SCI at Hornings - Friday

Uli was adamant about a 10:00 call time, even though we didn't go on until 12:45. But there was a meeting for the Saturday lightshow then, too. Ari and I were there at 9:45 - nobody else showed up until 10:30 or so. Nobody was actually *there* and ready until 11:30. It was really frustrating 'cause I get cussed out for being 10 minutes late to practice now & then, but the cussers are frequently an hour late for performances. I attended the Sat-night show practice as the sole Kazum rep, which sucked - we would've been way better positioned for the show if we'd all been there.

Anyway, by 12:45 we were all set up. We had Daniel Flynn for our MC, with Tommy Twimble & Blake Hicks & Jackie for 'Tweener acts. Blake really ripped it up - people kept blowing past Dutch & I to compliment him on his bikery. Very cool.

The show was great, though there was low turnout at 12:45. We busked through quickly and gathered a bit of attention, but it was still not many people. It filled up as we went, though, and it was an okay crowd by the end.

We did Piggies, then Tommy took over. Then it was Lions, then Jackie. Then Cards, then Blake. We ended with Death Blossom. The show went seamlessly - it was wonderful.

We wandered and busked for a few hours in Peacock costumes. It was a blast - people really enjoyed seeing us do stuff.

We also went swimming. Dutch and Blake and I competed in rope-swing leaps. I did pretty well - I've not swung on a rope since before I was an acrobat. I represented well. Doc and Alysia showed up and weighed in - Doc's a natural but I have more training. Alysia looked like an aerialist - very impressive.

The Cheese show was pretty cool. I like Keller Williams, so I like the Cheese okay. But I'm not big on 'em. Clover & Uli & Miranda tried to dance to them but couldn't... we had to bail. *shrug* We stunted a bit here and there for hours, wandering.

The girls wandered home to sleep, so Dutch and I took over the evening set. We had Biscuit, though, and I eventually found Dawn again. We wandered and stunted and had a spectacular night. I met lots of people and lifted many of them - success! Dawn and I wandered home around until dawn again.

White Album Christmas 2009 - first show

We did two routines - Piggies (with seven people!) and Birthday. We were scrambling madly on Birthday up to a few days before the first show on the 12th, but we pulled it off quite well, as we always seem to do. Yay!

I've been doing a lot of after-hours stunting with Dutch, in the last few months. Monday Funday petered out as the weather got rainy, but after Kazum practice we almost always stunt for a few hours. Sarah (Dutch's lady) is a regular. Amanda is a girl Dutch met, and she came & stunted with me and Dutch at the Halloween Howl. She's amazing, and drop-dead gorgeous. But I was dating Mary, so she was super-duper off-limits. Clover is a new girl who just moved up from California, and she's an astounding stunter. She's circus-trained, with ballet background as well as contortionist & hand-balancing skills. Like virtually all of the girls I stunt with, she's smoking-hot, but it's all professional and I'm really excited about working closely with Clover to build some tight & impressive stunt routines.

Anyway, the first White Album show went well. A few timing issues troubled us, and a couple of stunts were wobbly. Dutch was very frustrated about dropping a chair, and Uli's toes got jammed on an airplane during practice. But overall... a very good show.

After the show was a wild afterparty at the Jupiter hotel, across the street from the Bossanova. I ended up spending lots of time with Amanda, and she stole my heart away. She had broken up with her boyfriend a week before, and Mary and I had broken up just hours before (at the show; 'twas a sad event). Amanda was heading back to Santa Cruz in the middle of the week, which left us both well-situated for a rebound fling. So, we had one, and it was amazing. We connected really well and I hope that we can stay friends, and hang out when she comes to visit. I'm trying to prepare myself for her to fade away, though... she's got a full life going on in California. I sure do treasure getting to know her, though. She's amazing.

I spent the next week moving and practicing, taking a mid-week break to spend Amanda's last night in Portland with her. We walked around downtown being an adorably cute new couple. We traipsed through Powell's, wandered through Pioneer Square, and I showed her the downtown accoustic amplification park and the fountain park across from the Keller Auditorium. It was a magical night, without any doubt. We ended up at the hotel where she was spending her last night. Her best friend & best friend's daughter were in the room, though, so we hung out in the empty lower hotel lobby for a few hours. It was really a magical evening.

And then she was gone. :( I am really glad I got to spend two concentrated bursts of time with her before she left, and I hope that we can remain friends despite the distance. I have a huge crush on her, obviously, and she returns the interest. But distance and time are sure to cool that ardor significantly.

