yuval was a peace activist that was very happy we wanted to go there. Now we had to find ourselves where we would perform in Palestine. Mikael had the contact of a Palestinian circus school in Ramallah. He wrote to tell them we were coming to Palestine and Israel. They replied they would be delighted if we came to play and give workshops at their circus school. Coincidence wants that the wife of director Shadi Zmorrod is a Belgian woman called Jessika, that is originally from the same town as Jokke and his mother already knew her and the Palestinian circus project. So when all our questions were more or less solved and by the end of march we were ready to leave.

2.Trip report

30/03

The first day of the trip was already quite an adventure. We all got up early in our respective homes in Leuven (BE), Antwerp (BE) and St-Julien de Ratz (FR). It promised to be a long day, since we all had to connect two train rides, two flights and another train ride. We all met at the airport of Paris and the BoTrio was whole again. Jokke looked a bit pale and apparently suffered from a bad case of stomach flu. A flu he wouldn’t get rid of for another week… After long delays, a stop in Rome for a very short and stressy connection, we were finally well on our way to get to the promised land.

31/03

We arrived at Ben Gourion airport around 3.30 in the morning. Passing customs was a piece of cake with the invitational letters for the juggling convention. We didn’t even have to lie about going to Palestine. After changing some money we were able to buy train tickets for the last part of our travel. We arrived at Binyamina station around 5.15 were Yuval Roth was waiting to take us to his house.

At that point we thought it was amazing of him to get up so early to pick up 3 unknown guys, later on we would realize that Yuval works about 22 hours a day, and getting up early is pretty standard for him. Upon arrival at the Roth house we met Yael, Yuvals wife, and directly fell asleep in the beds she had prepared for us. Since we had been travelling for 24 hours we slept like babies. Ben and Mikael woke up around noon and Jokke, still feverish because of the flu, slept a little longer. We finally met Ori in person and after crushing us in a match of ping-pong, he and his mother took us to the very beautiful archeological site of Caesaria. To really welcome us to Israel they invited us to eat the famous Shakshuka. Our first day in Israel had been very nice, but a very busy day was coming up so we went to bed.

01/04

And a very busy day it was. First Yuval took us to Florentin Circus, near Tel Aviv, where we arrived a bit late due to traffic jams. Since they already started a show there was no one available to open the trampoline and show it to us. We had no time to hang around because not only did we have to get to Ramallah, we also had to create a brand new show and play the premiere of it the same night. So we just looked at the closed trampoline, thinking it would be ok. We took a taxi to get to the service sherut station, a sherut to get to Jerusalem. a taxi to get to east Jerusalem – where we were a bit lost at first – and then a bus to get to Ramallah. Seeing the wall and going through was a very impressive experience.

In Ramallah we met up with Shadi and Jessika and after a small visit of. their house we continued to the circus school. Fadi and Najeff, two of the circus schools teachers, were waiting for us. We had about three hours to make a show with a mini-trampoline, juggling clubs, acrobatics, the music and the costumes of our normal trampoline number. We were pretty efficient, and came up with a 10 minute number. We packed the material and arrived just in time at the theatre where the Ramallah international theatre festival was taking place. We played in the street in front of the theatre where some cars were still parked. Since it was all very new and the conditions in which we played weren’t ideal we messed up quite a lot of things and didn’t feel very happy about the show. The public seemed to like it tough and the organization of the festival as well. We went to a party where to our surprise alcohol was available. We had a lot of fun, ate a little and then decided to go to the hotel the organization of the festival had provided for well earned night’s rest.

02/04

After a good night’s rest we left for Jenin with the magnificent red Palestinian circus school van. Since the van had Israeli license plates, it wasn’t easy for us to get through the checkpoints. “For our own safety” we couldn’t pass and had to make big detours. Once arrived in Jenin, we prepared ourselves quickly to play our still brand new little show for the second time. Our public consisted of 8 boys to whom we were going to give workshops after. The show went better then the day before and the workshops were fun. All the boys were enthusiastic to do the mini-trampoline which they had never done before. After the workshops the host of the place where we worked offered us two local specialties: coffee with cardamon, which takes a little getting used to (I love it ! mik), and a self-made cake that was truly delicious. We went back to Ramallah where we were invited to a party of an Italian girl we met the day before. She was working for an NGO and was leaving the next day. We didn’t stay too late and went back to the hotel by taxi.

