Threads tagged #ejc2014

peterbone - 2014-07-29 02:00:31 UTC - Parent #

H: Meeting new people, including some legends. Working on 11 balls with 6 other people. Meeting and talking with Michael Moschen. Watching Poki from the US learning the dual balance.

L: Parts of the Gala show.

G: To juggle a lot and meet new people. Achieved,

C: Elk Fest.

B: Dusty and dark hall. Having limited good space to juggle in. Non-ideal tent pitching surface.

S: Bumping into my step-brother, who I did not recognise.

lukeburrage - 2014-07-31 09:40:47 UTC - Parent #

H: Various parts of the Legends Stage. Landing a near-impossible squeeze scissor catch at the end of my squeeze catches workshop.

L: Putting our tent up in the rain on the first day. We then abandoned the tent, inflated the mattress in the hire car, and slept there for the rest of the convention.

G: Win Fight Night: Fail. Inevitably I lost to Jochen.
Organize Fight Night: Win, but with some issues. This'll be the last time I run it.
Run a juggling workshop: Win. Twice. Squeeze Catches and How To Not Suck At Combat.

C: Viktor Kee on stage too obvious? Patrik Elmnert too.

B: Being in a venue designed and maintained for horses. Next time can we live like humans and not livestock?

S: From those who walked out of the first Gala Show, I was led to understand that it would be utterly awful. It wasn't. I actually quite enjoyed it. It was, however, the slowest and down-tempo-est Gala Show I've ever seen. None of the acts were bad (in the second show) but there was very little variety of tone.

Squibly - 2014-08-03 03:32:48 UTC - Parent #

H: Difficult; it was a GREAT convention. The banana manipulation was a definite feel-good moment though.

L: Samuel Youde. Also much illness on the way home.

G: Practise tapbacks. Achieved, but levered off my nail using stupid non-ball-shaped props.

C: Toilet corridor violin guy.

B: My sandy dusty throat.

S: Darragh McLoughlin's whistle piece - I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed this considering how little juggling there really was in it.
Also the campsite. That ground was pretty surprising...

niallkelly - 2014-08-04 10:20:44 UTC - Parent #

H: Attending a lock-in in the bar that included Viktor Kee and Marco Paoletti with lots of drinking, singing and banging of tables!

L: Sam's act and Mathias telling everyone to get the f*** out before the interval (He wasn't speaking for the organisers).

G: Catch up with friends, volunteer, and watch some good acts. Check.

C: Michael Moschen's workshop. I only caught the last 40 minutes but it was quite interesting to hear his opinion on various things.

B: Continuously failing to get out of my tent before the sun hit it.

S: Steve Mills.

Monte - 2014-09-01 03:53:05 UTC - Parent #

H: Ireland what a great country with such friendly people. Winning trophy for coming third in the Millstreet soap box race.

L: Noel C Duggan (site owner) deliberately driving into my brand new awning and bending the struts.He was a complete nightmare and eventually the organisers had to call the police after he knocked one of them over with his forklift and tried to steal the rented generator.

G: Get my kitchen, staff and several tons of kit safely back to Hulver Farm after a journey of over 1000 miles. Succeed
Win soapbox race. Fail (came third)

C: Barry from the smoked meat stall.He took a day off after the convention to show me around Kinsale and Cork including a trip to Charlesfort.I love a good castle.
Also Tony O'Brien the local butcher who bent over backwards to deliver meat and veg to me on site. He also organised the soapbox race and found a kart for me to race with.

B: Bloody American tourists at Blarney castle who queued for 2 hours to kiss the stone but took absolutely no interest in seeing the rest of the castle. I even had to tell one off for throwing his litter on the floor.

S: High cost of many foodstuffs in Ireland. By the time I got home I had barely broken even.

The Void - 2014-08-27 03:43:11 UTC - Parent #

Nice job. :)

Orinoco - 2014-08-27 11:48:21 UTC - Parent #

Very well done!

pumpkineater23 - 2014-08-30 16:01:55 UTC - Parent #

I always thought Oli was Scottish for some reason.. not sure why. Great video!

Monte - 2014-08-13 20:03:14 UTC - Parent #

Do you think anyone noticed how I was levitating one of the spinning balls several inches above my finger?

