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.