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I have had some difficulty street performing this summer. Along with other factors,  suddenly everyone started ignoring contact juggling and all I could hear were whispers of this f-word. Then some got loud, “I saw that on TV!” an American tourist would exclaim in the middle of my show. “Fuh-Fuh….” they say

“nope, this is contact juggling” and I explain to them that they’ve been duped into thinking a ball can magically float as hand them a ball to try themselves. “This is a skill that I have taken 9 years to learn, it is not as easy as they make it out to be”.

I call it the F.ball with good reason.  The first offense was the misleading advertising, as it single handedly convinces the entire American public that contact juggling can be learned in an instant with one false advertisement. The second is the less-than-perfect manufacturing process can be proven with a few easy tests. The latest blow includes using a mock website with the registered trademark of Sphereplay  for their own commercial gain (which they have since taken down upon request). Ouch, that’s Low ZoomTV, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

I have begun an information campaign, simply trying to inform people about the problems with this product and this company, in a re-educational campaign about what contact juggling is really about.

Check out the videos, they are very revealing!

OMG ~ I am working so hard, with the rest of our committee,  to put together this awesome juggling festival for the Vancouver Peeps! It’s going to be an amazing weekend, I can’t wait!

Here’s the details

The MadSkillz Collective features some of Vancouver’s finest jugglers, hoopers, flow artists and ground-level circus misfits, who have banded together to develop and showcase their mad skillz! The first of its kind in Vancouver, The MadSkillz Juggling Festival (madskillzvancouver.com) has been developed to provide a forum for collaboration and cross-pollination, creating a new style of circus and performance art… not to mention juggling, spinning, flowing FUN!

What?
3 days of workshops (see below for a partial list… even more to come!), 2 Cabaret performances, a late night juggling party, games, prizes and some of the most eclectic skillz you have ever seen.

Why?
Didn’t your mother ever tell you to go out and play? It’s good for your brain, body, and being!

When?
June 11-13, 2010

Where?
VANCOUVER!
Friday– Juggling Jam, Workshops, and RENEGADE Show at the Wise Hall from 2pm-1:30am
Saturday – Workshops at UBC from 10-6; GALA showcase at the Rio Theatre at 7:30pm; Juggling PARTY till 3am at a surprise location.
Sunday – Workshops at UBC 10-2, then Games (with PRIZES!) until 5pm… then RAFFLE prizes will be drawn!

How?
Get yourself out there to improve your skillz, and mingle with the other circus freaks! Connect through the facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=184748874952
Or pre-register on the official website:
http://madskillzvancouver.com/

Cost?
Preregister for the WHOLE weekend (including ALL workshops, shows, jams and party times!) for $40 (at the door, $50).
$20 Day Passes and $25 Kids’ Passes (with adult admission) will also be available at the door.

OR, for only $15, just come see the amazing Gala Show on Saturday June 12th! Incredible performers in all sorts of circus disiplines are coming together for one night only! Featuring top notch performances from:
Bekka Rose (Vancouver, Canada) will feature Vancouver’s best club juggling talent with an artistic twist!
Giulio Lanzafame (Italy) will be honouring us with his brilliant balls/toss juggling routine.
Ryan Mellors and Dawn Monette (Vancouver, Canada) are excited to present the North West Coast’s best contact juggling duet piece!
Aaron Gregg (Victoria, Canada) is a hilarious Comedy Juggler who will make you laugh your face off!
MCP (Scotland) is one of the best Contact Staff Manipulators in the world!
Alley’Oop (Newfoundland, Canada) is a well traveled hoop performer who was a feature of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
Micheal Bean (Vancouver, Canada) will tie the whole show together as the M.C. for the evening.
PLUS MORE! This will be the most grandiose Juggling Show this town has EVER SEEN! Doors open at 7:30pm; get there early to get a good seat! After the show will be a SUPER FUN TIMES YEAH JUGGLING DANCE PARTY until 3am! Featuring SURPRISE DJs at a special surprise location, come and shake out your sillies and get your late-night juggle on!  All are welcome, but note that this a DRY event, please and thank you!

