Fun weekend conducted

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the House of Paint, a fantastic free event which incorporates all of the elements of Hip-hop: DJing, MCing, Breakdancing, and Graf Writing. I brought my staff, juggling clubs, and some other toys to play with. When I got there, there was a huge crowd of people around the breakdance cypher, so I got up on a chair so I could see, and realized that I could juggle up there at the same time while watching the dancers. Sometimes I'm concerned that people think that I'm juggling just to show off, but really its for my own pleasure that I do it. And if other people get off on it, well that's great too. Later on Lochness of the Decypher Cru approached me and told me that it made her happy to see me juggling because it made her feel like she was there for the fun and not for the show. That gave me a nice lift :)

On Sunday I also had an opportunity to jam in the park with a very experienced staff spinner, The Pheonix (check out some sample videos on Google Video too). While I was passing by the market square, he caught my attention and after chatting with him for a bit, I found out that he was a fire spinner and his specialty was staff manipulation. My wishes were answered ! For a while I have been hoping to meet someone with more experience than me in the ways of staff play. And best of all The Pheonix has now moved to Ottawa.

At Major's Hill Park I picked up pass juggling with pins as well as learned a couple of new tricks for the sticks with The Pheonix. He at one point refered to my half-broomstick sized staff as a baton, and it never occured to me that it was somewhat like that. I always thought of a baton as a really thin stick that was just thrown in the air a lot, but I had never seen anything impressive done with them. So, last night I decided to do some research on "baton twirling" rather than "staff spinning" which is what I had been looking for with little successs, and I found a very well-developed culture around this. For example, here's a video from UK's Got Talent of Craig, a baton twirler.

So, I got up to some more research last night while I was working on my clowning act and found out that baton twirling culture came out of marching bands where drum majors and majorettes played the role of keeping a beat and conducting the band with their batons or maces (notice how a conductor's wand is also called a baton). Marching bands came out of the military, where they were used to keep the rhythm for marching troops. But then the bands became less useful in actual combat for whatever reason, so the marching band became more ceremonial than anything else.

So, a lot of this object manipulation (baton, mace, rifle) stuff has some strong roots in military, and I'm pretty opposed to the military-industrial complex . As well, marching bands are popular at football games, and I'm not to into that form of combat either. So, I guess what I'm working to do is make staff/baton manipulation into something that is more in the style of the circus rather than the militant marching or gymnastic competition that I have seen with baton twirling thus far. Ok, now to stick to it ! Hmm, maybe I should call my sticks "poles" to distinguish them from the tradition of baton-twirling. Roley-poley !