White Album Christmas Show - epilogue

This is from my Tribe blog, and a lot of it repeats stuff from this blog. *shrug* Deal, I guess.

What an amazing event! This was my favorite Kazum performance, yet. That's saying somethin', because Lightning in a Bottle was a blast, and the Oregon Country Fair is a FunFest of epic proportions. But I had more fun at the White Album event than I would've considered to be humanly possibly without high-quality drugs, tons of money, and a Swiss women's gymnastic troupe of questionable morals.

I think that my favorite aspect of the show was the crowd integration. Noah directed us to quietly merge ourselves into the crowd about 10 minutes before the show started. We lay down against the walls and one another, and went to sleep. We stayed there for Jasper & Noah's opening spiels, as well as the opening number. Then during the 2nd number (Dear Prudence) all of the cast gradually woke up, yawning & stretching & working out the kinks. We slowly filed backstage, preparing for the upcoming show.

It was so enjoyable to move among the audience like that! I loved it, and I think it added a great deal to the show.

During the 3rd number, there were several quick performances. First Rhys Thomas & Leapin' Louie came onstage and did some juggling. The crowd loved it. Then Cherry pranced forth in her delightfully sparkly outfit, and wowed us all with a short fire-spinning routine that gave glimpses of the amazing things to come. And finally, Kazum came spinning out of the crowd with girls in lifts. I wish we hadn't been required to devote 100% of our time in practices to learning the routines we were performing, because we didn't have enough time to work out a 5-person stunt. So we threw our staple stunt - the Chinese Star - which is a 4-person stunt. That left Alex out, and if there's anything I regret about the show, that's it. Alex is a core and integral part of the group, and he's also a great performer, not to mention blisteringly hot eye-candy. If anyone shoulda sat out of the opening stunt, it shoulda been the boring guy - moi. But the Chinese Star with me on Russ is tried-and-true. We knew we'd hit it reliably and quickly. So that's what we chose to throw. I'm really sorry that it had to be that way, though.

It's gotta be amazing to see Russ pop me up onto his shoulders; I'm not a slender fella. When I pulled the girls up into the star, the crowd busted loose with mad applause. Russ looks like a monster as he lifts me & the girls, and it's just an awesome & impressive stunt. Few people realize that basing it is fairly easy; it's the mid-level flier that really has the tough part of the trick. I'm so pleased that I can fly it, I get wood just thinkin' about it.

So, the audience-integration was wonderful. In one of the final numbers the cast circulates out into the crowd in order to dance and cheer, and that kept us integrated. The final number is slow & quiet, and we were instructed to wander out onstage and relax into a big cluster of bodies, gently going to sleep as the show concluded. It worked wonderfully well and the crowd thundered with applause as the music concluded.

After audience integration my favorite part of the show was the visual continuity. We had one costume designer who spearheaded creation of our clothing. Melody led a team of dedicated ladies - I'm not sure who all was involved but I saw a picture of Cherry, Meghann and Kate hard at work building the Kazum dudes' vests. All of the costumes shared the theme of patchwork fancy - bright and flamboyant but made of odds & ends thrown together haphazardly. It worked beautifully.

Adding to the magic was a coordinated makeup theme that mirrored the costuming ambiance. Robert is an amazingly talented makeup artist who also happens to be a really interesting & friendly guy. Assisting him in his efforts was Naia, who Kazum often gets the delightful pleasure of working with. Naia always takes care of me and I appreciate her more than I can express. They were the primary makeup artists, though quite a few people kicked in their talents. The results were spectacular: darkly sparkly minimalistic makeup that really amplified the theme of a backalley circus.

The next tier of excellence was, in my opinion, the onstage talent. I can't really differentiate between band members and performers, because both categories were astoundingly impressive. I'll start with the band, because B (and) comes before P (erformers).

John Averill was the sassiest and arguably most noticeble musician, simply 'cause lead vocals are sassy & noticeable. He outdid himself, delivering a musical experience that shook the walls. Screaming along beside him was a lead guitarist whose name I've forgotten, but that guy made my eyes bleed on at least 2 separate occasions. He wrenched sounds from his strings that were mindblowing. Heavy thunder was provided by a percussionist who reminds me of Animal from the Muppet Show, though he's not nearly as furry nor aggressive as Animal. He did, however, get pretty damn aggressive in complimenting and hitting on my girlfriend... which is awesome. I can't remember his name, either... I heard dozens of names at the shows and remembered remarkably few of them.