The Void - 2014-07-31 19:13:39 UTC - Parent #

The compère was a character act, who spoke really slowly, and did quite long bits between each act. A couple of them had funny moments, but generally, he sapped the energy out of the show. There were a few okay acts, but then Sam came on in a shark suit, with a stream-of-conciousness story-of-a-dream monlogue, which I may have enjoyed as a bit of left-field surrealism, if it weren't for the compère having dulled the life out of me already, or the fact that it went on for (seemingly) 20 minutes. But then he busted out a mighty fine short 3 club piece, which he should have just done in the first place, IMHO. By this time, 75 minutes had gone by, and I was hoping that I would finally get to see the only act I'd been interested in watching, having read the lineup. But no, we get told that there is now an interval. And to get out, because they need to do some set-up. Not asked politely, mind, actually told to piss off. Oh yes, and there had been a fair bit of swearing from Sam, and some from the compère. In a 6:30 Public show.

AND THEN... having been kicked out of our seats, we found ourselves coralled into only half the hall, with access to only 1 set of toilets, which had a queue of 20+ people there by the time I'd been turned away from the nearest ones I'd headed towards. And not allowed back into the main site at all. Fuck that, I'd had enough of that shit, and I was hungry, and Monte had a smoked veggie lasagne on. So I barged passed a steward and through a fire exit. Sorry crew, but there you go, your right royal fuckup of a Gala evening left me fuming.

I later heard that the 2nd half was actually quite good. And that they offered refunds to the public punters.

So, that was what was wrong.

The Legends show was, contrastingly, completely awesome.

lukeburrage - 2014-07-31 21:42:52 UTC - Parent #

I saw the second show. I was surprised at how good it was judging from the comments of those who had walked out of the first one. Still, it was the slowest, lowest energy Gala Show I've ever seen, by quite a long shot.

mrawa - 2014-08-01 08:00:00 UTC - Parent #

True to what everyone else has said. Sadly I remember the act quite well... I'll do a full write up on the Legends and Gala show later, but honestly I was quite disappointed by both. Depending on when you started queuing for the early Gala show (around 5:00pm - 5:30pm) we finally got out around 9pm. Longest show I think I've ever been too, and I thought Toulouse Gala dragged.

magicalmarkwatson - 2014-08-01 10:48:11 UTC - Parent #

I saw the second performance of the Gala Show, and so missed the act that caused so much controversy the first time around.

I thought all of the acts were good, Patrik Elmnert in particular was his usual amazing self! I was surprised how good it was, considering the number of negative comments I had heard about the first show, though I now understand they were two very different shows.

Mathias Romir was, in my opinion, very entertaining - he had created a great character, had some really nice bits and the couple of routines he did were really great. I would LOVE to see what he does in a full hour long show. HOWEVER, this does not make a good compere, and as others have already stated his character sapped all life and energy from the show which is probably one of the worst things an MC can do. Overall, this Gala Show was good, but disappointing in a few key areas and certainly not up to the professionalism and quality of many BJC Gala Shows.

The Legends Stage Show, on the other hand, was in my opinion the best juggling show I am ever likely to see. I am biased in that I prefer the classic circus style of many of the acts, and I'm certainly not saying it was perfect, but I was overwhelmed with the amount of amazing talent up on stage. If we had ended the convention on that show, I would have left in awe of our great circus community.

PS - Regarding the organisation of the Gala Shows, putting up a fence down the middle of the hall and segregating early show and late show ticket holders. I completely agree with Void in that I was left rather angry on the last day by how it was all handled by the organisers. When the fence went up I was dubious, but as they began to put in place tougher controls it just made me angry that we were being caged in to certain areas. I even asked one of the stewards on the entrance created in the fence what purpose it was serving and he said he honestly didn't know, he'd just been told to man it. Whilst I can think of a few reasons why they might have put the fence up, I don't think that any of them are particularly good ones. It certainly brought a downer on the end of my convention...

mrawa - 2014-08-01 10:59:40 UTC - Parent #

Right...

Disclaimer - Never seen most of the acts before... and by this point in the convention I was happy and didn't care about the camping situation or the dusty hall. Actually that's a small lie, I was steadily counting the ways of disposing of the Samba Band... but I consider those happy thoughts!

