Tour has rendered me too lazy/tired to do anything more specific, so let me just say that all of these are freaking incredible and if the short description piques your interest, you should probably watch it!
Raphaelle Boitel - Contortion from "La Symphonie du Hanneton" by James Thierrée
Leilani and Sancho - Contortion/Bboy Duo from iD by Cirque Éloize
Peres Brothers - Duo Acro
Yann & Greg - Duo Acro
Pavel Stankievich - Handbalancing on Canes
Chunky Move "Mortal Engine" - Dance with interactive projections
Rosas - Dance on chairs with awesome use of hair and breath!
Do no watch this.
I really really really appreciate that they took the time to list all of the tricks that happen on screen. Something like this could make it really accessible for new trickers and people outside the community to understand (or begin to understand) the amazing amount of variety in tricking. It's not all corkscrews, even though they happen pretty often.
Also giant kudos to the insane level of tricks and editing. Bravo bravo.
Old news, I know, but I still think it deserves to show up on here.
Might look even better when he's working his hair.
Tossing doubles with the inimitable Maxime Girard. Also, first few flips on jumping stilts.
See also: solo tramp training from Dec 3.
I found an awesome new activity for YouTube nerds: go to Google Translate and find out how to say something in other languages, then search it on YouTube. Chair stacking acts are kind of hard to come by in English, so I figured why not look up some Chinese videos.
The final trick in this is cool: head balance on top of 8 while spinning rings on each limb.
Final trick is a 4 block drop from one arm to a bench on 8 chairs.
This ends with the best finish of any chairs act ever. It's hard to avoid climbing down and being boring but he does a drop from 2 canes to 8, then THROWS DOWN EVERY CHAIR! Clearly he's giving his mechanic a workout, but the audience doesn't know that!!
And so far every base has been a table. This act's base is a little girl!!!
OK inspired now.
Veronica Melis and Beatriz Sayad in Daniele Finzi Pasca's Donka. As they get into position on the floor stage left, a live feed of them is projected onto a curtain at center stage. Then they do this hilariously impossible hand to hand act. Reminds me a lot of Les Kiriki, Acrobates Japonais by Segundo de Chomón from 1907. Funny, sometimes the stuff you think is brilliant and original has already been done, over 100 years ago. The element of being able to watch them live, though, made it even funnier.
via Lewie West.
Either these intrepid backyard acrobats rigged up their own bars everywhere, or the parks department had the great idea of just sticking them everywhere. Either way, it looks as though there's actually a scene of people who do this street high bar stuff. Is this happening anywhere else in the world? America's far too litigious for sure to let this kind of thing (read: fun things) happen in public parks.
While we're on the subject of crazy Russian kids, here's a crew who set up some gym mats and tumbled off of a roof. One kid chucks a roundoff triple.
WHAT ARE THEY FEEDING THESE GUYS!?
Skip to 3:00 for the nuttiest HB routine you have ever seen. 3 Kovacs skills (backwards salto OVER the bar in pike, tuck, and full twisting) in the same routine, each done with utter precision. Beautiful form, nasty difficulty. I especially love how definitively he squares out of his dismount a whole 180 degrees before landing. Just awesome...
But no, he's not just a high bar specialist, here's a video of him training and then nailing a couple of triple twisting doubles on floor - 1/1 in 2/1 out.
Good lord, there's even video of him working on a DOUBLE Kovacs. Skip to 5:00.
The future of men's gymnastics is scary. I'm glad I got out of that sport!
Just tossing quads like it ain't no thing. I love these seemingly random setups that allow for craziness like this. (We've had our own adventures of the sort!)
Mike Wilson is apparently a pro skier with previous experience on rope swings.
Sorry about the lack of updates, been busy jumping off of a wall all day.
http://www.cirque-eloize.com/
I saw 7 doigts do a cabaret show at Completement Cirque that was thrown together, but utterly amazing. I've only heard great things about their productions and this video is no exception. Double full through 4th hoop!?
I'm kind of upset that there are no NYC dates. That really needs to happen. I think it would do well here.
I was bouncing around yesterday and wondering why nobody ever incorporated contemporary dance styles into trampoline. The obvious drawback is that it's difficult to make trampoline rhythmic, but that doesn't mean it can't contain expressive movements. Maybe I'll develop this idea a little more and see how some music and choreography might work out.