The keyboard player was Carl, which I found out several days after the show after talking with Creedence. He put the soul into the Beatles' music, and he got to rain down his music from a high vantage point atop the backstage stairs. I envied him his position, and I was awed by his skills.

I know two of the other musicians, so I'll call them out by name... but every single one of the band members was exquisite and I hate that I can't give adequate props to all of them individually.

Jason Wells played rythm guitar like a madman. He is the only person I've ever met, heard of, or been drenched by, who actually sweats more than I do. They had to install a special grate in the stage to handle the downpour that he produced while in the throes of musical orgasm. He played his frakkin' heart out up there and provided the pulse and rythm of the music that was produced.

I got a chance to take some verbal jabs at Robin before the show, as he was warming up his lips & fingers in the Hoth-like tunnels beneath the Bossinova. Alex and I were hanging around while he made sweet oral love to his tenor sax, and we were impressed and aroused by the talent he has for blowing into his closed fist. Onstage, Robin added his instrument's brassy roar, melding its voice into the amazing music that the NoWhere Band produced to wow us all.

It would've been a great show with only the band. But when the band combined with the performers... Ye Gods, I wish the Beatles could've seen this show. I believe that they would've loved it and felt honored by the tribute that was paid to them.

First in the lineup was Jasper Patterson. His role was perfectly suited to take advantage of a great number of the talents that he's a master of. He's one of the few people I know who can rival Noah at laying down high-quality, perfectly timed, impromptu bullshit. His patter is exquisite and he played the audience like an experienced whore plays a fresh young john. He really instilled the ambiance of the show in his introduction, and he kept cycling back throughout the night to keep the same spirit alive. I wanna work with him to perfect an extension while juggling; that'd kick serious ass. We did a juggling shoulder-stand, which probably looks pretty impressive but it's really a cakewalk. His sexy dress routine with Noah was perfectly executed and the crowd ate it up like courtesy 'shrooms.

The bulk of the show featured Noah & Creature stepping on Jasper's attempts to become a star. It played wonderfully.

My favorite part of every Hippodrome performance is Noah's brazen, "Laaaaaaadies and gentlemen!" It makes my heart pump and my pulse race, and it fires me up to raise the performance bar. As I listen to his off-the-cuff BS I have a tough time not grinning like the idjut I am; he is an amazing entertainer. He did his customary incredible job as MC and Ringmaster.

Nick da Creature brings his good ol' Texan ass-kickin' dread-wearin' personality into full bloom during shows like this one, and it's amazing to watch he and Noah play off of one another. Creature also managed the stage & set, and he did all that could be done to provide us with a safe & adequate performance space. I very much appreciate his efforts in that regard, in addition to admiring his talent as a performer.

If I had to say whether I was more impressed by Night Flight or the AWOL Dance collective, I'd probably gnaw off my own tongue. I'll group them together because they're all aerial performers, but they're very different and I'm a bastard for taking such liberties. These girls are, first and foremost, incredibly gorgeous. Lip-smackingly delectable. If I hadn't been newly in love with my wonderful girlfriend, I'd've drooled more than Jason Wells sweated. The ladies are picture-perfect even before costuming & makeup turns them into movie-stars. I'm not even gonna talk about their figures. That's something that must be seen to be believed.

Now that I've concluded the obligatory admiration for face & form, I'd like to move onto their real talent. They performed the most amazing & graceful aerial routines that I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of that stuff. They don't rely on sex to impress, which is something I'm often disappointed about when cute girls are showcasing tits & ass rather than demonstrating actual talent. But Night Flight & AWOL Dance take off from T&A as a baseline, climbing quickly into pure amazement. They hang suspended over the crowd, spinning and hanging and posing and smiling their 2-billion-watt smiles as they do things that human bodies aren't intended to do. And they make it look easy. Every person in the audience was riveted by the performances. It's not something that can really be described; if you want to see what's so amazing about Night Flight or AWOL Dance Collective, check out their websites and invest in an upcoming performance. It's so very worth watching!

The remaining performers were mostly solo acts, and I've had the honor and pleasure of working with & watching nearly all of them in the past. Rhys Thomas is a blast to be around and he's been performing longer than anyone I know with the possible exception of Leapin' Louie, who's been performing longer than dirt. They are so tight in their routines that they can take anything in stride and make it look planned. Their showmanship is exquisite as they juggle, balance, lasso, patter, and craft an amazing display that leaves the audience breathless and giddy. They're both a lot of fun backstage, as well, and I'm probably not going to renew the restraining order against Rhys 'cause he's kept his hands to himself for the last 2 or 3 performances, now.

