What's that? We rock? True story.

So let's see, Tim and Ricky continued their amazing work with our promo material and created the below brochure:



(outside)



(inside)

Pretty sweet work, no?

We are fine-tuning our APCA showcase performance and I am much less stressed about it than I used to be. It's coming along fairly well but that's not what has taken away my stress---the fact that we rocked our audition for America's Got Talent is. Due to a surreal set of circumstances, we decided to write and rehearse an act to audition in about three days time (check out Jeremy's blog for the back story). We went into the audition, saw some other circus friends of ours, and proceeded to rock the producers' faces off. We were placed on standby and I received a call yesterday from our producer asking if we wanted to come be put on TV next week in NYC. Unfortunately, as those of you who diligently follow this blog know, that is the same time we are attending our super important conference. So we had to decline but there is still a chance we will be on the show in a different city's filming block. A pretty good chance. And in any case, it was a great vote of confidence in us as if our hastily thrown together act could impress them, we must really be awesome :)

On a related note, our good contortionist friends Tracy and Morgan who team up to form a duo called Bella Curva advanced to the filmed round in NYC! They are awesome and it would have been great to join them, but if all goes well we will both be part of this really fun show (seriously, the folk who work on this show are great!). I hope they have a blast and that we get to meet up and maybe cause some TV drama mwhahaha!

I believe...

...in what we can do. I believe we can succeed. I believe we are good enough, talented enough and creative enough to make this happen.

Now we just need some warm weather and a sound system for the amazing things to be shaped.

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...

Hello, (Business) World!

Anyone get that compsci joke? And come to think of it, I think my first ever blog had that same kind of joke.

Annnnywho, A Different Spin is now officially a Partnership. Much cheaper than an LLC (free vs. $800+) and still gets us a tax ID number for colleges. Means we need to keep really good books and are not protected in case of debt and such, but it takes a load off my mind without taking a load off my limited bank account :) In the future we may go the LLC route but due to the unknown future of A Different Spin it doesn't make sense to make that next investment.

Carry on.

Total shift

So I finally received info on the manuals I am supposed to write for Torr, Inc. About three weeks late which means the work they want done is also three weeks more pressing. That + APCA Conference prep means I'm gonna be a busy mofo. We got our bio, showcase intro and headshot into the APCA and Ricky is almost done with our full-page ad for their website which leaves us mainly with the tall task of getting 15 minutes of pure awesome choreographed and pretty much 'perfect' for performance. Oh, right, I also am trying to find the cheapest way to make A Different Spin an LLC (a way that does NOT involve $280/hr legal fees and a $2,000 retainer). I'll be sure to update as progress is made...

Things!

So we are taking the plunge and heading to the National APCA convention in Atlanta. Big financial investment and a huge 'ratcheting up' for what we need to have ready. We are going to not only be promoting ourselves to over 120 colleges across the country but we will also be one of only 10 event performers to schmooze with 100 military sponsors. These sponsors book performers for bases and stations all over the world, creating events to take troops minds off of the stress of everyday service and other family-and-friends events to have a good time during visitation weekends. Pretty great potential for gigs all over the place.

Sounds awesome, yes? Well it also means we need a damn polished 15 minute show for the showcase and some great promo material to hand out and have on display at our booth. Plus we need to deal with paying way too much money to stay at the hotel and figure out the cheapest way to travel---airfare for four may end up cheaper than driving all the way down and back as well as being quicker. I also need to get on top of figuring out this 'small business' thing as we would look more professional as one and it would help eliminate the potential tax headaches we may encounter. More to come, I'll be sure to post our full-page ad that will grace the APCA website when it's done by the end of next week :D

Circus Extravaganza!

We had a fantastic time overall at the Arisia Sci-Fi and Fantasy Convention last night. Though our big juggling act was cut basically in half mid-performance due to time constraints, each of our acts were well-received and fun. Ricky did an amazing solo juggling routine that was created moments before he went on stage and had a great build and caused a fantastic fan-reaction. We dropped a few too many times during the first half of our four-person juggling routine but still completed some great tricks and had a good overall reaction from the crowd. Jeremy and Tim had a grand old time messing around with some audience volunteers, Jeremy and I did a successful improv glass walking routine and the second half of our four-person juggling act went almost flawlessly and earned the solid applause.

In my mind, the effectiveness of the night on our networking was astounding---muscians and performers and audience gave us rave reviews and we are sure to be working with Chuck and the talented Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band again in the future and will eve get paid for it ;) I am going to try and push for an outdoor event with them in the spring where we can do some fire too!

Group update: website is now really complete and even has a video that Jeremy did a bang-up job editing (the footage was not very helpful in giving him anything astounding to work with). Check it out below, visit our website at www.adifferentspin.net and feel free to give us feedback!



Visitors: Man we have a lot of great friends. Lily is visiting us this weekend along with Mike and next weekned we get Craig, Surei, Aaron and Elias. Overwhelming amount of visitors continue...