Excerpts from Juggler.com/video review. By Eric Bagai
© Eric Bagai, used with permission.
From JUGGLE magazine, 2004 |
This is a great compilation video, despite the weird title and nondescript
packaging. Here you'll find Dan Holzman, Frank Olivier, Bill Berry, Rich
Ross, Sean McKinney, Chad Taylor, and Dave Capurro, as well as Bob Mendelsohn
and Tim Kelly. You'll also find Kimo the cat, Woogie (a space dog), another
dog (probably terrestrial), a few odd cartoon characters, a passing skunk,
and Bob the Jockey.
Chad Taylor, better known as Mad Chad, is definitely a warning to us all
that juggling two flaming tennis halls and a chainsaw while riding a motorized
skateboard at 18 mph may be hazardous to your health. Still, it took him
only two tries to nail the stunt, six weeks apart, so the enormous burn
blisters on his hand could heal. (You get to see the healing process in
all its gory glory.)
That leaves us with Berry, Olivier, McKinney, Holzman, and Kelly. Now here
is some fine juggling that makes the video worth seeing again and again.
I've long wanted to get Holzman's cane work on video here it is. And he
and Kelly go through enough variations with three-tennis-balls-and-a-can
to keep the rest of us busy for a year or two. Kelly gives a brief but thorough
demonstration of club flourishes and their application while juggling, something
I haven't seen done as well since Chris Baer amazed everyone at the first
Portland Juggling Festival.
Berry, McKinney, Holzman, Olivier, and Kelly each do their three-ball work-outs
for us, showing a variety of styles. Frank Olivier favors the funny stuff that plays off his charm. Bill Berry
combines tricks based on pendulum movements to which his body type lends
itself. Sean McKinney projects an introspective grace and aloneness. Tim
Kelly produces an amazing variety of tricks with seamless transitions, and
Dan Holzman does as many tricks or more with three balls, but at least twice
as fast. And because this is a DVD, there is a bonus track! The first two
parts show more three-ball work by Kelly, but the third part is worth the
price of the DVD all by itself. Alexander Kiss does remarkable work with
head balances of clubs and swords, and head bounces of balls and clubs(!).
All the more remarkable because he does up to seven rings or five clubs
at the same time, and occasionally uses a rola bola simultaneously. These
clips are taken from shows in 1955 and 1970. In the midst of these and other
splendors, Kiss does continuous fiveclub backcrosses that are as solid as
a rock.
A few juggling one-offs intersperse these brilliant exhibitions: Kelly's
box tricks, Bob Mendelsohn's ring, ball, and club tricks. Mark Nizer's 2,000-foot
drop. And throughout the video, knitting it all together, the editing and
musical synchronization is quite remarkable.
I'd recommend this DVD to all jugglers. The
DVD format makes it easy to avoid the stuff you don't like and to see some
of the best juggling anywhere, over and over again. |