I got to see the tail-end of DizzyHips' performance, where this slender & athletic guy uses an enormous tire as a hula-hoop. It was throwing him back & forth as he spun it and I got to see it from almost directly overhead, from the balcony - it was amazing. The crowd loved his routine.

I got to see a YouTube video of Cherry's flaming poi performance, but I can't find it now. I cannot fathom how she can keep those two spinning balls moving in such complex and contradictory patterns, without ever colliding or shaking. She's amazingly talented, she's heart-stoppingly beautiful, and her costume made her look like a magical nymph from another dimension as the flames darted past her like guided meteors. Her routine was breathtaking!

I'm worried that I'm forgetting performers. :( I didn't get to see some numbers 'cause I was backstage prepping for other stuff. I hope I didn't forget to describe any of the routines that I was lucky enough to actually see.

The venue itself really worked well for this event. The Bossanova is a big area, with ceilings that are almost adequate for Kazum's basket-tosses and double-stunts. That's rare for an indoor venue. Uli did get clocked in the back of the head by a ceiling fan while cradling from the Triple-Base extension during a pre-show run-through of Birthday. But she pulled herself together and we had a nearly flawless performance when it counted. The stage was wonderful, although it really sucked when we had to rechoreograph the day before the first performance because a 3-foot section of the corner had been replaced by a wall. That really cramped things. But the stage was sturdy and very nearly adequate for what we needed, and the ambiance of the Bossanova fit perfectly with the theme of the show.

Kazum's numbers came together really well. Russ choregraphed Piggies, and it's graceful and regal with some pretty impressive tricks in it despite the stately tempo. It's only 2 minutes but it's packed with amazing stuff that makes it seem longer than that. I've seen a video of Piggies on YouTube and it was really fun to watch. Miranda wasn't in it because her work/school schedule only allowed her to attend half of our practices. My favorite parts were the Juanita Barrel-Roll over the 3 guys' heads, the High Throne (aka Ass Catch) where Russ & Alex swing Uli into a toss up to a chair-like catch, and the Juanita Roll where Uli dives forward and swings under & back up. I don't think I've ever done a 3-guy-1-girl routine, and it really turned out amazingly well. I want to do more of them, now.

Birthday was our exciting, flamboyant routine. Uli choreographed it, and it came together beautifully with some wonderful musical cues that the NoWhere Band nailed perfectly every single time. Thank you, band! Birthday starts out with high-flying stuff in the background behind impressive shifting poses in the foreground, and it keeps the excitement high throughout the full 3 minutes of the song. Here's a shot of one of our opening poses. Some highlights include a Triple-Base extension that was a beast to solidify, Alex & Uli doing a dizzying Flying Squirrel, multiple Straddle-Over to chairs, a rock-solid Cupie with Miranda the super-stunter, a breathtaking Toe-Touch Basket Toss that could've been 5 feet higher if the venue's ceiling hadn't cramped our style, and a last-minute perfect-ending Double-Base Chinese Star with balloons in the girls' hands.

The whole show was exciting and amazing and more fun than I could've ever conceived of. I love the Kazum members very much and I hope that we can keep working together for years, always improving ourselves and upping the difficulty level of the routines we're capable of mastering. The Wanderlust folks are awesome and I love working with them.

Piggies

This is one of the acts we're performing for the White Album Christmas show, which is so far the most enjoyable and exciting Kazum performance I've had the pleasure of participating in.

This is the first act that Russ has choreographed, and I gotta say that our initial diagnosis of mental & social retardation has been drastically recanted. Dude has got mad skills when it comes to putting together a presentation. Not only is he mountainous in his raw strength and reliability and solidity as a base & spotter... but he dances like a fairy and I mean that in a good way.

Piggies, as any Beatles fan can attest, is a tongue-in-cheek, satirical, yet stately number in which the proud and affluent are mocked by the proud and destitute. Few people can muster as much disgust in others' pride as those who are replete with it themselves. :) When we were first assigned to Piggies, Russ led the complaint-brigade but we all bore arms. Now that he's had his cunning way with it, though... I really like Piggies a lot.

It starts with a grand entrance: the High Bow & Arrow that we plundered shamelessly from Juanita and the Ganjou brothers. I suspect that Uli would be upset at me for posting this (assuming I had more than one reader, at least) but I think that's silly; we took quite a few of our moves from Juanita & her boys (who performed in the 50s, by the way) and it's just plain silly to me to pretend otherwise. Anyway, it really only uses 2 bases and a flyer, though adding a 3rd base provides the illusion of a 4-person stunt. The flyer gets to pose in a really cool & striking pose while the bases walk about with her up there. We use their dismount, as well - a cradle to our left arms, followed by a barrel-roll overhead to a one-arm cradle on the right. We get pretty darn close to their height, too - it's one of our more impressive stunts.