Legends Show
Getting into the show was fine, Ron had kept a seat for me whilst I finished off a hand of Tichu. However, my first issue was that I could clearly hear some guys music blaring outside. The crew were informed about this and it took a good 10 - 15 minutes in order to quell the awful din.

Note: this was the second showing of the Legends show

The compère... I did not like him. I don't know who he was, but I couldn't understand him (had a thick French accent) and was quite slow at talking and announcing the acts. He didn't dally though, so there wasn't much of him, though he did one trick about halfway through. On the otherhand, others I spoke to did enjoy him, and thought he was quick and was one of the better Compères at the convention (apparently he was an act on an Open Stage that I missed, so that might have added to his character). Maybe he was asked to slow down for the second showing?

Haggis/Charlie
Funny act, and a good laugh. Some of the jokes went on too long. Others (veteran jugglers) had seen the act many times before, but still enjoyed it and I don't think I spoke to anyone who didn't enjoy it. Nice comedy on passing 7 clubs with clever jokes and insulting each other.

Jochen Schell
Apparently in the first showing the lighting wasn't correct so he walked off stage. Later on it turned out that he "couldn't see his rings" according to a tech guy I spoke to. When on in the second showing and the act was passable. The act was split into distinct sections for different tricks (numbers of rings), and the style was centered around manipulation starting with some artsy movements, then to the standard 4 ring rocking/winking thing... and finally finishing off with bouncing juggling 5 rings with a backspin. Nice ending it's just the act wasn't very enaging especially with all the intricate lighting changes.

Steve Mills
Odd start with purposely falling off a unicycle, then went on with a talk about how nice it was to be at an EJC, then finished off with a 3 ball routine that was no better than the "traditionally second act" you'd see at a one day convention... wasn't very impressed for such a high profile name.

Françoise Rochais
I vaguely remember this act from BJC Southend. Much better and cleaner act, interesting use of props, and I was surprisingly impressed with the tempo/mood change halfway through. I don't remember much about the act other than being impressed...

Freddy Kenton
Hmm... initially I thought this was the best act in the show. Impressive balances, looked genuine... however what I heard after the show changed my opinion. After the his act in the first showing he apparently decided that his violin wasn't mic'd correctly and proceeded to storm and shout at Sound Techs (making one of them cry!) all whilst the next act was performing. This is incredibly unprofessional and unacceptable in my opinion, he should have spoken to the Stage Manager and/or waited until after the show. Also, how could he know the violin wasn't loud enough when he was listening to the stage monitors which is not the same as what the audience hears. In addition I heard that this impressive balancing made use of some subtle trickery, which make me question how genuine his act actually was. I was not impressed.

Donald Grant
Flawless, well executed and highly energetic act. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Spoke to Donald afterwards and all I can say is that he's a lovely man and very modest. Afterwards I also heard of his "everything is shorted version" I look forward to seeing that sometime.

Michael Moschen
Bored out of mind... did a little bit of 3 ball bounce juggling, talked about something and made the audience do a trivial finger shape drawing exercise that he audience failed at. Made me think he was conveying the idea that "he is something I can do that you can't" then the audience laughed. I've been shown his Triangle act and was expecting much, much more. Disappointed.

Viktor Kee
Incredibly interesting and well put together act. Only after the show did I realise that he barely moved from the same spot! Great act, fantastic use of flair, stage presence and a ball dropping machine. My only criticism is as a juggler the tricks that were performed were not that impressive. I was expecting more from a Cirque due Solei performer and during the week I would constantly see more impressive things. Great for the public/non-jugglers, I wish was in the Gala show for the public to see.

Overall impression. I was disappointed with the show. I enjoyed half of it, but because of the hype beforehand I was expecting too much.



Gala Show

Note: watched the first showing

Compère - Matthias Romir, with Pig and Whistle (unknown girl... and Darragh McLoughlin) as Stage Hands. I'll say this first. I was thoroughly impressed with the Stage Hands; fantastic characters, and well executed. I personally wish that they were the compère without Matthias.

