EJC update

[Daniel Shultz]

What's going on!?!?!
lets get trivial, people!
I wanna know everything you're stoked on right now at EJC.
...because I'm not there... sniff.. sniff...

Daniel

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[0norb000]

Daniel Shultz wrote:
> What's going on!?!?!
> lets get trivial, people!
> I wanna know everything you're stoked on right now at EJC.
> ...because I'm not there... sniff.. sniff...
>
> Daniel
>

I'm interested too... please post how it is...

[Aidan]

I'll write something about the EJC. The site was excellent. There was a
massive main hall for
juggling and a smaller hall for aerial, acro and unicycles and the like.
The floor was a bit dusty,
so if you went barefoot you quickly got black soles! There was also an
upstairs area, where
people played games, and there was a separate area for balloon modelling.
I spent most of my time either passing clubs or playing games. The card
game Tichu was a big
hit at this year's EJC! Usually games started at midnight or later and
continued until the small
hours. There were four games of Tichu going on at once on more than one
occasion!
The campsite was enormous and there was an overflow site if necessary.
Unfortunately it wasn't
needed, numbers were below what was hoped for. There was plenty of shade
on the campsite,
which was a good thing, because most of the time it was very hot! There
were a couple of
welcome downpours though. The ground on the campsite was not ideal, but
was ok. A friend of
mine returned to his tent one day to find a mole's excavations just inside
the porch!
The food area was ok. There was a great pancake stall run by a very
friendly Polish man. You
always expected to wait a while for your pancake, but it was worth it!
There was a pasta stall,
which was ok. An upmarket fast food stall, if that's not a contradiction
and a stall selling coffees,
fruit, cereals and other stuff, which was very pricy. I'm told that each
morning there was a
bakery with fresh goodies, I was never up early enough to experience this.
It would have been
hard (read unhealthy) to survive on the food available on site alone, but
luckily there was a
decent restaurant nearby. Also the centre of town was about 20 minutes
walk away, with plenty
of excellent and cheap options for food and beer.
Also onsite was a small minimart, selling among other things, bottled
water, fruit and some
lovely tubs of Polish ice cream, there was the obligatory bar tent,
selling several different
bottled beers very cheap, and also apparently hosting bands each night - I
was too busy passing
or gaming! There was also an open stage and renegade tent and a fire
space. Once again I have
no idea what happened in these places. (maybe I'm not the best person to
write one of these
reviews)
For me personally, I did lots of passing. I was surprised that a group of
us did an 8 person
scrambled v pattern. I never thought anyone would get round to trying that
- that's 16 hands
and 14 clubs. There is some video evidence, maybe it'll find its way to
JTV. I was also surprised
that I managed to persuade a couple of Dutch guys to spend a good hour or
so working on an
eight club roundabout pattern with me. We never quite got it running, but
it is a thing!
Before the gala show I almost persuaded Caspar and Ron to go for a beer
instead. I asked them
afterwards if they regretted their decision and Caspar said he did. Having
said that there was a
world class hand to hand acro couple from Ukraine and the show finished
with a great hoop
act. There were actually two hoop acts in the show (!?) and neither of
them was like any other.
But the first didn't do anything for me. The first act was a girl
manipulating one club with her
hands tied behind her back. She had won a competition earlier in the week
for that honour.
However the announcement said 'before the show starts...' This was a
really bad way to
introduce this act. Especially as, for me, it was the third best act in
the show. I understand why
it was done like this. The show had no compere, instead four stagehands
acted out a story as
they set up the stage for each act. The story was completed by short films
specially shot for the
show. So the show was one complete concept. The story didn't include the
first act!
I ran one workshop on takeout theory. It inspired some of the Australians
to test it to
destruction by trying to make a one count roundabout. We couldn't quite
get it working, so the
jury's out. The last time I ran that workshop, it inspired another couple
of Australians to create a
five person pattern based on the Havana feed. I was taught that pattern at
EJC and it's fun!
Since coming home I've been thinking about variations on the Havana feed
(without takeouts)
and come up with some nice patterns. Why does that happen so often after
I've spent a week
surrounded by a couple of thousand jugglers, many of whom would be only
too happy to test a
new pattern.
I had a great week in Lublin and want to say a big thankyou to the
organisers, you created a
fantastic festival!
Aidan.



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