Bags of Tricks – Exploring Move Discovery in Skill Play
Coming up with something you haven’t seen done before can be one of the most rewarding aspects of skill play. This article covers a wide variety of exercises and techniques that can potentially be used to help people come up with new moves. The image above is a clickable index so that you can dip in and out of it without necessarily having to read the whole thing in one go.
Firstly I’m using “skill play” to describe an activity that generally involves another object (or objects) and focuses on the relationship between our bodies and that object. Through practice different movements are learnt that allow us to interact with the object in different ways. My background is in circus and object manipulation but these ideas apply equally to related arts such as skateboarding, magic or any other physical skill-based creative activity. Sometimes I’ll use specific terms that might not apply to your type of skill-play but hopefully you’ll be able to adapt it.
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Bags, a Horse and a Cherry Tree
Here’s new video of me in a tutu wearing a cowboy hat. Just a quick one thrown together because the organisers of Spin Summit wished me to wear these things while alerting people to the fact that I’ll be at their event. I can’t wait! I looking forward to seeing people there! xx
Hoop is Old School
Here are some clips of a few hoop rollers from a whiles ago. These hoopers are some of the most impressive I’ve ever seen. All these clips have been taken from the amazing website http://juggling.tv which is well worth a visit. Many of the videos seem to have been found by http://juggler.com.
The names are probably right but might not be. The dates are not necessarily when the clip is from but more a rough guide to when the performers were at their peak (again probably). This information is partly taken from “Virtuosos of Juggling” by Karl-Heinz Ziethen.
Revolva & Bags @ Bristol
My sister Revolva came and visited Brizzle a little while ago to teach some workshops. We had a spare few hours so we made this. It covers many classic hoop sites in Bristol and includes pasties, telephone boxes and cider. What more could you want, eh?
In the Round – What Every Successful Hoop Performer Needs to Know Part IV – Marketing Your Act
It’s the long-awaited final instalment! The previous parts can be found here: part one, part two and part three. But now here’s Tim Marston’s expert advice on marketing:
This subject is long enough to write a book on! In fact I’ve already done that and don’t want to do it again. So I’ll keep it short and sweet so you can understand the basics. Here are a few of the main ways you can sell yourself as a professional hoop performer.
Entertainment agents
A classic and effective way to sell your act. Most freelance performers don’t have one agent who handles all their bookings but rather they work with a variety of different agents on different events. Good agents are worth their weight in glow hoops, sadly this level of value means they are hard get on board. Almost all agents will have a barrage of performers trying to get work out of them and this means the job of getting agents to sell your act is a tricky one.
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The Olympic Hoops – Comedy Circus Routine by Bags
Sorry. I’m sorry for posting another video shameless promoting myself. I’m sorry for all the silly dance moves. And most of all I’m sorry for the union jack onesie. Watch this at your own peril.
Kenna Hoops’ College Drinking
The lovely Kenna Hoops doing some really rather wonderful single and double hoop shennaigary while drinking rum and ginger ale. First video from her in ages so well worth a watch.
Bags’ Comedy Fire Shows
Here’s a little bit of shameless self promotion. This is my new fire show promo. It has a little bit of fire hooping in it and some other random stuff including a bicycle on fire and on my face while I spin a flaming hoop cube around my body.
In the Round – What Every Successful Hoop Performer Needs to Know Part III – Publicity Material
It’s time for part three of Tim Marston’s (howtosellyouract.com) series on how to be a successful hoop performer. If you haven’t read part one or part two then I suggest reading them now. Here’s Timmy…
Publicity material is vital for any act that wants to do well. Fortunately for you, hoops are very photogenic which means good photos and videos of hooping are relatively easy to get.
In some ways good publicity material is almost more important than a good product. It is not uncommon for people to get a good costume and idea for an act together, then have photos done without actually having the completed act. This way they can see how well it sells and finish it off properly when the bookings start to come in.
As with the other articles, I’m going to break this down into sections then expand on each individual section. Publicity material can fall in four main categories.
| · Photos | · Videos |
| · Printed publicity | · Websites |
SpinForth’s Durty Disco Mix
I’m really enjoying this mix that my friends at Muscial Mana blogged about a while ago. I don’t really know how to describe it because it’s quite a mixture so I’m just going to say glitch hop ghetto funk step. Enjoy.
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