Go ENC! I don't mind that most of your students have the same stylistic tendencies, they're excellent at what they do!
Seen on Ministry of Manipulation.
I was recently introduced to Cedar Lake Ballet. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui did a piece for them last year and this video comes from his work before that. It's a collaboration with artist Antony Gormley, composer Szymon Brzoska and the Shaolin temple.
The canon at 0:24 is intensely beautiful.
I saw this girl in 2008 at Loopkicks and she was blowing my mind - I'd never seen a girl do a corkscrew, and get this - she was 11. Now, 2 years later she is showing some really high level skills and shining bright in a very male dominated sport. I have nothing but respect for her and her insane work ethic. I can't wait to see what the future brings for her tricking career.
Hi readers! I've been super busy rehearsing for this show lately; explaining the recent drought of postage. If you live in the New York area, you really ought to come check it out because it's going to be a ton of fun. I'm doing all kinds of acrobatic shenanigans including some tumbling, static trapeze, and handbalancing on chairs.
http://circusofcircus.com/
No, not the champagne, and yes, the kid who did the handbalancing act with the mannequin. Eike is one of those people who can have an act on pretty much anything he wants. He's a superb handbalancer but also an extremely strong all around acrobat. Trickers will appreciate the corkscrew that he uses to kick off the act. It's got a lot of inventive skills and creative images, very distant from traditional chinese pole acts. I especially like when they both jump up and freeze at 4:40.
I want to jam with that guy.
So this is apparently from a synchronized marching competition at Nippon Sports Science University in Japan. If you get a lot of people together to do hard things at the same time, it's pretty impressive. If you get a huge amount of people to do the simplest thing in the world, you've got to be creative for it to be worthwhile. A lot of really impressive stuff goes down in here, but those crosses at 1:50 really blew me away.
If you like this Japanese brand of insane synchronization but want more acrobatics, then I have to point you in the direction of Men's Rhythmic Gymnastics. I've only seen teams like this from Japanese universities but I'd really like to see this kind of thing done on a global scale (I'm looking at you, Russia.)
Those crashes are GNARLY! But he did it. The acrobatic spirit cannot be stopped by physical handicaps!! I've seen Bill Shannon get down in my living room and Dergin Tokmak's act in Varekai. Duo Jen and Nate do all kinds of rad acrobatics and she has no legs.
The Russian Bar act in Cirque du Soleil's Alegria has been around for a long time. I'm sure they've gone through tons of lineup changes and generations of flyers and porters, but this video takes the absolute cake.
I first saw it on TV from the recorded version (see here.) It was one of those mind-blowing acts that made a huge impact on me as a young gymnast. It has all the aerial difficulty you'd expect from an elite trampolinist but with the added challenge of landing on a little flexible bar.
From what I understand, the same team as in the Monte Carlo video is now in Totem, and though their act was amazing when I saw it, I can understand why they wouldn't want to perform their 100% act every night, but why they would want to unleash it for this festival. They came out with a Silver Clown.
It's funny that I never thought about the idea of a 100% act. Think about all of the people in circus that do mind-bendingly difficult and dangerous skills every night. Then think about the skills that they don't perform every night because they're too dangerous to risk injury. It makes me want to rethink the way I evaluate acts when I see them. An act in a show you have to do 8 times a week should leave hints about what else is possible without actually doing those things. I feel like this is a rare occasion where you can see the difference.
Photo via here
Who's ever heard of Mallakhamb? I certainly never had until a few days ago when I came across a few amazing videos. Think gymnastics meets Chinese pole. It's a competitive sport in India based on ancient traditions that date back to the 12th century.
The second guy is probably the best Ive seen. See part 2 here! The second guy in part 2 looks like a teddy bear. If Marjaani is stuck in your head after watching those, I'm sorry. It happened to me too. For more, read on!
Hi everyone, my name is Ryan. (Everyone: 'Hi Ryan') I'm a train-o-holic. (Everyone applauds)
I spent the entire day a couple days ago in a weird, creaky haze. I couldn't get out of bed until noon and after I did, I couldn't be bothered to do anything but eat leftovers from the fridge and sit in front of the computer for the better part of the day. Sounds like a hangover, right? It's kind of like that. I was just totally exhausted. Overtraining is actually a lot like binge drinking.