Then we lean Uli out with the guys in a head-on line, and she spins in and I shoot back under Russ' legs just before Uli dives down to follow me in a "into the rabbit hole" kind of move. It took us forever to get that working; I couldn't hit the count just right and Uli was too scared of hitting me to dive on her count. But we've finally got it... if not smoothly, at least presentably. We rabbit-hole again, and then we are supposed to do our next halfway-impressive Juanita trick. We call it the Psycho Banshee move, which isn't particularly descriptive but still oddly apt. She does a flip-dive that ends up becoming a reverse gainer (a front flip that travels backwards). But after a surprisingly non-painful head-thump followed a few days later by a whiplash-style neck injury to Uli, we've replaced the Psycho Banshee with a simple straddle-lift to a high straddle. Ridiculously simple (assuming Uli keeps her hips tight, which she usually does) but remarkably impressive-looking. Many stunts are like that. And then there are ridiculously difficult stunts that are remarkably unimpressive-looking. But I digress.

I cradle the high straddle and Alex & Russ take Uli in a jump-rope hold. Lickety-split she shoots up into a mid-high back-arch (which I totally think we could do extended) where she kicks into a back walkover. I catch that and duck under her into a shoulder sit in a manuver that looks pretty cool but feels dreadfully awkward and clumsy while performing it. Then Uli leans back, usually while insisting that I hold her feet down, which it'd frankly be difficult for me to avoid doing. If we get our timing right she shoots back up as I pop and extend her, throwing her forward into a swan-dive to her stomache in Russ & Alex's arms. It's really fun to throw, and it looks most gorgeous as well.

Then they grab her in a chair-swing type of hold, give 'er one strong forward swing, and then huck her backward toward me as though throwing her into a throne that's 8 feet off the ground. The technical name we invented for this is the High Throne, but we invariably refer to it as the Ass Catch. I suggested Booty Call but Uli shot that down for some strange reason. It's probably the most impressive part of the Piggies routine and we reliably shine at it. But it's secretly dissapointing, because the Ganjou brothers toss Juanita easily 8-10 feet, perhaps 15 feet. It's hard to tell 'cause the camera pans heavily there. We've rarely made it even 5 feet, and Uli's form is nothing like Juanita's... though of course Juanita was pretty much the epitome of a perfect flier as far as physique and form, and the Ganjou brothers were ridiculously talented at what they did as well.

After the Ass Catch I drop down so that Alex can take Uli in an Arabesque (basically a back-arch held by hands in the small of the flyer's back.) It's pretty, but it's beastly difficult to transition correctly for all 3 participants, and we've all contributed difficulties to making it as quick as it needs to be. Then Alex extends the Arabesque up and we are supposed to transition into a High Triangle, which is an L-Base trick that we extended. But it's tough to do and often it collapses, so Russ generally just takes Uli's feet immediately and holds her in a stand.

I bend over toward Alex, who drapes himself over me, buries his nose in my crack, and holds on tightly as I stand back up. This lifts him (nose still firmly encracked) into an upside-down position so that Uli can lean forward into a derivative of another L-Base stunt called the Secretary. I pivot back down in a seesaw motion, turning Alex into a lever to lower Uli to the ground.

Then we're always a little behind so it's spin and crouch across from Russ to double-base Alex, where he leans over and grabs Uli up into a hanging swing while we all lip-synch "Everywhere there's lots of piggies, leading piggy lives. You can see them out to dinner with their piggy wives."

By then we've dismounted and grabbed Uli for my very favorite of all the Ganjou troupe's copied moves: the Juanita Roll. Russ and I lift Uli in a straddle-split, then pop her up & forward so that she rolls forward with her arms reaching down. We grasp her on the way down (missing both of our hands would result in one helluva crash) and swing her around and back up. The fun part is where we release her to fly totally free as we regrip to absorb her rotational momentum, then pop down and way back up & up & up... a cradle of basket-tossesque proportions. Superfun!

Then we reposition to repeat the exact same pose that we started with. Yay, big finish!

The whole routine is stately and serene, with an element of humor that is hopefully being captured. It desperately needs to be fine-tuned and perfected, but frankly we're still just barely even hitting the stunts reliably, so we're about as good as we can be until we've drilled the stuffing out of the number.