Mini convention review for Ballring Juggling Convention 2015
This Saturday the 28th February 2015 was the Ballring Juggling Convention held at the University of Birmingham (UK).
We had an early start, collected Jay on route and arrived at the convention in good time, mainly due to Jay’s knowledge of the Birmingham road network. If I had relied solely on my sat nav it could have all gone horribly wrong.
I Liked:
Club passing with the main man, Lewis Kennedy.
Seeing a seven ball neck catch on a unicycle. Who was that guy?
Passing Chopabout with Ben and Lewis and Dan before the show.
The show! It was short and sweet, but the acts were great. I enjoyed Matthew Green being himself and enjoying being on stage, I always enjoy it when Stumpy comperes (although I thought he was better at Lestival a couple of years ago) and I feel the audience let him down a bit, Mike was great and I enjoyed his more relaxed music ;-), Tom performed his lovely singing in the rain routine, Fred performed her club routine which was super smooth, Lisa performed her hula hoop routine, very techy hooping (I thought she was much better this time then at Bath JC).
The star of the show was Alexis Levillon! Alexis performed a jaw dropping diabolo routine entitled ‘Infinity’. It was astounding. It has been a long time since I saw a routine anything like it. It was first class. (I was delighted to find out that anyone who missed it at Ballring might get a second chance to see it at the BJC this year.)
The after show curry. I thought that the quality of the food was good and it was great that we could order anything off from the menu with our curry tickets.
Disliked
My big major number one dislike of the convention: Hecklers during the show [1].
The room. Every year the Ballring convention gets more popular (and rightly so) but that means the room is getting smaller each year. For the first time the room felt much to small this year. It felt a bit like the London Convention in this respect (although if people bumped into you they apologised, unlike at the London convention...)
The curry house was full to bursting point and it was very loud. Good food and company, but we were pretty exhausted afterwards and also feeling a bit head achy.
All in all we had a great time at The Ballring Juggling Convention and we very much look forward to coming again next year! Thank you to the Ballring organising team! :-)
This is the ranting section, sorry.
[1] Hecklers: The people sat behind us during the show were obnoxious and rude. They had either smoked something wacky or were drunk. They heckled acts during the show and spoilt it for us. They also spoilt Alexis’s routine for him (and his experience of performing for us) as his drops were due to their shouting. When will people realise that heckling acts during a show is rarely funny? Some acts invite heckles as their routine interacts with the audience and is meant to be funny, these have been my best recollections of some genuinely funny heckles. However, just yelling stuff in the middle of performer’s routines is not funny and is rude and disrespectful to the acts. IMO. Rant over. Sorry.
#conventionreview
The audience in the Birmingham convention shows has been a disappointment for the last couple of years. The heckling isn't enjoyable but neither was the whoop whoop whoop from the people behind us last year and especially not the strange purring noises this year. Some of the other comments from the people behind us aren't worth dignifying with more attention.
For a short and rushed show I found the level of skill and variety was excellent. Alexis's diabolo routine was definitely mindblowing but I felt that Stumpy bigging him up before he went on actually took away from it especially as his one diabolo stuff was nothing special. Tom's routine is always classy. Fred shows more stage presence each time I see and Mr Green was his normal unique self. I really enjoyed the spinning ball routine but felt that the five clubs on a rola bola as a finish should have been left out as it didn't fit in with anything else.This was the first time I have seen Lisa's hula hoop routine and I thought that it showed great technical skills. However there was a lot of repetition (ok at the start it was because she messed up a trick twice) especially at the end where the one hoop stuff felt like it was there to get to the end of the music track. The other thing was the whole routine felt like it was a derivative Gale Francis routine and if I want to watch Gales routine then I'd prefer to see Gale do it.
Unfortunately I didn't see the 7 ball to neck catch on a unicycle but I did see some pretty impressive stuff. Much of that was by people I already know or those who would later be in the show but Taiyo Kishi was particularly impressive (and yes I have booked him for MKJC). The second half of my day was spent in the underground room which was roomier and had the Milton Keynes jugglers in it. There was also an extremely good freestyle german unicycle lady who was particularly impressive with her one footed standing glides (I didn't get her name but she had the green unicycle).
Nigel
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