Victoria
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Post by Victoria on Jun 24, 2007 18:08:31 GMT -5
I'm making a new thread out of this so it's easier to work with. Here's the background chatter: Witness the rise of the New Circus in the American Youth Scene! Whoop! they're popping up all over! colleges have long had little juggling groups, but now loads are discovering the movement/theater/juggling/sideshow/fire/aerials/bending-the-bounds-of-the-possible wonderment that is the new circus movement. i think that, seriously, we should organise a festival or con or at least a website. aybody feel like tackling that with me sometime? maybe next winter break/jan term would be a good time to send out emails, research and recruit... plus: *I heard just before school ended from someone who's living locally but used to go to Bard (her name's Mary) that Bard also has a circus, a sort of skillshare/performance thing like we do. *and I met a firespinner in New Orleans from a Conneticut college with a fire-spinning group called Prometheus. I think a festival is a great idea. Luckily , alot of these troupes are somewhat nearby. A performance festival would be great and possibly a conference featuring multiple forums. This is the next generation of circus and we are the pioneers. wow, lameguage on my part...but dude. this thread makes me so excited! first: if other people are down for a conference thing, then i will definitely commit to organizing it, 'cause i wanna see it happen. this thread makes me so excited! first: if other people are down for a conference thing, then i will definitely commit to organizing it, 'cause i wanna see it happen. |
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Victoria
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Post by Victoria on Jun 24, 2007 18:14:17 GMT -5
Right! So I really wanna see this happen. I was thinking of where we could hold it...maybe the RCC? We could ask Hampshire to host it and ask to borrow lounges like for the reproductive rights conference. Or UMass? I realize we do need to have an idea of how many people are showing up, first.
As to when: while talking it over with the other two here, they said Oct. break would be best...though it doesn't give us much time to plan. Also, I'm not sure how many other schools line up with our break. Though if we made sure we covered one or two long weekends, then maybe. As mentioned before though, January might be good.
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Post by tarapeze on Jun 24, 2007 22:44:10 GMT -5
yes, yes!
1) ocotober break's a good idea, but doesn't the college officially close, kick us out of dorms, etc? 2) RCC is the perfect venue... multiple workshops, high ceilings, set it up for performances!! also, it shouldn't be too long, just because of the difficulty of putting people up.. three days, a long weekend sounds good. concentrating on featuring performances & skillshares (enormous playtimes! woot!) and
3) panels, like sarah said - circus history, circus careers, circus for social change, amateur circus, circus with/for kids, circus as art, physical theater, dance, other influences... oh, so exciting!
and lots of general socializing and meeting of the freaks, &tc.
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sarahonfire
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Post by sarahonfire on Jun 24, 2007 22:55:31 GMT -5
Sounds kinda like Wildfire, but for college students in all circus skills.
I don't think the college closes for October break, and I know for sure we're not kicked out of rooms. I think SAGA is closed, and the RCC may have limited hours, but we might be able to get that changed...
We should talk to COCA about this, as soon as possible.
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jfunk
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Post by jfunk on Jun 25, 2007 3:01:15 GMT -5
sooner the better so it doesn't overlap with touring efforts.
Also, Kalamazoo College has a circus and one of the fire spinners is sitting right next to me and shes is interested... so yeah.
another school for the list. Though michigan is far away. How big do we want this?
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Victoria
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Post by Victoria on Jun 25, 2007 3:11:33 GMT -5
Kalamazoo's real? I thought it was invented for nursery rhymes...
Kay so things we'd need to do that I can think of (I, who have never attempted to plan anything with Hampshire before):
Talk to Hampshire about hosting where/when/how
Try and figure out a bit of a plan for how we'd do it...maybe massive playtimes with (for example) a focus on poi at noon, staff at 3, juggling at 5, acro/partnering blah blah blah the next day...if it's a weekend, a midnight Saturday burn?! Light Amherst Commons on fire..muahaha.
Insurance? Yeugh, that's a process that'd be gross.
Talk to the circuses we know and get them in on it
Try and contact a helluva lot of schools to see if they have any under-the-radar circuses
Network our faces off
Yeah, Sarah, I guess we are trying to make it a sorta Wildfire-esque thing...which I think is awesome! Plus, it's great for other colleges to see who/what is out there, get ideas, share tricks, and so on. I think it could really go over well...or at least, I don't see how it couldn't.
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sarahonfire
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Post by sarahonfire on Jun 25, 2007 14:15:51 GMT -5
I think the Wildfire system of classes is really good... there's like, 3-4 classes during a certain timeslot, taught by aweXome teachers (volunteers from various circuses!) and there are like, 4 timeslots during the day. It might be a good idea to do something like that so that there're classes for people who say, don't do poi or don't do staff or whatever.
Alternatively, we could do it your (Victoria's) way, and direct people who aren't interested in the specific playtime could just shuffle over and play with each other in whatever way they want.
I dunno... sounds cool though!
