I greatly enjoyed Camvention too. A terrific venue, as others have already said. Masses of space so plenty of room for everyone, but a good attendance so the hall hummed. Inspiring as always to see so many fantastic jugglers doing their things. And good to catch up with old friends.
I really enjoyed the Scrambled B workshop. It was great to get to try, and begin to understand, one of these intriguing but extraordinarily complicated looking manipulator patterns. I was lucky to be paired with three more than competent passers, who I suspect were carrying my less accomplished attempts – thank you for that! Jon, far from being ‘woeful’ in assisting our group during that workshop, you were extremely helpful – thank you (and the other workshop leaders) too.
Two things that were extremely helpful from the workshop format were firstly the ‘wind back in time’ approach, where each group worked on a few beats of the pattern until they had some success, then started at a point a few beats *before* that, so as to lead into a familiar section. And secondly the instruction to ‘follow a certain juggler’ from the four demonstrating. I was assigned to follow Jon so, Jon, with that being the closest I’m ever likely to get to ‘juggling like Jon Peat’, plus your organising the combat *and* performing that fiendishly inventive and accomplished spot in the show, I would make you my review ‘crush’ had Mark not arguably overdone that bit already as show compere, as you alluded to. I’ll just have to go for all the graceful hula-hoopers as usual…
Jed and Ben, from our Norwich club were at Camvention too and were also at the Scrambled B workshop – we, plus Matt, had fun trying to build on what we learnt yesterday evening. If anyone can point me to a video of the variation taught in the workshop, please do. We are getting there, but not yet sure about everything.
I also got my Diabolo out for the first time in years, and enjoyed attending a workshop. I really must practice Diabolo this time (as opposed to my usual balls and clubs) rather than leave it aside until a convention months or years later as usual. And I enjoyed a couple of games of Battle Sheep, courtesy of Lazy Juggler – taking a copy home for the family.
The show was excellent – 8 very varied acts, all highly accomplished in their own ways, and very ably compered by Mark Watson. I had brought along a friend’s son, Seb, who I taught to juggle clubs recently. He was well impressed by Ashley and Michael (from who’s club-passing act I enjoyed the popcorns particularly). The high points for me were Pascal’s Cyr wheel and Nik’s mesmerising ‘8-ring’ isolations. But there were no lows in a consistently good show, and indeed a consistently good convention – thank you Camvention organisers.
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Post by ChrisD
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