Sexy Unicycle

I just got back from seeing the last preview of the new Cirque du Soleil show, Kooza.





OH. MY. GOD.





I don't even know where to begin. It was so amazing; words cannot describe the excitement and rush from that show. The technical aspects are stunning (come on, you knew I'd start there) and I went with a few other techie friends and we had fun dorking out together. We generally came to the conclusion that working for Cirque, while cool, would give us endless heart-attacks. And there is not enough money on this earth to make me a part of their rigging crew. Good God.

The acts were astounding. The clowns were funny and had some good running gags (literally). Lots of audience participation. There was a contortionist act where one of the girls Ran Around Her Own Head. As in, lying on her stomach, feet come up and over her head and run in Multiple Circles around her own head. There was a trapeze act to hard rock music. A high wire act where they had all sorts of shenanigans, including fencing and bicycle riding. And one of the guys nearly fell. And when I say nearly fell, I mean he was doing a trick involving jumping over another performer and didn't land on the wire right, slipped and caught the wire in his hands. He managed to swing himself back up onto the wire and finish the act. They re-tried the trick and he landed perfectly.

In the second act was the Wheel of Death (in my opinion aptly named), which opened the act. It was well-timed as one of my friends and I had just finished discussing the reasons neither of us want to ever be a part of the rigging crew. Way too many people's lives depend on getting it just right. Then, of course, Giant Metal Apparatus That Spins with two guys doing gravity-defying stunts comes flying in. I spent half their act watching them and the other watching the chains holding the structure up, praying the motors or whatever was holding them was functioning properly.

Oh, and I almost forgot the unicycle dance. Yes, the unicycle dance. Think pairs figure skating crossed with a tango and you get the unicycle dance. It was silly until the guy riding the unicycle started to use it to dance, in a very latin inspired fashion. Then it became rather, captivating.

My brain is still reeling from sensory overload. Shows like this remind me why I love doing what I do for a living. I think I want to run away and join the circus now.

101 Things to do with Gaff Tape

This one requires a little background. I'm currently assistant stage managing (ASMing) a children's show. In this show, they perform a flower dance where the actors are flowers having a midnight ball. The costumes for this piece are fake flowers that are coiled into crowns, necklaces, belts, and bracelets. The necklaces, actually, are plastic leis. The string of one of said leis decided to fail spectacularly last show, sending small plastic flowers EVERYWHERE.

Today the stage manager and I tried to fix said lei. Let us say that the first attempt was...not aesthetically pleasing. The second attempt was us taking one of the flower belts (which most of the actors had given up on) and attaching extra flowers to it using black gaff tape. It is slightly more aesthetically pleasing than attempt #1, but...

This one may need to immortalized in a picture.

Huzzah!

I now have internet in my new apartment! Yay!!!!!

But, of course, I have nothing else to say.

Hello World

Hello folks

This is the start of my new, and first ever, blog. I'm still getting used to this, so the format and styling are probably going to change a bit. Anyway.

A little bit about the title of the blog (which might change shortly, too). I'm a theatre electrician and lighting designer. That's my thing. Light is fascinating to me: its shape, color, texture, the way it moves, and most importantly, the lack of it in specific places also known as shadows.

I once was told, when I was a tap dancer, that the sounds we made were not important. It was the silence and the anticipation between the sounds that was. The silence was what we should play with, not the sound. To me, this is the same for lighting. As silence is to sound, shadow is to light.

That's all for now; I need some sleep.