I don't have any good ones of my own to share lately (though I did kick the board last night pretty hard...) but I've just come up on a couple of straight ridiculous ones.
There are some OK ones in here, but nothing can touch 2:15.
The fly act is pretty easy but super clean, if anything check the beautiful lay in double tuck at 2:50, then skip to 6:00 and I won't spoil the rest...!
And this one's just classic.
Rudi Macaggi seems to do a lot in the New York variety scene, but I've still never managed to see him perform live. What I have seen of him has all been online and whatever he is doing, it's always enormously entertaining and acrobatically absurd.
Frigging handstand block drop over a circular saw. What a hero!
Kendama Blockhead Completed by Keith Nelson from Jim Moore on Vimeo.
For any performer, a breakthrough is one of those reasons to live for. For some variety performers, some breakthroughs and achievements are so esoteric that they require 2 minutes of setup so that the audience actually understands what they're seeing. Seems kind of silly, until they actually do it. Apparently he's been performing this trick for 2 years and never hit it until two days ago.
Congratulations, Keith! Now, try to land it on the peg!!
Originally seen at Dube Juggling Blog.
YouTube user avroraagata1 has uploaded a whole mess of videos of the 22nd World Championships in Acrobatic Gymnastics. I think I'm going to take the time to watch ALL of them, but here are a few gold winners that you should watch, if you're going to watch any of these videos.
Women's Group Gold - Russia
Why don't we start by tossing this child into a 2 1/2 front and catch her in a basket hold? Brilliant!
Mixed Pair Gold - USA
Men's Pair Gold - Great Britain
Edit: The videos keep coming!!! Look at this one!
I usually can't stand poi. It takes some pretty exceptional work to grab my attention. This guy does it right; it blows my mind and he doesn't even do any of it lit.
This duo does some seriously dangerous stuff all on fire. That's some real trust right there. You know they really put in the hours for that, you can see them doing some really technical experiments in this video too.
Circus School
Originally found at CircusNews.com this documentary from Shanghai Circus School follows the training of a flying act (specifically, a copy of the Moranbong flying act) and a handbalancer - with 9 and 8 year olds.
I bet these kids don't even understand the caliber of the tricks they're doing - at a fraction of the age of the majority of professional performers.
I'm familiar with a toned-down version of the infamous Chinese discipline. It's rough, it's cold and it's emotionally overwhelming - but it works.
Here's a little video I put together on the 11 hour train ride back from Montreal. It's a chronicle of the setup of the TSNY Governor's Island rig. When we set up this rig, I put my camera in one place and every so often ran over and took 3 sequential pictures. Stitching them all together, it makes for a stop-motion type video.
It took us from 6am to 3pm to finish this much. It really makes me admire the people that can erect one of these in 4 hours for a traveling show.
Montreal is a pretty amazing city. Last time I was there, it was March. It snowed. It was terribly cold. I was confused and alone in a big French-speaking city.
This time around my opinion of the town has changed quite a bit, thanks in part to a circus festival, some awesome weather, and a super cute traveling companion to share it with.
This year marks the first ever Montréal Complètement Cirque, a circus festival organized by La TOHU, a nonprofit that in part aims to put Montreal on the radar not just as a home to high-quality circus arts but also an international circus destination. Though the roster is primarily Quebecois circus groups, they also summoned shows from Belgium, Australia, Germany, Wales, and Spain.
We only stayed for one week of the festival (which goes for most of July), we saw four shows: Cirque du Soleil's Totem, Eloize's iD, 7 doigts' Cabaret, and Ea Eo's M2 - which is more circus than I usually get in a year. It was a pretty excellent, very inspiring experience.
Following this there will be four posts - one for each show!
Remember how I was complaining about teasers 4 weeks ago? Here's what he came out with. It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Kind of like Vellu in the tricking scene: this eastern European kid comes out and just bursts the difficulty bubble with one bonkers video. He's surprisingly well rounded - he shows off some trampoline, tumbling, tricking, and he even does air flares. Seems like the kind of guy who could learn anything in a couple of tries.
Nice hair too.