03/04

We woke up in the hotel for the last time, and enjoyed the breakfast of hummus and labneh. This day was going to be a little calmer. We were going to stay all day in Ramallah to give workshops. We decided not to do our small show since we were still going to do the show with the maxi trampoline in Ramallah. Calm, but not too calm.

In the morning we gave workshops to the beginners group of about 15 children and in the afternoon we gave class to the advanced workshop. In both groups boys and girls worked together. We worked on floor acrobatics, juggling, partner acrobatics and mini-trampoline. We enjoyed it a lot and so did the students. We didn’t have the hotel anymore, so we went to the apartment of Sarah, a Belgian girl who worked for the Palestinian circus school. The amazing thing was that she had a ping pong table in her apartment, so we ate and played ping pong until we fell asleep.

04/04

Today we were going to Hebron. We had heard some things about it, but didn’t really know what was going on. We went in two groups: Us three, Fadi, Shadi and Jessica went through Jerusalem with the circus van and picked up a German girl that was studying dance in Jerusalem. Najeff and Sarah took the bus through Palestine territory, making a huge detour, since Najeff is not allowed to come into Israeli territory.

When we arrived there was a big crowd waiting for us. It was world children’s day and a lot of Palestinian children from around Hebron reunited in a theatre, where we played our show for a public of 400 children. This was the third and the last time we played our mini-trampoline show (until now). It was also the best one we have done (until now). The time had come to give workshop to a group of about 20 boys and girls. The difficult part was that the boys and girls could warm up together, but they couldn’t touch each other. So we played the game 1,2,3… piano; that’s the game that exists anywhere in the world, but has a different name in every country.

After the warm-up, we separated them into 2 groups. 1 group of the more advanced boys were doing mini-trampoline. The other group, a mix of boys and girls, did juggling. The workshops were a big success and a lot of children did a front summersault or juggled 3 objects. Jessica told us that we couldn’t know Hebron without paying a visit to the old city. Muhammad, one of the boys who did the workshop, came with us so that we wouldn’t only be European looking ( or maybe Israeli looking) people.

After the first passport check, we saw what appeared to be a ghost town. Just a couple of soldiers were watching us at gunpoint. After a second security check we entered into some small streets of what used to be an Arab market. The shops were still there but only 1 out of 10 was open.

Since there was none to sell goods to but us, the vendors really were trying to sell us everything they could. We ended up buying some olives, chilies, tomatoes and some souvenirs. We quickly noticed that we were watched from above. Watchtowers were installed on the houses. What was also strange where the nets that hung above the streets with a lot of trash in them. The situation in the old city of Hebron is as follows: The Israeli settlers have occupied the upper floors of the Palestinian houses and left the Palestinians to live on the ground floors.

The Israeli settlers have a protected entry from the back of the house, and when they have trash they just throw it down on the streets of the Palestinians. During our walk, a shocking event happened. A group of small kids was playing in the street when all of a sudden, settler kids started throwing stones from their terrace. One kid got hit pretty bad and was bleeding strongly from the ear. When we looked up the settler kids were just laughing at us. The Israeli soldiers in there watchtowers did nothing.

With this image in our heads we left the old city. On our way out we saw some settlers in civilian clothes walking around with machine guns on their arms. We still had to wait for one hour to get through the security checkpoint. Because they had to check the passports of Fadi and Muhammed, the two Palestinians that came with us. To end our Hebronadventure we went to eat Shawarma. This made us feel a little bit better. We went back to Ramallah and slept again at Sarah’s place.

end of part 1 – part two is here

Related Posts:

• Le Botrio – the journey ends