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[Ollie, I added the video to the first post for a front page posting. (Duncan)]
Malaysian Diabolo Team Visit - juggling videos hosted @ Juggling.tv


[Firstly apologies for the very long post, I suppose that’s what happens when you spend 5 years lurking on the forum and finally have something to contribute.]


In two years of Asian travel my diabolos had spent almost all of there time disassembled at the bottom of my bag, so it was a relief when I recently visited Kuala Lumpur and was lucky enough to meet up with lots of Malaysian Diabolists. In two days I got to meet 3 different ‘diabolo teams’, join an practice session with an incredibly high level of skill, see a classic public performance in a shopping mall, and visit the converted studio/office space of Ya Ping Diabolo Dance to practice my ‘body language’. The quantity and quality of Diabolists in this one city was phenomenal and many of the tricks left me speechless (it’s not every day that you see somebody pull of a 53sun on their first attempt at 4 low) but far more interesting than the cool tricks was the different culture of diabolo in Malaysia. Rather than a hobby and juggling prop they view Diabolo is part of their Chinese heritage, and that classic Asian style and the formation of Diabolo teams dedicated to performance come directly from that culture.

Like many of you I’ve watched several videos of Asian Diabolo troupes from Malaysia and Taiwan with synchronised team displays but I’ve never really known much about the culture that surrounds those teams’ style and skill. A few of the diabolists I met are on diabolo.ca and most certainly know about, watch and absorb ‘western’ videos but there is definitely a divide between east and west and its interesting that a common prop can have such different cultures. Considering that there are probably as many or more diabolo players in Tiawan and Malaysia than the rest of the world combined it’s probably worth knowing a little about what goes on over there. What follows is a review of my visit and some of the things that I learnt about diabolo culture in Malaysia.

I was met by Heng Ee and Luke, the joint leaders of Ya Ping Diabolo Dance, and driven across the KL to their Sunday morning practice area, a school courtyard. They are both students at University and have been playing diabolo for 10 years or more after starting at primary school and then later joining the Ya Ping team. Like them almost everyone else I met had been diaboloing for a long time, started young and were currently students at high school or college. Despite this I was told that diabolo has a brief history in Malaysia and was only brought here 15 years ago by the original sifu(master/teacher) ‘Ya Ping’ from Tiawan, after whom the diabolo troupe is named. Now, two of Ya Ping’s original students are the coach/managers of Ya Ping/TND, and Soul diabolo teams. Amongst Chinese students Diabolo is taught in schools as an extra curricular activity and as part of their Chinese heritage. All of the diabolists I met were of Chinese descent and spoke Mandarin as there first language, there were no players from the other main Malaysian ethnic groups, Malay and Indian, as they presumably have no cultural link to the diabolo and it is not taught or chosen at schools. Ya Ping and the other teams continue the tradition by teaching diabolo in schools and when I first asked Luke how many diabolo school teams there were, as opposed to professional troupes, in KL he told me that there were hundreds, all with many pupils. When you consider the cultivation of this many players in one place along with a strong tradition of strict training and team performance its not surprising that there are a lot of good players in Malaysia.

For the morning practice session Ya Ping were joined by several members of TND diabolo ...

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[扯鈴diabolo] 賀！楊明勳老師得冠軍了~Yang's champion

Hello, everyone
This is our new video. We come from Tainan, Taiwan.
We love playing bearing diabolo, sharing with you and hope you like this video.
Thank you for watch.
Tancle~

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hope you guys enjoy..(

新兵進行曲扯鈴達人表演-林韋良

)