Speaking of grandiose shows, the Renegade Cabaret at the Wise Hall on Friday night is sure to be out of hand itself!  A Renegade show is an open mic-style stage for any and all jugglers who wish to participate. This show is 19+ (cash bar, yeah!) and will be a hilarious, ridiculous riot! Heckling is enthusiastically encouraged! Don’t miss out on the weirdest of the weird… come down and become part of the show!

And of course, 30+ WORKSHOPS all weekend long, from beginner level basics to ground-breaking next level skillz! Here are just some of the incredible workshops that will be presented by facilitators from across North America:
Beginner Horizontal/on body Hoop
Beginner Vertical/off body Hoop
Intermediate Poi-style Hoop
Intermediate Self tosses and Partner passing Vertical Hoop
3 ball Mills Mess Devil Sticks
“Getting Over The Hump” – Intermediate into Advance Contact Juggling Transition
Advanced Contact Juggling incorporating foot, leg, and body
Beginner Three Ball Juggling
Intro to Siteswap
Advanced Siteswap
Table Juggling
Building Blocks of Poi – steps to hybrid moves
Contact Staff Dance
Flow-wand
Beginning Double Staff
Beginning Partner Poi
Poi/ Double Staff Hybrids (Advanced Doubles)
Foot Juggling
Beginner Hoop
Advanced Hoop
Beginner Unicycle
Explorations in Fan Tech
Fan Spinning & Tossing
Partner Fans
Intermediate 3 Club Tricks
Beginner Contact Juggling
And MANY MORE to be announced!

So come on down, step right up, and join the circus!!

Check out the website or facebook for more details!
http://madskillzvancouver.com/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=184748874952

Photo by Jonathan Hanley

So I have some deep philosophies about the color green and have given a great amount of thought. Wikipedia says that the word is close to Old English, meaning, to grow.  In some ways the color of new growth is neon, and this bright new color is my favorite, the green of choice.  In Vancouver, you have to appreciate this to get through the rainiest days. If you understand the correlation of the green of this new spring growth with the rain that supplies this growth then you can appreciate how this land really is all about new growth.

I’ve learned a new word, the word Solastalgia . This word is connected to nostalgia and refers to the missing of one’s land that has changed environmentally from some destruction. It is this missing of the green lands which once filled our back yards, but have eroded due to climate change, or pollution or simple destruction of peoples presence. I wear green so often because of this solastalgia. When I look out my windows and see concrete for miles lining the shores I miss the great trees that should be here. This is a tree friendly city and I still miss the green.

I dream of a day where the rooftops are built to be strong enough for gardens and trees. I hope we grow food on each balcony. I wish that this whole city could live under the canopy of trees that once lived in this place, in the not so distant past.

My friend Carmen once said to me “if we all chose to move out to the country side, then the country side will soon become a city”.  In this I agree and realize that I cannot stay in the lush green all the time the way I would like to, if I would like to get what I need to do done, I have to stay here and encourage the city to become more green.

Right now, I stand out in a crowd, because I took this new growth of the trees that were once here and I attempt to replant this idea simply by embodying this color. When people ask, I find it is difficult to explain, that I represent what was once here before the gray sidewalk,  new growth.

One seed is all it takes

I dream one day you will join me.

To fulfill this goal more thoroughly, I have decided to join the Green Peace team as a street canvasser.  I need a bit more money for school than performance is giving me, although I believe performance is picking up quick, I think I can balance both.

3 balls in the air -  school, work and juggling performances. This will be the biggest thing I have ever juggled.

Give’r

I bought stilts last summer and have been practicing on them for a almost 9 months now. I feel like I can go out into the world with them and show everyone how super tall I am, YAY! The hope is to be able to juggle, contact juggle, spin fire and do everything except unicycle on top of stilts, making all of my shows have double the impact!

I also bought some fabric to make my first pair of basic stilt trousers and I am looking for materials to cover the feet like shoes. I think it is important to the whole character to have full feet, giving the audience relief to their suspension of disbelief!

Here we go folks, I can now stilt walk on 2 ft stilts for your parties (soon to be 4ft as these are adjustable)! The hope is that I can do almost all my juggling, high up in the air! WEE!