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trampsarah
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Post by trampsarah on Jun 26, 2007 13:33:46 GMT -5
I love this whole idea. I think the most purposeful way is to divide the initiatives up:
1. For a general skill share, playing festival like wildfire seems to be less time consuming
2. For the mode of thought portion, It would be a stretch to realistically put together things like presentations by October. But yea know what, I just changed my mind...we can do anything. The only thing is it might be hard for the other colleges to organize enough to get to Hampshire by THIS October, like we'd have to start sending out invites and pamplets now and stuff. What about Spring Break? Or any other break that all colleges across the country have.
I would love love love to help organize this and do research for it as well. My career will hopefully be something along the lines of City Arts Councler, so i'd like as much experience as possible. Heck this could even turn into an independent study.
I'm sure the people who know me are tired of the "When I was at Circomedia..." line but the reason I keep bringing it up is because over there, they've already accomplished much of what we as youths are trying to do in the states. Of course its so different in the USA, but I would like to share what i've learned and act as an ambassador of sorts.
In Bristol, as part of my failed independent study, I attended the UK New Circus Conference, which featured every circus from the UK involved in challenging the notion of what Circus is. I met so many types of people, from performers to local government. It was dual part like we are hinting at in that they had a couple of locations...one of performances and one for conference. Of course, ours as students would be better in that we coul feature organized play that could perhaps lead to a culmination of skill share and maybe even improv performances with other kids from the other colleges. This all could just be under the "Play" part of it.
Nextily, I think if possible, we need to invite to necessary stakeholders and professionals that we will, as grassroots organizations, have to work with as we rise the ranks. An example could be maybe a performer, venue owner or grantwriter, whatever issues we feel are important. For example..in the forum, discussion and research portion, like Tara said, we'd have a variety of issues we want to talk about and get a discussion going about. Someone would have to record all that is said and eventually we will type up notes and distribute the materials to all who is at the festival, just like at any informative conference.
Sound like a good idea?
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Post by tarapeze on Jun 26, 2007 16:56:31 GMT -5
that sounds amazing. i think October really might be too soon, too. especially as as a group we'll be working on the Hampshrie Halloween fireshow and the Halloween show.
i think we could schedule things so that:
*mornings there are panels and more 'academic' workshops/classes, with guest speakers like the ones Sarah A was describing
*afternoons there are skills classes like the ones Sarah W described and semi-organized/themed playtimes like Victoria described
*evenings there are time slots for different groups to performs prepared acts/shows and maybe even an 'open mic' type performance the last day for people who've been playing the whole time to show what they've put together, or for free-style/improv
the major logistics would be around housing & feeding people (though, obviously we have no idea how many would be attending at this point). and parking, etc. here's an idea: use the whole RCC floor as a campground. that would be cheap and fit a bunch of people, though probably not everyone. overspill could be invited into lounges and mods, like Bread & Puppet and the CLIP conference. overspill from that (people who register late) will just have to get motel rooms.
finally, insurance for fire-spinners, acrobats, and aerialists would be a key point, obviously!
AND: fundraising. we should charge admission, but try to keep it seriously affordable, like $25/person, 'cause then they will all need to pay travel expenses and possibly hotels too. so, besides college sources (COCA, etc.) who can we ask? sponsors?
keeping things pretty centralized to the RCC would be good, though it would involve a lot of set-up/breakdown, or at least a lot of spatial planning (one half workshops while stage is set up in the second half). though for traffic and crowding reasons, we should probably have stuff going on in another place - the South Lounge, perhaps?
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Victoria
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Co-overseer of everything.
Posts: 284
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Post by Victoria on Jun 26, 2007 17:03:33 GMT -5
Depending of course on how many people attend, I feel like having people live and play in the RCC could get a bit squishy, though I don't really have any alternative ideas. It really would depend on how many people come, I suppose.
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Post by tarapeze on Jun 27, 2007 15:47:23 GMT -5
so i want to call it the Student Circus Resurgence Convention, pronounced 'surk' (cirque!)
hooray for acronyms.
and here's a little statement i wrote up to help us start asking for money, telling people about it, &tc:
The Student Circus Resurgence Conference 2007 will bring together the next generation of American circus creators, performers, and enthusiasts for a three-day event featuring panels, workshops, skills classes, open practices, and performances. This conference aims to introduce students of both the circus arts and the liberal arts from across the country to each other in order to encourage discussion of the current youth circus movement, to fuel creative collaborations and partnerships, and to inspire and evoke new ideas in the field of this quickly growing performance art.
I know those are two very long sentences. Feel free to edit & expand.
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Post by Blue Hair Sar on Jun 27, 2007 16:01:32 GMT -5
love the acronym (ha ha, acro-nym!). Sounds like a pretty good statement... I'll write something more useful when I'm not suppose to be working...
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trampsarah
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Post by trampsarah on Jun 27, 2007 21:37:07 GMT -5
Lets get into contact with the other colleges NOW and ask them if they'd like to contribute. Democracy woo!
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Post by tarapeze on Jun 28, 2007 8:38:47 GMT -5
good idea. but we should be ready to seriously start talking it about it once school starts - 'cause i dunno if other groups have message boards like ours to talk to each other about it over the summer! though we should invite them onto this one, maybe? no! i'll start another one, to do what we're doing but on a bigger scale. woot!
kay, hooray!
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Post by tarapeze on Jun 28, 2007 8:41:57 GMT -5
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