Matthias... introduced himself as the MC (Miserable Clown), and that was true to his word. Thinking back, I think the show was better than I gave it credit for at the time and I reckon that this was due to Matthias' constant depressed, slow and boring intervals between acts. I've seen him perform at Southend BJC and I remember enjoying his balloon/club routine, however this time it was just depressing. He's a good performer, but I don't think that he is suited to compering. Many people did agree with me on this, however some people did enjoy his character... but the children sitting behind me were impatient (as all children are) and made hilarious comments about getting him off stage. Also, he smoked and swore whilst on and off stage.

On to the actual show

Roxana
Opened the show with a fantastic trapeze (I think... single swing) ball stall, trap and balance routine. Defying the laws of gravity and sense. Thoroughly enjoyed it and was very impressed.

Kyle Johnson
Brilliant if a bit droppy act (heard the second show was very clean). Some amazing contact and juggling moves.

Gail O'Brien
Quite a slow acts. I hadn't seen this side of Gail before, it felt like she was trying something new, but as I'm not much of a hooper I didn't really "get" some of the tricks. I remember seeing a different act at Sheffield and Durham conventions and thinking it was fantastic.

Samuel Youde
... *sigh*, how/why this act wasn't screened before the show or even the convention is a mystery.
Basic breakdown of the act... Whistle is introduced, shows his whistle, blows audience closes eyes. Whistle is blown again and we open our eyes to see:
- Shark onesie on stage next to a flat onesie pikachu?
- Sam shouts that he's been eaten by a shark and asks pikachu to help.
- Gets out of the shark and declares that pikachu is dead.
- He is wearing what is declared to be a Pope's outfit.
- Something to do with his room (as a child?) ... being the Pope, then gets on an imaginary plane to go help people in a third world country.
- Plane crashes and he is the only survivor and swims to a desert island.
- Needs food so uses the dead pikachu as bait and swings it around on a stick, then describes the experience as sex with pikachu... (I remind you that there are public and children in the audience)
- Stops and declares that the hear of pikachu is a bible and that as the pope he should read it....
- At this point I stopped caring, I think this was about 10 minutes in... I was thoroughly disheartened. The rest was to do with being shot by his mother, dying, his soul being carried away by a toy helicopter (that failed to fly) and his dad's soul trying to catch him?
- Then he gets up and says, I should clean my room, but I thought I'd juggle... then does some vaguely interesting 3 club manipulations for about a 1 minute.
- The end....
WTF


Intermission - Matthias literally told everyone to f***off "at the request of the organisers", whilst smoking in a Cherry Picker as he was told he wasn't allowed to smoke on Stage (due to a previous between act piece). An announcement from the crew later confirmed that there was a 15 minute intermission. At this point a fair number of people were angry and disappointed so they decided to leave. Many of the public (I heard) asked for refunds as they did not pay to see this. I'll admit, I was tempted to leave as well... I'm glad I didn't.

Patrik Elmnert
Fantastic, seeing Patrik setup this act during the intermission caused me to stay for the second half, and encourage others to as well. Not quite flawless, but brilliantly designed and executed act. Exactly what I wanted to see and should have been seen by the public.

Roxana (ground/feet act)
I'm sure this was a great act... but I couldn't see it. I'm disappointed that the stage/seating was not designed with this act in mind and an announcement before the act (in both showings) to tell the audience to make sure they could see the stage did not help.

Cyrille Humen
Bored, mostly centered on the same trick (some kinda contact move with crossed arms...), quite sad atmosphere, and little variation. I heard that Cyrille was a talented contact juggler and poi spinner, but maybe another time. The act didn't follow well with the Miserable Clown compère.

Florent Lestage
Incredibly impressive, just a same about the lack of structure and the constant yelps of glee and talking to the clubs. Reading the blurb in the programme I thought afterwards that it might just have been his personality, but other thought it was his character... apparently the second showing was had more drops. Some people liked his yelps of glee, but it just distracted me from the amazing juggling of clubs with the use of canes!

I have to say I feel sorry for all the light and sound crew for the shows. They must have been worked to the bone and I heard they that (certainly the sound guys) were not given very good equipment. In fact I managed to procure a Mac from a very helpful Jane Randall for one of the sound techs for the Legends Stage so that they were about to use QLab, free software in order to do the sound ques, rather than use stop/start in VLC (why oh why?!).

... So yeah, that's my take on the last two shows. I know I'm a bit critical, but I'm being honest and at least I've tried to express the opinion of some others with opposite view to myself.

