Squares of Darkness: Poitato Sushi Poitvch1

Youtube Link

Music by Makoto from Jujumo
http://jujumo.net/

Shot in Sanfran at the Vulcan
http://jp.youtube.com/user/VulcanVideo

Apparently this was originally intended for the COL DVD, but somehow or other it ended up online instead for our viewing pleasure.  Thanks guys!  Some really jawdroping 2 person twirling here along with the general ninja skills that you would expect from these two, all in a very light and playful package.  Nice.

Editing credits to the mutli talented David Nolan.

Update: you can also check out the hi res version on their website.

Visual midi experiment from Kyle McLean on Vimeo.

This video was a live run recorded on a DVD recorder.

Youtube Link

Youtube Link

Ronan, you are a madman.  Loving the contact poi!

Archive.org is a pretty amazing source of culture from times gone by.  Some good old dance clips to be found here, and a search with ‘circus’ and ‘newsreel’ brought up this slightly disturbing gem filed under the categories of Motherhood and Surrealism.

The US Library of Congress has some very old archived moving pictures.  There are quite a few historical collections and subcollections there to check out.  The American Variety Stage is a bullseye for circus fans.
 The LoC site explains:

The American Variety Stage is a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920.

Deeper link to the  List of films from the collection. Most of these are over 100 years old. Enjoy!

Mr Om performs with AYA Company. You can find another nice video and some beautiful photos on the site.

Here is an article in Wired if you would like to know more about Theo and his creations.

Youtube Link

By Germen based crew Lichtfaktor .

While we’re on the topic of techno graffiti, really must mention Projection Bombing. Feel like redecorating your city? Here’s a step by step guide.

JTV Link

Hillary Carlip appearing on The Gong Show in the 70’s.  She won with this comedy jugging routine. She seems like quite a funny character. She has a kooky looking autobiography called Queen of the Oddballs.

This video is streaming from the Vaults over at JTV (Juggling TV).  IMHO the most splendid video hosting juggle niche site in the world.  Nice feature is that they actually let you download videos you like, without having to resort to firefox plugins and flv converters and other such things that really only really geeky people even use. They also have all sorts of cool RSS options. If you still don’t know what this means, look at this…

The weekend was fun, full, and VERY well organized.  Everyone felt very grateful to Gabe Monson for her work here.  It was the first Uber to take place without the presence of uber founder Rob Thorburn (known to many as Bluecat, his Home of Poi alias), and I seem to remember him saying at some point that Gabe was about the only person in the world that he could simply hand his baby to, and know it would be sorted. 
 
This Uber was also a bit new and different in terms of content, which in the past has been been primarily staff and or poi only as far as the workshops go.  This time a wider range of props as well as associated disciplines were thrown into the mix.  I’ve been lucky enough to go to three ubers, but the diversity of play in the hall at any given time was quite surprising.    The expanded program was filled by some serious talent on the teacher list, including contact juggling with the master Mr Om, old style vaudeville from new circus artist Davey Sampford (Circa), and club and hoop manipulations from the walking talking object manipulation encyclopedia that is Mark Douglas.

The star import this year was Tokyo Poi Ninja, Yuta. 
I’ve seen an awful lot of poi around the world, almost enough to be jaded, but he really blew me away!  And it was really so wonderful to see such a talented performer and teacher who is also very interested in community building. Bring on the Global Fire Cyber Tribe…
Other workshops included dance with Asuka, our other Japenese guest, choreography with Dave and Grace of FlameOZ, and it goes on and on really.

When we weren’t teaching, Sphercular Matt and I were running around filming for the upcoming UberOz DVD.  We also had a Video Booth, where people could come to share tidbits of twirling, play, manipulation and randomness.  It worked really well and saw lots of use.  We’ll definitely be taking the concept to more gatherings.

On Saturday night the whole event came to Gabe’s house for a party that will live on in the minds of those there for a long long time (and on the dvd of course).   Would have to be the best backyard spinning the world has ever seen I reckon.

The last part of the weekend (aside from the cleanup workshop) was the show on Sunday night.  Having been so recently to UberParis, I found I couldn’t help comparing the  shows from the two events.  Very different.  Both great.  If it was all a juggling convention, Paris would have been the Gala and Oz would have been the Renegade I suppose.  In terms of being a production the Paris show was just amazing with top act after top act, but it was also a set program. In Oz a more open stage format was used and it gave participants a bit of a chance to show what they have learned and to have a go.  Both good, with pros and cons.  Both archived away on my camera.

Huge thankyous, kudos, and more to Rob for having made his vision real. It’s really hard to find twirling classes at this level. It used to be impossible. I’m already looking forwards to the next Uber -I think a couple a year will keep me pretty inspired! 

Be sure to keep your eyes out here and on uberevents for DVD details. Big thanks to the many people who preordered. If you didn’t and would like to, contact newgabe AT optusnet DOT com DOT au

GooTube Link