I saw this video a week ago and since then it’s gone viral and for good reason: Selyna Bogino is an incredibly talented performer. She’s got her own YouTube channel where you’ll find this one:

And this one where she’s just messing around learning a new routine:

[via wimp.com]

Circus is a new six-hour series that takes you on an unforgettable trip with the legendary Big Apple Circus. From the big top to the “back lot,” explore a distinctive world with its own rules, lingo and no fixed address. Follow the diverse characters who make up the Big Apple family and find out what it really means to live life in the ring.

I first posted this in 2010: This recently aired on PBS, we missed it but we can all watch it in one hour segments online. I just finished the first hour and it’s fantastic. This is great behind the scenes footage of amazing performers and producers and circus culture.

Update: We’ve now watched all six 1 hour segments of this show using Netflix and while not perfect it’s quite good. You can watch the segments on the PBS site: here or you can get DVDs or watch it streaming on Netflix here. We watched it streaming with AppleTV.

What’s great about this “docudrama” is the behind the scenes stories of performers, management, and tent riggers. What makes The Big Apple Circus great is that it’s somewhere between street performing and Cirque du Soleil, meaning, it’s well produced but it’s a one ring circus, not a Las Vegas act. The performers are real human beings and we get to see both the behind the scenes and the polished performance.

The Big Apple Circus maintains a “wikipedia-like” site called Circopedia. I found some highlight videos of Sarah Schwarz doing her tight wire act and the LaSalle Brothers doing their juggling act. There’s plenty more video up there so poke around.

Lots of great juggling routines on YouTube but these stand out: they have the least obnoxious music, they use glow balls which put the juggling up front, the juggler behind, and he’s exceptionally good at both the tricks and the choreography.

And another one:

And another:

I can juggle three balls and I can do a few tricks so I have an appreciation for what Peter is doing, sort of. His juggling is fantastic but the footwork takes it to another level. Wow.

I used to juggle a bit so appreciate what it takes to get through an entire song doing complex moves without making a single mistake, in front of a huge audience just waiting for you to drop. This guy not only does it but does it with incredible style.

Source: Michael Williams

I’ve never had the nerve to ask him about juggling (something I do from time to time) but then, he’s not really a juggler in the traditional sense, or, he’s gone so far beyond juggling that juggling three balls (which he did magnificently in this performance) is not the place I want to make contact about.

What he’s done (and he received a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Award for it) is to take the control of objects to a place far beyond what most people could imagine. He’s combined skill and imagination in a way that makes the result go far beyond “mere” juggling all the way to art, in the best sense of the word.

Between his “pieces” he’d come on stage and talk with the audience about juggling, dance, practice, kinesthesia, and more. He had us do a few participation exercises and one of them caught my attention because I play drums, and also because I think it’s a great kinesthetic exercise. Michael was trying to give us an idea of what jugglers (and drum set drummers) experience when they do different things with each hand (and foot).
Here’s the exercise:

Point your left hand out in front of you. Take your pointer finger and slowly and carefully draw a square in the air, counting as you go:

1-down 2-right 3-up 4-left

Practice this for a bit until you get it. Now let’s change the count, simply repeating the square 3 times for a total of 12, counting all the way up to 12:

1-down 2-right 3-up 4-left 5-down 6-right 7-up 8-left 9-down 10-right 11-up 12-left

Great, so we just did some math: turned 4 into 12 by multiplying it by 3.

Now things get interesting. First, shake your hands out (and your brain) and check out Michael juggling inside a triangle. He had multiple balls going all over the place in the triangle, making fantastic rhythms at the same time he was tapping his feet in another count. Okay, back to work for us…

With your right hand, with the same slow movement draw a triangle like so:

1-down 2-right 3-up and left (the hypotenuse)

Practice the triangle for a bit with your right hand, then change the count, repeating the triangle 4 times for a total of 12:

1-down 2-right 3-hypotenuse 4-down 5-right 6-hypotenuse 7-down 8-right 9-hypotenuse 10-down 11-right 12-hypotenuse

More math: we turned 3 into 12 by multiplying it by 4.

I swear if you can do these two in isolation you’ve achieved something but of course, Michael went further and took us where he wanted to go. The idea is to combine these with the count being constant, like this:

1: left hand down, right hand down
2: left hand left, right hand right
3: left hand up, right hand hypotenuse
4: left hand right, right hand down
5: left hand down, right hand right
6: left hand left, right hand hypotenuse

(at this point because the entire thing repeats I’ll just copy and paste and change the count)

7: left hand down, right hand down
8: left hand left, right hand right
9: left hand up, right hand hypotenuse
10: left hand right, right hand down
11: left hand down, right hand right
12: left hand left, right hand hypotenuse

As an audience, we struggled with it and I’m going to work on it from time to time for fun. Michael, not really showing off, did it so fast and crisply (he’s a mime so of course) that it took my breath away.

Let me know if you try this and what you think, it’s hard at first but as you do it more it gets easier. Have fun.