Friday Night in London

This is a bit late, but definitely worth mentioning!  On Friday the 28th, I went into London to a club.  Now, normally I can't stand clubs.  They're dangerously loud and packed, very expensive to enter, and overall not much fun.  I was especially nervous since I didn't have a functioning cell phone at the time, so if I lost track of my group I'd be stranded.  Fortunately, the people I went in with were aware of this and very helpful.

My main reasons for going at all were to see London (how often do I get to do that?), and to see Steph performing at this club.  Steph is on the one-year course, and does some aerial acts as well as burlesque fire manipulations – fire fans, body burning, etc.  The decision to go was last-minute, and I didn't find out until I was on the highway that the tickets had sold out!  Incredibly, Steph managed to get me on the guest list under the names of performers.  I was to tell them at the door that I was "Beans on Toast," performing with Slamboree...

It turns out that they didn't have any record of that name, but still let me in.  Go figure... at least I didn't have to pay the 20 quid fee to get in.  The event itself was called Rumpus, and club-goers were supposed to dress up as crazy as they could manage.  I lack much costume material, since my juggling equipment took up most of my suitcase, so I had just put on a nicer shirt and some dark pants.


This wasn't a typical club, though.  Though parts of it were absurdly packed, and waiting in line in the rain to get in was annoying, there was live music in multiple rooms and a lot of circus happening.  This made it more into a concert than a club, and the circus I saw there was unlike any I'd encountered before.  When I first got there, there was an act of 3 Corde Lisses on stage, with aerialists working in tandem on each.  This was yet another side of circus arts I'd never seen – performers in dark costume to dubstep music.


The night turned interesting, after I'd had a couple drinks, when James, another student who works with Steph, asked if I'd be up for improvising some 3-ball onstage with him.  Of course, I said yes.  Since I lacked a costume, I just went shirtless.  I was given three K8 LED balls and rocked out onstage with Slamboree!  After a while, I managed to drop one so it rolled upstage and out of reach, so I had to finish up with two... but for two drinks and a few minute's notice, I think I did a decent job of juggling for a crowd of hundreds.

You can see me from backstage at 15 seconds in this video:

And here's my view from backstage:

We spent the night at James's friend's flat, getting back around 4:30 and got up early afternoon, had a nice breakfast at a cafe and then watched (of all things) "Team America: World Police" until James felt ready to make the drive back to Bristol.  Overall, a pretty kickass ending to a first week of training.  I managed to bend or break pretty much every rule of my training regiment – staying up late, sleeping in, drinking – but got to see a new side of circus and take part in it.