Saturday, October 11, 2008

Two colleges have already felt the power!

Iona College on October 3rd and Canisius College on October 9th were targets for the east-coast contingent of A Different Spin.

Result: direct hits.

The Iona College gig was about as difficult as could be---our day show was requested for 8:30pm in a parking lot and our mic randomly stopped working after 2minutes of our show, said parking lot was separated from half the audience by a 4-foot high brick wall and 3-foot high iron railing which caused a great disconnect for many audience members as well as ourselves---and yet we put on a great pair of shows under the circumstances. The coordinators were thrilled with the product which is a hugely important piece of the puzzle and we had our first 'real' gig as a group under our belts. A success for sure.

Canisius College is in Buffalo---5.5 hours each way for us---was a totally kickass show. It was a ridiculously windy day which put a big damper on our club juggling (but luckily we were not hired to do a day show so we just avoided the clubs) but the crowd had fun learning to juggle. They were also freaked out by Jeremy and my glass walking (and Jeremy's face-plant in glass while Ricky juggled knives while standing on Jeremy's head) and I made quite a few people flip out with some card magic. A great time was had during our four hours of 'circus entertainment'. The fire show was amazing, though; under the watchful eyes of a crew of a fire truck from the City of Buffalo Fire Department we performed damn near as well as possible and the audience had a complete blast. Our audience volunteer was reluctant to join the crazy performance but eventually had a good time with the four weirdos with electrical tape on their faces (ie, us). It was a lot of fun and maybe we'll even get to go back again in the future to teach and/or perform.

We've got two more gigs this month at colleges---SUNY Cortland on the 24th and Johnson & Wales on the 30th---so our plate is full of fun fire shows in October :) I think it is an overall fantastic beginning to our journey as professional fire performers!