Sorry I've been lacking in posts. I'm in Montreal right now, seeing some incredible stuff. Greg Kennedy is amazing, but put him in a Cirque du Soleil production and it reaches a whole new level.
Maybe I'll write up some reviews of the shows I'm seeing here. Stay tuned!
Risk is what makes performance admirable, entertaining and compelling. Any performer places themself in the lion's den the moment they step on stage.
Circus is special because of the absolutely absurd amount of risk that any given act involves. With seven objects in the air, the audience is absolutely terrified that one will fall. As the wire walker teeters 30 feet in the air, the audience clenches their knuckles white at the possibility that he might plummet to his fate.
...And these things happen. But as the age-old saying goes: the show must go on.
This video shows some absolutely harrowing spills. In a venue like Monte Carlo, performers are expected to show their very best, even if it doesn't go according to plan. That's why I love this - each performer recovers, does the trick again, and nails it. Even if they have to do it twice.
I was showing this to a friend and he asked me if it made me think about what I do. I thought about it for a moment, and then replied it doesn't make the think about what I do so much as how I do it. Only by endless repetition and total concentration are these feats possible. If I stopped to worry about how dangerous a trick was while I was doing it, I'd already be well on my way to an injury or even worse.
I remember the first time I saw an Olympic level trampoline routine. I've been doing flips for a long time, but the first time you see someone do that many flips and that many twists, I don't care who you are it's hard to count! Only after watching many more routines, becoming familiar with trampolining technique and actually learning some bigger moves does it become easier to identify what that blazing whirlwind of arms and legs actually was.
This is a great video to watch to get a start on that process. Here, Samantha Sendel (at 16 yrs old!?) performs 40 different variations of triples on a supertramp, complete with a skill name to go with each clip. Really amazing stuff.
Bonus: a quadriffus and some choice crashes at the end.
What I wouldn't give to be able to train on that monster...
Lewie West never fails to impress. He combines tumbling, tricking and bboy moves seamlessly into his own incredibly unique style. He makes the tumbling look a little more raw, the tricking and bboying a little more polished, and just utterly controls his directions with brilliant transitions! (Back handspring into swipes! Bailed aerial to bboy cork! Who thinks of this stuff!)
His progression is very apparent. He's put out a few videos like this all at Circa training centre in Australia and each one gets a little better. His lines keep improving, his gymnastic tumbling is getting higher (double full in this video is finally looking solid!) and it's really exciting to see him develop. I'm so enthusiastic to see him take it to the performance realm where it can hopefully coagulate into something where he can take his creativity and originality and turn it into something beautiful.
From Cirque de Demain 2007? A unicycle and bicycle on a round trampoline. They are quite entertaining characters - a charming mismatch just as bizarre as the combination of their apparatuses.
The back drop on the bike has to be the coolest looking move in the act, even though they do much harder skills. I love how he springs back up from it without breaking his rider's pose.
The bike spin and face at 2:30 bring to mind Elvis Mokko!
John Vanek is ridiculous. Rudy is just as nuts. Put them together at Epic gathering, which I so idiotically miss, and this happens. Double back over a (round off to) double full. Keep it up, you insane, ridiculous people. I'll catch you at a gathering sometime soon!
(Remember when Neil ran under Vaughnya's double cork at LoopkAcks? I think this wins!)
B-boy power moves are incredible. They're such simple shapes carried by incredibly complex patterns of momentum that boggle the mind. Taking it down to super slow motion makes it easy to appreciate these moves for how amazing they really are.
Awesome faces too. I often wonder what kind of grimaces I'm making through a double layout.
Good ones, I hope.
My relationship with tricking has changed a lot since I started. For most people who do it, it's an extreme sport where the goal is to the most difficult and creative tricks and kicks. Since I've decided to pursue performing, it's become less important to be the best tricker and more important to do good looking tricks. Coming from a gymnastics background, I try to do my corkscrews with locked knees and pointed toes as much as I can. I think it makes it easier for general audiences to appreciate a skill if it is done with form - with the intention of having it look presentable regardless of its difficulty. Most trickers seem to be doing it for other trickers who can objectively identify skills, making classical form less important.
