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Reducing Juggling Baggage during ShowsItsik Orr - 1st January, 1990. In our show we have substantially more equipment than that (we also bring
our lighting system, full PA system for an audience of up to 800 people, 30'
backdrop, unicycles etc.) and we found it's so much easier to have a
platform with wheels than a baggage pully. It holds much more on it and when
unloaded it takes no room at all (put it at the bottom of the trunk and you
won't know it's there). Ours is approximately 3'x2.5', with a long chord
attached to the two front corners so we can pull it along easily.
Other tips I can give you: 1. If you use a hard sided large suitcase(s) or case(s) rather than a duffle bag you have more chance of finding a good way of packing things inside it in a compact way. In a duffle bag things tend to achieve maximum entropy, shuffling about inside there until they reach more or less the most space consuming arrangement. In a suitcase you can arrange your clubs pointing in opposite directions so they use up less space, your diabolos in 90 degree angles to each other so they nestle in each other (if you have any), the rola bola boards along the bottom so they take up almost zero space, the rola bola cylinder you fill up with stage balls or whatever (I usually put in it the more fragile pieces of equipment, like water pistols and stuff like that which is then protected from the rest of the stuff in the case). Hard sided cases also look more professional (especially if they are a matching set), make you feel more professional (a very nice feeling I find...) and are much easier to stack together on a pully or rolling platform or whatever. 2. I don't know how much energy it takes to fill up a slo-mo ball, but it doesn't make much sense to me to store them uninflated at home and then carry them to the show after inflating them. Either come 15 minutes beforehand to the gig and inflate them there and rest for 5 minutes, or buy a small compressor. I have a knife throwing number in the show for which I need 12 balloons. It's very tiring and tiresome and time consuming to inflate 12 balloons with breath, so I carry a small compressor with me and it does the work admirably. Admittedly I don't know if for you a compressor plus two uniflated balls is smaller and/or less heavy than two inflated balls, so perhaps this doesn't work for you. 3. I do not know what your bouncing routine is, but if you use the stool just for bouncing and nothing more and you use it only as a podium, there are less volume-consuming alternatives to a stool. When achievign a good bounce you usually pay either in space or in weight, so if space is valuable for you you can have a slab of reinforced glass (glass is virtually indestructible wehn over a certain thickness) or marble (which is more fragile) or whatever. A good compromise I found is thick plywood (about 0.5") with a sort of beehive arrangement of wood underneeth to give it "virtual thickness" that greatly enhances the bounce but doesn't weigh as much. 4. The balancing sticks do fold or screw together somehow right? Perhaps a possible way to cut down on weight is to "recycle" using the same few sticks for various numbers - when unscrewed they give you short balancing objects and when screwed together you have a long one. 5. Whatever you do I advise you to put your PA system in a separate case. It will help you in packing the rest of the (less sensitive) stuff into the cases, and you will never have that "ouch" feeling you get immediately after slumping a suitcase heavily on the floor only to recall (a milisecond before it hits the floor hard) that you put the PA system in it. view in thread mode or date mode post a new message |
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