Great shows for Grey Days

And the crowd goes wild!

Thanks to the person who recommended my website, I’ve gotten an extra gig for TV! The momentum has really come in my juggling world, it seems I am surrounded by it at home, work and amongst my friends! It’s really awesome to be immersed in this wonderful culture! It really allows me to improvise my skills from event to event, working with diverse crews of people who all have different skills. I am so grateful that I get to be amongst such inspiring and humbling people in my life. Thank you to all of you!

I busked hard this week and it is fulfilling, inspiring, humbling and personally creates so much magic. Contact juggilng gives me reason to talk to so many strangers of different ilk, of all ages and class, ethnicity and origins. I get to hear so many stories of what my lucid ball brings out in them. “Is that made of electricity?” a little boy asks, a cute little girl demands more “tricksies” to which only my most difficult moves can impress the 5 year old, then business men tell me that it’s pure magic when I do a palm circle.

It’s exhausting, and although I do have many photos taken of me, I have none to show. I have been on the beach for the past 4 days, working as hard as I can – but I know I could push harder. I stretch before I leave, and in my breaks. I bath and stretch when I get home, but my back still feels like it wants to seize sometimes. Ryan has been giving massages ~ I am so grateful for them.

Although I am always juggling, school gets in the way most days and now this is back to training. I am out of shape in my training regimen, but it gets better with time. My body rolls feel flowy like and isolation after 5 days on the street, and I can head roll the 4′ acrylic now. My shoulder is still in pain at times, even after 6 weeks break and I’ll be honest when I say I am glad it’s raining today. I need the day off to get my life in order, my body rested and my mind together as I prepare.

Busking is a strange and lonely job, yet it puts me into this meditative state. The world glows after a day of training my bliss, sharing it with anyone who’s around to see, get paid a wage I could live off of. It becomes a state where my thoughts form in poetics, where the world feels perfect.

This was the first video I ever made. Ryan said to me, after the first date, that he wanted a juggling story, something someone would tell in a video. As I fell for him in the 9 months that passed between our first and second date, I practiced my juggling hard. I practiced everything I could and couldn’t do. This is where my behind the neck ideas were inspired. I tried to show Ryan I could do a behind the neck roll at the juggling festival, yet I had one of those “can’t do it when you’re looking” moments. Something I know I can do, but when I have a really cute boy looking at me, the nerves wreck the idea and make me look like a fool. Thinking about the christmas video I wanted to make for .org, I considered Ryan’s idea of telling a story, and the obvious story I had to tell was – obsessive compulsive contact juggling disorder.

Obsessive Compulsive Contact Juggling Disorder

OCCJD2 the padded cell

OCCJD-ED

Ryan and I have finished the our workshop series. Watch this in high quality, please.

Its really exciting to have completed this project. I was in disbelief at the endeavor the whole time & still am. I will be honest when I say this was a fascinating journey. Everyone should play tourist in their own country. Exploring contact juggling in such depth was really beautiful for me, and I am so happy I got to share that with Ryan.

We are planning a new project to share our workshop and our new exploration of objects on a 40 min down loadable DVD. We are hoping to charge a bit of cash to supplement our funding for the whole project, and anything leftover will be funding the newer projects Ryan and I will be working on long term – like a full 40 minute show.

Tell me what you think, guys!

Contact Juggling in Canada: British Columbia

Contact Juggling in Canada: Alberta

Contact Juggling in Canada: Saskatchewan

Contact Juggling in Canada: Manitoba

Contact Juggling in Canada : Ontario

Contact Juggling in Canada: Montreal 1

Contact Juggling in Canada: Montreal 2

Contact Juggling in Canada: Toronto

I bought it October 2004. I actually lost it last August 2006 in England, but there was still hope of her returning home. Ryan had found it when I called to check back then, but the news returned only recently that she was totally gone.

My mom had given me the money as a birthday present. The ball was a poly-carb, so she was slightly gray. I played with her everywhere. She was heavy, and upon dropping her on the hardwood floors of my old apartment would jolt the neighbors. My neighbor’s here, The Skylight Restaurant, told me to play after hours (7pm-8am) with her. Apparently, it sounds like thunder if she drops. She’d been cracked 1/2″ deep in three places from Busking over cement. I loved her all the more for it.

