Steps in the right direction

So we were part of a fantastic cast of performers on Friday night that came together to celebrate Johnny Blaze's 25th birthday. The ~4minute act we performed was to serve as a 'check-in' for ourselves with regards to the choreographed juggling act we will be including in our showcase for the APCA National Conference. We did not give ourselves enough practice time to have the act ready so we made last-minute adjustments on Friday morning and *mostly* succeeded in our evening performance. On the one-hand, our early drops during the simple stuff were covered well and made the audience think they were intentional OR made them excited for the rest of the act as the saw the knives we preset and thought 'ooh, if these guys can't juggle clubs it is gonna be CRAZY when they try and juggle knives!'. Ah, the bloodlust of a good crowd :)

I know that most of my own drops during our show were due to my badly battered fingers---I've got one big split on the top of my left ring finger and my left thumb is raw and ready to give me three more lines of blood---but some were due to a different environment than we had practiced in which is a HUGE thing to know about. We are not going to have much practice time at all for the APCA showcase onstage so it stresses how ridiculously polished our act has to be to deal with a new stage and lighting setup. Good to know...

We were insanely well-received by the crowd even though we messed up several times which was a great confidence boost for us; sure, we had a few biased friends in the crowd and many liquored-up folk, Boston is starved for juggling and our dance-break is always awesome, but it was a great reaction nonetheless. If we stick to our plan of practicing three times a week at the YMCA and throw in a weekend practice or two between now and March 17th (when Ricky and I fly down to start the schmooze-fest in Atlanta) we should be ready to rock that section. The audience-volunteer section should be pretty easy to get solid as we have the skills down pat (and don't even hit our volunteer!) we just now need to get really comfortable with the dialogue and actually map-out our slow-motion movements in the finale. We performed this bit at our second gig of this weekend (another performer's birthday bash. Damn, Boston performers love to bring their friends in to make a fun party) without having ever practiced it and that went well enough that I could make those previous statements ;)

The other fantastic part to our Friday was that we all had such an amazing time contribuiting to a talented cast of drag kings and queens, aerialists, burlesque artists and our favorite acro-duo (yay Morgan and Roger! But boo for Roger leaving us for his crazy roadtrip :( He's lucky he and his girlfriend Ellen are awesome else I'd totally not allow them to go have fun). It reminded us all how much we want to make this project succeed however it has to---if the college circuit doesn't work we would love to do small-venue shows with crowds like that one. Oh, and did I mention that we also got to dance up a storm to the kickin tunes courtesy of Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band? We all looked around the room as we skanked, bounced and twirled our way around and saw such a wonderful range of people that were just enjoying the moment which gave us a bit of hope in humanity :) I know I need more chances to dance like that. Other than Friday and the night of the Dreamtime Circus dance party post-show I haven't had a chance to enjoy dancing. I'm so damn picky in my dancing music...

Also on the APCA front, Ricky and Tim are doing some rockin work getting our promo material looking sharp. Below is a copy of the full-page ad that is included in both the online journal and the hard copy sent out to all the APCA colleges. Those two artists are also hard at work making a sweet brochure to hand out at the conference. I wish I could contribute more to the graphic design stuff but it's great to know that they can create such wonderful things. To pull my weight I'm just gonna have to be 'the man' during the conference and sell us hard.



I am itching to keep refining these juggling acts and finally revisit our fire show once the weather warms up...