Guff politics

Yeah, whoever said that I can agree with it. I do get bored of just writing massive rants about staff moves and getting very little in return. I kinda thought that people would go away and learn masses of weird variations on them that I had never even considered and then tell me about them. But that never happened. Maybe they all just need more time.

Orbit: Sorry, dude, It's Arashi's bad influence on me.

Josh: Yeah, I quite liked that sentence, which summed up a really prejudiced view of australia for me. I know they're good spinners in australia dude! Look at knox and you and well maybe ben and probably a good hundred others! But blatent stereotypying is just such fun! Gotta say, I really liked your two videos. I think I actually prefered snakehandling just cos you don't often see such nice club swinging. You're style is nice cos it seems so meditative, and not exactly girly dude!

But even with non contact, traditional spinning, and throws and such. Nothing super technical seems to happen in other places. Simian has a super technical line of single staff non contact madness. I mean technical single staff non-contact, is that not an oxymoron? Well nope.

I sometimes wish I came from a dancey spinning culture. (But then I slap myselve and curse Arashi.) I'll get there eventually. But it might not be pretty along the way.

More so than not, I just want to know if people seem to agree that the idiocy of the british *TECHNICAL!* attitude is because of the links with juggling, links which seems to be not present in other countries. Or is it something else? I mean it's certainly not because we have strong links with baton twirlers, cos we don't.

Okay, this post wasn't so random. I won't let it go to my head.

I'm not saying technical is a bad thing. I'm saying ONLY technical is a bad idea. But not even that, only super smooth technical with some level changes and nice movement would be lovely, Standing still and expecting the staff movements to entertain alone is BAD.

Speaking of which. Dance. Dancing with a staff, or dance, where you happen to be holding a staff? COs I prefer the former.

This goes back to the old... is it boy, spinning fire, or fire, twirling around boy argument i used to have... with a wonderful gay friend over some very hot (and very decent!) spinners in our area.....

If you're hot enough, its "fire spinnning around", always, sorry But there will always be some subset of the audience who doesn't find you hot and thus can enjoy your show for what it is.

I think if you dance enough, same idea, its always going to be "dancing happening to hold a staff"

If you were asking which is better.... i prefer the former as well. But both can be good. whichever the person does better is prolly better for them to do...

I'm done with stupid tautologies for the day i hope....

Well I reckon what you need to to is...go travelling. Find a quiet beach someplace in Thailand or India, and get some perspective on what it is you are doing. Even if you dont see anything mindblowing in the way of twirling, you will probly see what you want out of it. I dunno - it works for me

Building opinions on differences between nations based on HOP learning and second hand information (even if what you think is pretty accurate), has less impact on your primary perspective I find.

And besides, even if you dont learn anything amazing in the way of twirling from other people, you will have an amazing time I reckon Go to Burning Man, come to Aus and do the twirling tour (but dont forget Adelaide like most do :P) go to New Zealand (not that I've been there - Im intending to tho).

Josh

I'm always gutted I don't get to go to burning man.

And I'm probably going to be double gutted when bluecat flys off to australia and america and does numerous uber workshops while I stay in scotland...

I have considered giving up my slack lifestyle to get a job just to earn enough money to go to australia... And I'd better do it sooner rather than later with the way oil shenanigans are going...

<pines>

Meg, I get the impression that you were (mostly?) joking in terms of the nationalistic one-up-man-ship slant to your post. Keeping in this spirit I'd like to throw in my two cents. IMHO staffing uberness is really simply a reflection of geopolitical winds and the short of the long is: look out for China.

The first post had me falling off my chair laughing meg. I know you were joking, but If I am supposed to become some sort of Arashi like beacon for staff technique then I can only think that something has gone very, very wrong in the world of staff

On a more serious note:

Written by: mcp

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I do get bored of just writing massive rants about staff moves and getting very little in return.

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How much did you learn by writing it all down in the fist place? Seems like it would be hard to write such a prodigal amount without quite a lot of ideas and connections being made in the ol' head. Could this tie back to an idea of enjoying the process or way rather then focusing on outside goals?

Written by: mcp

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More so than not, I just want to know if people seem to agree that the idiocy of the british *TECHNICAL!* attitude is because of the links with juggling, links which seems to be not present in other countries.

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I don't get out enough to speak for OZ, but I know this to be very untrue for brisvegas at least. I think the only difference is in the nature of the juggling scenes.
Speaking for myself, far from turning away from juggling, my play time is being consumed by it. I'd say the last few months have had about an 8:1 juggle/twirl ratio for me. While this might not reflect anything broader I felt the need to respond to madam's blatant sterotyping.

Man if you see the video of Faithless's release of insomnia, that has some scary (I assume chinese) formation stuff in it. I wann find the video that stuff came from...

Yeah, but you becoming arashi, it would be funny wouldn't it?

Yeah, I do notice things I'd missed before and make new ideas come out of writing things down, but that all requires thinking, something I'm trying to avoid, which is why people telling me moves seems so appealing.

I dunnoe though, I think my obsession with really hard technical moves has gone to sleep. This thread must be a wee obtituary for it. It seems the path laid out for me now, is making up cheese and funny dance moves with a stick.

On another note: I'm still trying to get away from the shadow of technical mastery the baton twirlers cast over us. Anyone else feel that way?

Sometimes I find it dispiriting that baton twirlers are extremely good at spinning, but have to do these competitions that force them to do very unelegant things. (In my opinion.) It other words "They use their powers for evil!"

I get the impression they're also quite good at finger spinning and throws.

exactly

girl stuff

See, I've discovered that the American brand of sarcasm, is like ours bit without the wink at the end to illustrate that it's not an insult, it's just sarcasm.

So in their form, they just insult you, or some other random group, and don't add any clues for you to guess that it's sarcasm and not an insult. Good eh! Much superior to our form.

I guess I've learned too much from arashi.

aha!
so thats where i've been going wrong.

hmm

I would be inclined to disagree, I much prefer the british, whom you can tell are insulting you (or not) without five years of personal knowledge or a large amount of blatent sterotyping.....

I agree about batons tho...

throws are not girly! you throw a [censored] heavy stick several stories in the air, and don't kill yourself with it thats not girly. thats manly, like all other methods of injuring oneself with blunt objects.....

O.O

*ck a duck....

Megs becoming american....

(Or I'm really [censored] tired. But I'm hoping its the first because that makes me a little less of an idiot. marginally. I clearly havn't hit myself in the head enough times yet today.)

Faithless vid HERE ...... WOW just watch it & it's amazing, mind blowing am in a state of shock...