Ryan came home without it last time, and before the Hangers closing, he went back there and still could not find it. I whined a little about he loss but shrugged it off “its only a ball”. I have been wondering why I am having trouble getting myself out there to busk this year. I don’t have my ball anymore – and it was my favorite and most appropriate prop. I had been doing body rolls with her for two years, I knew it – I could do nearly everything I could do with a stage ball, and more… I could even get some down the leg roll kick-ups with this acrylic! Acrylics are part of the draw and these 3″ things just won’t do!

Last night I dreamt all night about that ball, that I was chasing it and looking for it, and trying to find a new 4″ that I wasn’t afraid to drop. Her character (the scratches) allowed me a freedom with it that I wasn’t afraid to really move with her. We could dance so openly – she was my favorite busking partner.

As I sit on my new/used couch, that I got for free this weekend from craigslist, I think about why online social networking is so important to me. With the new site www.facebook.com I hear many friends and peers talk about why it’s a “waste of time”, and I have to ask myself, am I really just wasting my time here? I can’t imagine it to be the case, mainly, because I have found so many like-minded people through online forums, and bonded deeply with them.

Years ago, after raving and finding parties through Hullabaloo someone mentioned to me about the Om festival at a party, and I asked in a forum where I could find information about this magical festival, that I heard about for 2 hours in a stairwell of the BigBop. A user named Gollum posted a link to the Om website, and I joined the Om list. All of a sudden, I’d get 100 emails a day in my inbox, all about interesting philosophy, open hearted approaches to situations and invites to potlucks. Omies are the first crew of online socialites that I knew, and it wasn’t long before I dubbed them all my crew, broke off with my boyfriend and claimed to have found something incredible. I had invited the whole list to my cottage within a month, and they all showed up with sound gear, decks, computers and visuals. What a party and they were all so damn creative too!

We had years of good parties, and I learned a lot from everyone – it changed me from inside out, and everyone was so open, searching for truth, and accepting of most people who would come in and get involved. Om gave me a reason to be creative again – unlike the office – and when Davy came home from England I began juggling again too! This is where contact and poi became a new found obsession (little did I know)…

After years of good times in real life and online with all these folks, I moved to BC and was told to go to www.tribalharmonix.org, where I met a network of the same sort of folk, all whom seemed connected to the crew in Toronto. Through these networks I got a job the day I arrived in Vancouver, Yogi’s Vegetarian Indian Restaurant, where I still work. I looked up places to live in “Shelter and Spaces” there, and found a home in the Freakbox for 2 years. Those Freakbox years were amazing, and deeply integrated me into Vancouver quickly. Jessica my upstairs neighbour even said at a party a month after I was there “Wow, you already know more people than I do”…

Davy had also mentioned a website that I started to browse called contactjuggling.org, where I began to watch video clips (through my 56k modem) of contact juggling. I learned through this website everything I knew about contact because I knew of no one doing this anywhere around me. I made a post introducing myself, and Ryan answered, mistaking me for another Dawn he knew from the Vancouver area. He was living in London and added me to his MSN, and when he came back to Canada to renew his Visa, we met at a small juggling gathering I was trying to put together. We decided to travel together to the Victoria juggling festival, and that’s where I fell for him. We had 1 date before he moved back to London, but kept in contact through MSN and email… along with dozens of hand-written letters.

I began to save money to travel to England – he beat me to it and came back for a visit, but by then I was determined to go to England and Europe. Ryan went back to the Hanger and put me up for a lot of the time. This is where I began to meet everyone I had learned contact juggling from through internet video years previous…

Now Ryan lives with me, and we laugh because of our balls all over the house, and how that all seems right. Many Omies moved to Vancouver also, and they are still the closest friends I’ve got. Tribal Harmonix people continuously are creating events and actions which are creative and progressive and that I love taking part in (when school doesn’t take all my time). My apartment, my roommates, the fact that I go to school and juggle, my furniture and the people I am interested in all come together through a thread of internet networkings by one or two degrees. This thing has infiltrated my life, and people call it a waste of time?