multi prop pros and cons...

just got thinking after a post of Sui's over on tribe...

why do i do so many different things? and what benefits do i get from it, and what negative aspects are there...

background info:

i spin poi, staff, juggle (5 clubs, 7 balls, neither particularly solidly at the mo), contact juggle, balance, and talk shite, all to performance level. i also do a load of other things to an ok level - hackysack, trombone (though i do get paid for that too....) bits of hula, devilstick, diabolo (learning 2), capoeira...

now there are some really obvious benefits to doing so much. but why aren't i like on of those sensible people who dedicates time and becomes really good at just one two things?? take ronan, for example. he can contact juggle, but have you ever seen him pick up anything that wasn't a contact ball, a poi or two, or a spliff? no. and look where that has got him.

the reason i do so much stuff has to be partly nature, partly nurture. firstly, i have and had no television growing up. and my family is very artistic, so i was forced (not in a bad way) to find ways of amusing myself, and doing physical stuff.

thing 2: it took e until i was 16 to get any kind of sticking power - most school stuff was too easy (sounds bigheaded, sorry, but its not meant like that - there're plenty of things i'm crap at, but the scottish school system is not on eof them) so i never had to work hard at anything. I learnt to juggle when i was 12, but my brother was better than me so i didn't do anything about it until i was 20. D'oh!. anyway, the point of that is that when i did get it, i got it with a vengeance - if you could do it well, i was going to do it as well as i could.

thing3: i like patterns. and limiting yourself to just one prop means soooo many patterns are left untouched! ubbcrying

i couldn't let that happen.

4 - i juggled first. for most people this would exclude them from developing the spinning gene ubblol

but thanks to thing 3, i not only wanted to learn them, i wanted to learn them ALL, but with the same analytical mindset that jugglers have.

5 - i hang out at conventions a lot, with a lot of people, and perform a lot, with whatever people want. i quickly realised that hanging out was more fun if you could swap tricks, whatever pprop, earning money performing was much easier if you could say "door frame balancing? sure, i have a 4 minute routine with a door frame smile

"

so, there you have it....

the pros?

well, first and foremost, i must know thousands of manipulators accross the world accross many traditional prop boundaries. ubblove

the money earned through having the variety is nice - my door frame act is now my biggest seller. wink

the ability to cross over toys and tricks and movements. yum - i must have borrowed thousands upon thousands of tricks accross from one prop to another - big suns into poi, antispin into diabolo, hybrids into clubswinging, swinging into juggling, balances fromcontact into everythings... wow.

the lack of boredom - if its just not my day with poi; well, there's always something else. biggrin

the negatives... frown

hmmm. surprisingly large number here:

i have to carry a huge amount of props anywhere i go, just to make sure i have the one that works for me right now

I sometimes spend a whole day flitting between props, never settling into one, never connecting with the people at a meet because i'm just leaping about from contact to juggling to poi and so on. this is really crap when it happens...

i feel left behind. i'll never be a world class juggler, so its ok there, but i like to think i can spin ok redface

so when i turn up at a meet and i've been spinning stick for 3 months, and everyone is doing mad dancy poi hybrids with one head making an infinity and the other an inverted trifoil i feel a bit silly. and usually do some negative space to make myself feel better ubblol

equally i feel the same about staff when i spend a lot of time on poi. and then within a prop itself - i've been juggling staffs and making tasty patterns, but i can't do ANY complicated 1 staff contact any more. ARGH!!!!! this is good for my ego, but not for my sense of encyclopaedia or general skillz...

just as i feel i'm getting good at something i get switched on to something else - either through boredom, or more usually through inspiration. this happens even more so when i'm performing a prop heavily. can be exceptionally frustrating. especially when it links back to the previous negative...

some people are singleprop friends only. so if i'm at a convention, and i happen to be mostly juggling, i tend not to see a lot of the people i'd like to because they are all in a corner geeking out over trammels. not that i don't talk to them, just that i spend less time than i would like with them, cause my motor sense has gone juggling.

i'm sure i could think of more, but i want to leave it open for others to as well.

Single proppers - are you happy? why haven't you been tempted by other props? do you find it helps keep focus? anything i should know about? tongue

multi proppers - do you regret/love it? why. why did you start progressing through props. what benefits/negatives would you draw from spreading your load, as it were? wink

smiles

Rob

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