Durham Juggling Convention 2016 (UK)

JonPeat - 2016-10-17 09:00:19 UTC #

Durham Juggling Convention 2016 (UK) - Review

This weekend was the Durham Juggling Convention held from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th October in picturesque Barnard Castle.

We left Leeds on the Saturday morning and bombed it up the A1. We actually missed the turn off so I kept that little mishap secret and we took the next one and went through a load of small villages and towns to get to Barnard Castle (Jenni never noticed a thing).

We drove into the town and immediately saw a pink ‘juggling this way’ sign and so I swerved off the road and we found ourselves on the drive way to The Hub. The Hub formed the venue for the Friday night, Saturday after the show and Sunday venue for the convention. I practised my three point turns and took the next left on the road which took us to the Teesdale School (Luke Burrage’s school from 20 odd years ago!) which was the Day venue and show venue.

Nice big car park with a street food/burger van doing business. I didn’t take advantage as me and Jenni had brought a packed lunch for the Saturday. We found the reg desk (York had just arrived en mass) got our passes and bought a load of raffle tickets. My pass lasted ten minutes before all the beads fell of the string and fell into my juggling bag. The pricing for the convention was a bit confusing beforehand but it came to £17 for the Saturday and Sunday and the show with no overnight sleeping. The school has as a nice atrium area, not as modern or large as either Lestival or Chocfest but quite light and airy. You could not get a floaty triple in there (as demonstrated quite a few times during the combat tournament…) but it served as a good location for the traders (Butterfingers, Unicycle.com and Lazy Juggler) and the workshop board. Lots of good and interesting workshops in unicycling and aerial as well as other activities.

We went down the corridor into the main juggling space. It was quite a small room but it did have a good ceiling height, although there were banks of lights which pointed to the stage at one end of the hall (this room would later become the show venue). Further investigations down the corridor revealed the gym which hosted the unicycling and aerialists, nice big gym much larger than the jugging hall. Even further down the corridor was the dining hall where some people were breakfasting, and I think teas and coffees were available, and there were also German Wheels rolling around. I didn’t register how big this space was but possibly bigger than the juggling hall.

Anyhoo, I got started with a ball warmup with the intention of working on some numbers tricks and hard stuff but it didn’t really work out. Turned out to not be a good practice day for me. I spent some time chatting with Tom and helping Kiran with his backcrosses. The music in the hall was deafeningly loud and it took me and Tom slightly too long to work out how to turn it down. The music lacked energy at times, I think all the playlist was missing was a spot of Leonard Cohen to really cheer everyone up… ;-) I did some club juggling too although nothing stood out for me. After lunch I went along to Dr John’s cryptic crossword workshop. It was a good workshop with a useful handout and good explanations but I wasn’t in a particularly good frame of mind and I left with a bit of a headache. I hadn’t done a very good job of checking the workshop timetable because I thought I had another hour or so before the combat tournament started, oops, turned out not to be the case!

There were 10 of us and we got stuck in straight away with the qualification rounds. Luke had already pointed out I need to finish better than 2nd in order for my points to increase, no pressure then! It turns out that sitting for an hour and pondering crosswords and anagrams does not do much for my combat game! I took a rather unlucky club to the eye during mine and Luke’s qualification match, I threw it and then pretty much forgot about it until it came down again with a bump… I knew it was a bad one when I saw Jenni give me a double take from the other side of room and then come over and ask ‘who did it then..?’ It swelled quite a bit and shook me up for a bit but I managed to scrape through to be seeded 3rd with Brook and Luke seeded above me. I fought well against Luke but I still made a few too many silly mistakes, Luke deservedly took the match and went on the play Brook in the final. Brook stormed it and won himself a very fetching ‘top dog’ mug kindly donated by the convention. Me and Will retired to the Gym to have our third place match as the combat had overrun and we didn’t want to be in the way. We ran around lots and got hot and sweaty before I finally beat him down and secured the third place finish. Greg is rapidly storming up through the rankings so keep an eye on that one!

The games were hosted by Luke and held in the atrium and were pretty well attended. I like Luke’s ‘quick fire’ games hosting style as often there will be a few games which drag on or take a long while to set up where I think this method kept a bit of enthusiasm and energy going. I managed to win the 5 ball and the 5 club endurances, I also won the 3 ball Simon says although it wasn’t clear to me! I did the best I have ever done in club balance endurance but was up against Tom so no chance there. I got some bad carpet burns on my knees from trying to correct the balance at one point, just to tot up the injuries for the day…

Me and Brook did some good passing after the games and then I ventured into the town to meet Jenni and Sarah to get some food before the show. I was thrilled to see the butchers on the high street ‘William Peat – Master Butchers’, no relation. I had curry for tea and Jenni and Sarah had scampi. The mushy peas were rubbish.

The Show

We hurried back to the venue for the show and I deliberately went the wrong way in order to do a few more 3 point turns (always a chuckle), the atrium was full of jugglers so we started the queue outside the hall and got ourselves seats near the front row. The music was too loud for probably the first five rows and we couldn’t really hear ourselves speak so were very happy when the show did begin.

