Wanderlust Circus hits San Francisco - The Backstory
Three weeks ago Kazum returned from the Moisture Festival and realized that we had to choreograph a whole new routine for the San Francisco trip. That's really where last weekend began.
An unlikely duo stepped up to the plate due to Uli's school activity coupled with both of our fliers' superbusy dating life. It's tough being a dazzling, costumed acrobat girl. So many parties to attend. ;) No, really, they both work a lot and Uli's school schedule has been crushing her.
Dutch and I agreed to spearhead the new routine, which James eventually christened the "Death Blossom" in honor of a way cool weapon name from the Last Starfighter. If you don't know that show, please remove yourself from my FaceBook friends-list. We basically took one of our toughest routines "Planet Claire" with me & Dutch & the girls, and hacked it down a bit. Then we added a 5th person and our other hardest number - "Birthday". But we really needed to Doctor it up a bit so we threw in some Adagio and other Doc-friendly tricks, culminating in a big 6-person Candelabra.
Dutch and I paid lip-service to how freaking difficult and exhausting this routine would be. But we've both got enough machismo to gloat on the inside. We paid for that arrogance in sweat - both our own and others'. Doc looked like he had been white-water rafting at the end of the set on Saturday night, and James & the girls weren't so fresh-looking, either. But Dutch and Scott, the Meatloaves of Kazum, really bore the brunt of the exhaustion, I think.
It was sad to choreo Ari outta the routine, but he can't make the performance dates. :(
As we worked on it, Doc and James surreptitiously injected their special magic into the routine. They both kinda went with, "Sit out for the first half of it? I think not." And what they added is spectacular - yet they were careful not to eclipse or steal thunder. Excellent choreography shout-outs to both of the Kazum Ninjas.
Doc & Dutch have been putting in mad extra hours, too. Both of their stunting & spotting have increased remarkably in the last 2 months. Big kudos to them for extra efforts! That's the way to hone your stunt game - work it outside of regularly scheduled practice time.
Forward to last week - we've still not gone through the whole 5.5-minute stuntfest yet. Even blocking it is still rough. Some tricks were still tagged "in progress but hey we'll get it won't we?" Typical Kazum errata; nothing new there. But still pretty scary.
As we so adroitly do, we pulled it together. I had a hard time staying focused due to anguish over Joey and what I did. (Quick summary: I broke up with her by cheating on her.) I was also stressing about covering rent, finding a place to live, working as many extra hours as I could manifest, and not sleeping nearly enough.
But we did it! Death Blossom is a great routine with lots of amazing stuff in it. It rockets into action with an early Basket Toss, and finishes up with dazzling Adagio and a huge angular Candelabra. It's not to musical cues other than the first 8 measures or so, so it can be fit to any music. We're well pleased.
An unlikely duo stepped up to the plate due to Uli's school activity coupled with both of our fliers' superbusy dating life. It's tough being a dazzling, costumed acrobat girl. So many parties to attend. ;) No, really, they both work a lot and Uli's school schedule has been crushing her.
Dutch and I agreed to spearhead the new routine, which James eventually christened the "Death Blossom" in honor of a way cool weapon name from the Last Starfighter. If you don't know that show, please remove yourself from my FaceBook friends-list. We basically took one of our toughest routines "Planet Claire" with me & Dutch & the girls, and hacked it down a bit. Then we added a 5th person and our other hardest number - "Birthday". But we really needed to Doctor it up a bit so we threw in some Adagio and other Doc-friendly tricks, culminating in a big 6-person Candelabra.
Dutch and I paid lip-service to how freaking difficult and exhausting this routine would be. But we've both got enough machismo to gloat on the inside. We paid for that arrogance in sweat - both our own and others'. Doc looked like he had been white-water rafting at the end of the set on Saturday night, and James & the girls weren't so fresh-looking, either. But Dutch and Scott, the Meatloaves of Kazum, really bore the brunt of the exhaustion, I think.
It was sad to choreo Ari outta the routine, but he can't make the performance dates. :(
As we worked on it, Doc and James surreptitiously injected their special magic into the routine. They both kinda went with, "Sit out for the first half of it? I think not." And what they added is spectacular - yet they were careful not to eclipse or steal thunder. Excellent choreography shout-outs to both of the Kazum Ninjas.
Doc & Dutch have been putting in mad extra hours, too. Both of their stunting & spotting have increased remarkably in the last 2 months. Big kudos to them for extra efforts! That's the way to hone your stunt game - work it outside of regularly scheduled practice time.
Forward to last week - we've still not gone through the whole 5.5-minute stuntfest yet. Even blocking it is still rough. Some tricks were still tagged "in progress but hey we'll get it won't we?" Typical Kazum errata; nothing new there. But still pretty scary.
As we so adroitly do, we pulled it together. I had a hard time staying focused due to anguish over Joey and what I did. (Quick summary: I broke up with her by cheating on her.) I was also stressing about covering rent, finding a place to live, working as many extra hours as I could manifest, and not sleeping nearly enough.
But we did it! Death Blossom is a great routine with lots of amazing stuff in it. It rockets into action with an early Basket Toss, and finishes up with dazzling Adagio and a huge angular Candelabra. It's not to musical cues other than the first 8 measures or so, so it can be fit to any music. We're well pleased.
Labels: Ari, Candelabra, Death Blossom, Doc, dutch, James, Joey, kazum, Last Starfighter, Miranda, Moisture Festival, Uli, Wanderlust
posted by Scott | 1:46 PM
2 Comments:
doesn't joey have access to this, and is there really anything in here you would want to hide?
and planet claire is one of your toughest routines, you must have revamped it. good to see kazum growing.
Joey does have access. I don't wanna hide things so much as "not shove stuff in her face". And I want to feel free to say what I want to say, without worrying about my audience too much. If I self-edit everything... it circumvents the point of my blog. It's really only for my close friends and myself. Other people wander across it now & then but most of them don't retain interest for long. *shrug*
P.C. is stunt-heavy with some of the revamps we had in it. I didn't mean difficulty-tough so much as effort-tough. Space Hole was tougher. Birthday was, too, though it was lots shorter.
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