Where in the world am I today?: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
My first memory of Todd Strong came from seeing him dressed up as Julius Caesar at the Juggling Games at the 1987 European Juggling Convention in Saintes, France. We formally met in about ten years later in Vancouver through mutual friend Robert Nelson, The Butterfly Man. When Todd moved to Vancouver and got married to a lovely Canadian woman, our chances to hook up increased exponentially and when ever I’m in town longer than a week or so I endeavor to figure out a way to hook up for a lunch or conversation or what ever… It’s just one of those friendships which is a whole lot of fun.
Having written for Juggle Magazine for years and having published books on various juggling related props, Todd has a wonderful eye for proof reading which I’ve tapped into on a fairly regular basis. In exchange (and I’m not entirely sure it’s a fair exchange) I’ve often helped demo the moves he’s writing about for Juggling Magazine which often end up on his website as animated gifs. By visiting his site you can access animations of various prop manipulations including ball juggling, cigar boxes, club juggling, club swinging, etc. I can be seen demo-ing some ball juggling, hat moves and shaker cup moves if you poke around the site enough to find me.
Admittedly animated gifs are a bit old-school in terms of web technology, but that Todd has taken the time to compile such a great collection of moves and is giving these away for free is a pretty cool thing. Working with Todd on capturing various moves has also been a real education because often after I’ve learned a certain move I don’t really think about how to explain it to someone else. Because Todd hast to write about the moves either for Juggle Magazine or for his own book projects he’s had to come up with a methodology and vocabulary for describing what’s happening in an image so that the reader/viewer can understand and follow the action.
In the picture above I’m manipulating three shaker cups, one black one, one white one and one striped one. This use of black, white, pattern is also used with other props through out the site and allows Todd to describe the action of a specific prop so that it’s movement can be followed in the context of the pattern. This very simple, very effective technique made me re-think how I was doing certain moves and allowed me to demonstrate them more effectively.
YouTube videos have in someways replaced the use of animated gifs as a delivery system for presenting material like this even for Todd, but this resource is still a remarkable depository of information.