So for a person like Tim Man, a professional stunt actor, you can tell that he wants everything he does to be performed with poise and polish. Instead of landing a combo and walking off looking at the floor, it's a point for him to land in a fighting stance. His flexibility allows him incredible extension for all of his kicks, making it easy to communicate exactly when and where he is kicking.
My favorite part is the bit on the punching bag: training to attack with realism while still looking visually intricate. Extra badass points for letting the hair down.
If you like what you see, you must see him in action in this. A "cover fight" if you will of a scene from the Jackie Chan film Gorgeous. He also makes appearances in the critically panned Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li as well as Tony Jaa's Ong Bak 2.
Why do other countries get TV broadcasts of Monte Carlo? I'd be so much more jealous if cinacontortion didn't post heaps of videos of it from Chinese TV.
Though it's not convincingly funny all the way through, I love the retracting glove gag. There are some tandem flips I've never seen like three-person shoulder to shoulder and two-man front/back. Very neat surprise ending too!
saltocafe is probably one of my favorite YouTube channels: a constant stream of excellent gymnastics and gymnastic-related clips. This video came out beside a compilation of UB dismounts both from the 2010 JO Nationals. There are some enormous Tkatchevs in there; I bet they could stretch them out into Hechts if they wanted to.
34 wins in my book.
Also from saltocafe, this clip made me laugh pretty hard.He could choreograph women's floor routines with those moves.
I've been into slacklining since I saw the ISPO 2009 video and decided that it was something I wanted to participate in.
If you've never heard of it, a slackline is a thin piece of webbing tied between two anchors for funambulism. The line isn't actually slack like a slack wire, but I guess it gets its name from the dipping when stood upon - very unlike a tight wire. The flexibility of most lines give them a trampoline-like quality, but they also have the unique challenges of rapid sideways swinging (unlike the controlled side to side of a slack wire) and line torsion (the tendency for the line to twist on itself under pressure). Invented by bored rock climbers years ago, it's evolved into a conduit for rad tricks, but has yet to be embraced as a performance apparatus. Probably because it's really, really hard.
That's why people like Cihan Calis blow my mind. While I'm struggling to walk on the damn thing, he's BREAKING on it. With one hand down, he manages loads of bboy inspired threads and footwork - a completely unique style in any equilibristic art. Not to mention landing a back flips back on the line.
Obviously it's not a live performance but a collection of hit tricks and combos. I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually perform on a slackline. You're dealing with a lot of variables that I guess are easier to control on other types of wire, so although you might be able to hit a trick one time it's not easy to make it consistent enough to perform it with any kind of regularity. Who knows, though, I could be wrong. If Li Wei can swing on a slack wire in a one arm handstand then I reckon anything is possible.
Cihan is using a Gibbon Jibline, a completely affordable and incredibly easy setup that I would recommend to anyone trying to get into this.
For more Cihan, see his YouTube page here.
Still killllllin it. This is the rig from Cirque Eloize's iD. Just what I needed before going to perform again on the Stand Up 8 wall in Toronto!
Aerialist/acrobat/stuntwoman/dancer/general badass Sarah Moser just put this vid on YouTube. (Check out her page, she is amazing!) I thought for sure it would be a video of someone rolling a cigarette but instead, THIS! German Wheel meets new dimensions!
After Scotty did it, Guthrie did it. Then he did it in a combo. Now this? Such a monster at only 18, wow.
I had the pleasure of meeting these two at Cirque du Soleil in March. Totally magnetic personalities - they just shine all the time. Lysanne especially radiated incredible energy and attacked any request from the directors with utter abandon and complete emotional freedom. That's the biggest challenge I found while I was there: I couldn't break out of my serious acrobat shell. I really respect the people that can.
I got to see their acro act but I only got to see inklings of their trampoline skills. I finally found this video from ENC and oh my goodness it is more than I could have imagined. I'd keep going but it would just sound like gush gush gush.
A lot of tricking loses its martial arts quality in the pursuit of bigger, spinnier tricks. Danny, however, makes everything FIERCE. Amazingly fierce. Every kick looks like it could take your head off, even if it comes after 720° of spin - that's not easy.
His arms are always moving efficiently to speed up his movements, which takes an extremely long time to develop. Nobody tells you where to put your arms most of the time in tricking, so you need to figure it out through experimentation. You can really see it in him.