Harvey Cobb compered the show and he did a really good job. Very confident on stage, dealt with heckles and technical problems very well and made some great ad lib jokes. Looking forward to seeing what he does at Chocfest in January.

First act on stage was Francis who performed a hat juggling routine using small straw hats rather than Nils Pols. We loved it! Very slick tricks and well connected sections and it was full of energy. He smiled and laughed through the whole thing and was a treat to watch. Finished off with a good 4 hat shower, very fast and slick.

Margot then performed a good hoop routine, I liked the handstand hoop trap very much. I struggled with the on stage demeanour and thought the act could do with some more smiles or audience interaction. Nice routine though, solid 5 hoop finish and good splits, very neat.

RANT: It was around this point that I was distracted by the attention seeking children running around and messing around at the front of the stage. If children are going to mess about during the show (especially during the acts!) then they don’t need seats at the front, let them mess about at the back of the hall if they are not going to pay attention. I thought this was a bit poor and it did distract me from the acts at times. I understand conventions and especially the shows are very exciting for children but they need to learn that shows are not play time. END RANT.

The next act was Ellis who performed a number of chair balances. These were great and the two chair balance on a table at the edge of the stage was pretty scary to watch. Fantastic stage character. Jenni’s favourite act.

Jack Flash performed a very good and very fast bar flair routine with good presentation and audience interaction. It was a bit too droppy which was a shame as with bar flair you need to hit the final catch for the applause after you have performed the waffle (Tom had a much better way of describing it…) Took a few too many attempts for some of the tricks, I would love to see it clean but it was a tough routine.

Interval and raffle time. The raffle took 11 minutes and 16 seconds and I didn’t win the purple hedgehog or the unicycle but I did win the tube poi. There was a Leeds Juggling Convention pass in the raffle (19th November 2016) and no pineapples!

The second half kicked off with The Bad Egg Theatre Company. I can’t describe the act but I will quote from their website. “Using a unique blend of physical and verbal comedy, our ambition is to create highly entertaining, multi-dimensional work that provides the audience with easily accessible food for thought. We are strongly influenced by the stylistic form of ‘grotesque’.” They did exactly that, absolutely hilarious, I loved every minute of their performance (except for the really awkward to watch bits, but they were the right kind of awkward)!

Circomedia and The National Centre for Circus Arts graduate Truan then perform a lovely contact ball routine mixed with robotic dance. Great movement, great contact moves, super smooth and slick. I really enjoyed it, especially the final ‘tablecloth’ trick.

Francis then did a handstand and Harvey threw a plastic bottle of water onto his head.

Luke Burrage closed the show with a nice club juggling routine. Kudos for performing last minute with someone else’s clubs and wearing someone else’s shoes. Very nice display of club juggling tricks.

The curtain call and final bow was very well executed, I wonder if Luke may have played a small part in that..?
Overall it was a very good show. I enjoyed it very much.

Me and Ed passed clubs in the atrium, Jenni got concussion, Alastair punched Jenni and Alice prepared to punch me, then it turned out it was all just a big misunderstanding and we all got thrown out of the school and sent off to The Hub venue. Me and Jenni decided to retire to our B&B and nurse our wounds and to return the following morning for more juggling.

One troubled night’s sleep (traffic noise) and one very full English breakfast later we went on down to The Hub. The rest of the convention was eating breakfast and sitting about nattering so I went into the main juggling hall (there was another hall of a similar size) and did some numbers ball juggling while Jenni was sociable. The hall was pretty small, much smaller than the school hall on the Saturday. Turned out not be a big problem as everyone pretty much packed up and left and not many stayed to juggle in the halls. Me and Kiran did some club passing so I introduced him to 7 and 8 club ultimates as well as 8 club 2 count on singles. We also smashed out 40 catches of 8 club 2 count on doubles which was pretty impressive when he hadn’t tried the pattern before!

There was no food for sale at The Hub so me and Jenni ate all of Brook and Kiran’s food and were very grateful for it. Loved Helen’s T-Shirt!

Me and Brook then had a monster passing session (Sorry Andy and Rob for keeping Brook back so long!) Nice runs of 10 and 11 clubs, feels more doable now. We also tried some different 10 club counts and did a nice 10 ultimate pattern with us both doing straight doubles. Also filmed a snazzy combination transition from 7 club 2 count to ultimates and back.

Me and Jenni were the last to pack up and leave, we got in the car at about 3.30pm and were back home at smack on 5pm. We didn’t bother with the scenic route this time… Chinese for tea and an early night.

Hooray, what a good weekend! The convention was well attended and everyone seemed to have a good time. The show was very good. I thought the main juggling spaces were a bit small, this didn’t turn out to be a problem as there were plenty of other things going on and spaces to occupy. Thank you to the Durham Convention organising team for putting on the event, I look forward to coming back next year!

I have spent an entertaining Monday morning listening to all of the hilarious comments and jokes about my black eye from my work colleagues.
I don’t think I will tell them about the carpet burns on my knees…

Cheers, Jon

(Sorry, yet another long review, I hope you enjoyed it. If you did or didn’t then join the discussion. If you attended the event add your own review of the day too!)

#DJC2016