Orinoco - 2014-08-01 17:55:05 UTC - Parent #

Wow. Everyone's descriptions sound unbelievable.

I also don't understand why acts aren't vetted prior to booking but it has happened before I think. There was a footbagger in the first show at EJC 2003 who had no act, no costume & kept losing his ball into the audience who was asked not to return for the second show that I saw. I've heard that Thomas Dietz was not booked to perform his parody poi routine at BJC 2007.

I've been to loads of festivals that have had more than one performance of a show, different tickets has been all that was needed. Who ever thought a fence would be a good idea? I'm pretty sure there are regulations about providing access to toilets for event attendees too (nope apparently just a recommendation).

Definitely boo to ranting at the volunteer sound tech. Not cool.

Olivier - 2014-08-02 18:57:14 UTC - Parent #

sorry for the french accent. It was way better while rehearsing backstage.

^Tom_ - 2014-08-02 21:50:28 UTC - Parent #

Excited as I was about the Legends show, I queued for quite a long time to get good seats (second show).

I had no problem understanding acts or compère; I also liked the compèring - maybe you could tell him ;)
It was a good choice of a host for the legends stage - someone who I know has an appreciation for a bit of juggling history, whilst in the costume and persona of something appropriately classic for such a such.

peterbone - 2014-08-04 09:07:36 UTC - Parent #

I unfortunately watched the first Gala show. Sam's act was terrible. I personally didn't find it offensive, just very long and boring, depressing and not at all funny. I don't think anyone has mentioned that a lot of the Irish locals left during that act and were refunded (or so I heard). Somehow he did still get a standing ovation from a few people. He apparently also performed at the Israel juggling convention previously, where he got similar reactions. I just don't understand how his act got into the EJC Gala show.

Marlon - 2014-07-21 19:47:07 UTC - Parent #

I don't like this.
I don't need more reminders that I'm missing an EJC.

Mike Moore - 2014-07-21 21:29:48 UTC - Parent #

Closer than usual...but no cigar.

Made a video with all the free time, though.

https://youtu.be/z30L7bTW8GU

Kelhoon - 2014-07-22 06:58:51 UTC - Parent #

Here !

It's Him - 2014-07-22 08:18:33 UTC - Parent #

Haven't made it to an EJC this century. 
Nigel

vazonun - 2014-07-22 09:09:53 UTC - Parent #

Couldn't get the time off work, so I'm just chilling here at home.

Cedric Lackpot - 2014-07-22 14:36:46 UTC - Parent #

I'm not at the EJC, I'm at home, having returned from a gig this morning that Circus Kevin couldn't do ... because he's at the EJC! Rah!

pumpkineater23 - 2014-07-22 17:14:03 UTC - Parent #

Not there.. but looking forward to The Green Man. Hopefully the weather will hold!

Al_Bee - 2014-07-22 19:41:01 UTC - Parent #

Ooh, I'm off to that. Kids and other extended family there too mind so I doubt I'm going to have much time to piss about by myself.

emilyw - 2014-07-23 08:16:39 UTC - Parent #

I'm not. This is (mostly) because I have freelance gigs though so I can't complain too much.

The Void - 2014-07-27 19:28:50 UTC - Parent #

I'm not, 'cos I just got back.
You all should have seen the Legends show. It was awesome.

Little Paul - 2014-07-28 10:00:27 UTC - Parent #

I'm glad I'm not the only one who did that

Olivier - 2014-07-31 19:10:34 UTC - Parent #

oh yea, freddy rocked !

Dee - 2014-06-18 09:02:49 UTC - Parent #

And pre-registration is closed.  If you are still planning on coming to the EJC and haven't pre-registered, remember that you can pay onsite, in (Euros) cash only I'm afraid [transaction charges are a killer].  I'll shortly be starting the volunteering push - we're not going to be one of those huge EJCs, so will need everyone to chip in and help out.

With a population of about 1500 in Millstreet, we expect jugglers to outnumber locals - it's not often that that happens, even at an EJC!

lucasgabd - 2014-04-22 17:31:35 UTC - Parent #

it's gonna be amazing!

Dee - 2014-03-21 21:22:36 UTC - Parent #

The Legends show is to be on Friday 25th July.