Danny is currently performing with Jon Chu's Legion of Extraordinary Dancers on the Glee Live tour.
I feel like I see a lot of cheer tumbling that's like tricking - there are a couple guys who are absolutely out of control and a lot of videos of people that are working really hard to get there but aren't quite yet. Rarely will I sit through a whole one but man I am glad I got to the end of this one. That's some raw stuff.
We got a lot done in one week! Like I mentioned in the Oli Lemieux post, there's a whole different set of mechanics at play in this apparatus, making it so much more fun and dangerous. I keep thinking about all kinds of other moves that I didn't get the time or the balls to try. I can't wait to work on it again!
If you're on Facebook you can see another angle here!
I just got back from Michigan yesterday and the show went beautifully. The entire week I was sure that it was going to turn out to be this colossal failure but in the end everybody put their best forward, remembered their lines, and most importantly, turned on. There's something magical that happens when you put a performer in front of an audience that you will never, ever find in a rehearsal. I see it happen to me when I step up to take that first bounce and it's 3 feet higher than it ever was in practice. Either way, the show came together in a way that I didn't imagine, and I'm really happy that it did.
One of the huge surprises was Kim's skating lyra routine. She has this spoken part about how she fell out of ice skating, tried everything, and ended up doing aerial. Her act is the absolute personification of that, and the embodiment of a path very like my own. It's so graceful and set to such a beautiful song (one of my favorite Sigur Rós songs); it kicks the show off with a blaze of resplendence that is hard to follow.
Today I leave New York for the fabulous Midwest to participate in the production of Stand Up Eight. I will be performing trampoline wall as well as various other tricks! The show is Thursday May 13th at the Paw Paw Performing Arts Center, Kalamazoo MI for only $4! Details here.
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
-Ryan
A Yurchenko is a gymnastics vault where one does a round off onto the springboard followed by a back handspring onto the vaulting surface. The rest is magic.
That's a pretty Yurchenko full right there, let me tell you. I love the way she's fully extended and fully square coming down for the landing with her hands down by her sides. Even worse, she did it more than once!
So obviously that's not the hardest Yurchenko-style vault; there are lots of places to sneak more twists into the entry and flight, but seldom do you see people adding an extra flip:
He's an intense looking dude, and that's an EXTREMELY intense looking vault (on a horse, no less!). It doesn't even look like there's time for another flip in there but he manages it, sticks it, and then sports a huge grin beneath his Colonel Sanders beard.
...And then he piked it.
Any other sweet Yurchenko vaults I need to see?
-Ryan
I feel like maybe if I write about Damien Walters 2010 it will prevent the inevitable rush of "have you seen this video w/ ninja man?" e-mails from aunts and uncles and casual acquaintances who know I do "that flippy stuff". Not to belittle Damien Walters in the slightest because for four years in a row his reels have been consistently insane, innovative, and fun. But what makes his videos always go viral?
It's something like this that really makes me want to try skydiving. I realize that you can't just jump out of a plane and do this; there's the whole progression of getting strapped to your instructor, getting certified, doing loads of jumps (comments on YouTube say Omar has 13,000+ jumps!!!), etc until you can do anything this absurd. But still! Just imagine the kind of freedom he's experiencing! Utter calm at terminal velocity!
Freeflying is a relatively recent sub discipline of skydiving that focuses on different styles of falling which can be trained and coached in WIND TUNNELS!
Has anyone tried indoor skydiving? Is it expensive? And can I do it in the NYC area?
-Ryan
Goodness my HTML is rusty and these templates are boring. I'm going to have to do my research. Hopefully it won't be so lame to look at for long.
But here it is. I've always wanted to be able to write about the things I find but I've lacked the motivation to put it in a more proper format.
I must cite The Ministry of Manipulation as a huge inspiration for this. Since I've gotten more interested in juggling and circus arts, their blog has been an invaluable resource in my exposure to manipulation arts. I've always wanted a parallel sort of collection of acrobatic media and it makes sense that I should try to do it.
The goal of this project is of course to share the acrobats and acts that inspire me, but also to attract similarly interested people to bring and discuss the things that I haven't seen. Ultimately, I hope that this can be a constantly growing collection and celebration of human movement and creative spirit.
-Ryan
