Diabolos and the general people

[Juggling_Arcs]

I was watching some videos and it got me thinking. Why do people come to watch diabolo performances?
It's not as well known to most people like juggling, it does not make a lot of pretty patterns like poi, its not as magical as CJ, So why do people come and watch it?  

I am just curious what other people think about this.

Juggling_Arcs

[nezzybaby]

I think youu've missed the point a little bit, people are only impressed by poi because they're on fire, contact because they think its a crystal ball, and juggling because there's more than two objects.

With diabolos you get everything, you can do slow flowing moves like a contact juggler, or you can isolate two diabolos and do a bit of poi with them. and when you get as far as quentin you can do a cascade like a normal juggler.

I think whatdraws people to the diabolo is that eeryone played with one as a kid, yet never got further than throwing it in the air and catching it (or not!). When people see the things that can be done with 1 2 or 3 dibolos they are just plain impressed, and i think the difficulty is generaly appreciated.

Also fire diabolos are far better than fire poi
LED kits are better than glow balls!

so basically people like diabolos for all the same reason they like everything else its impressive difficult and pretty!

[Tom_G]

When people see the things that can be done with 1 2 or 3 dibolos they are just plain impressed, and i think the difficulty is generaly appreciated.

That's the one thing I don't agree with! I did a few tricks to some friends a couple of weekends ago, I did a couple of really tricky arm combos that I'd only just learned, which went really well, but the things they liked most were the pedal string climb, whip catch, and just throwing it really high - which are some of the first things I learned! I'd think it would be much more satisfying to perform to other diaboloists, though I've never done it cos I've never actually found another one of around my standard  

But that's just the way it goes I guess...

[seán_]

Basically I think the general public will be impressed because you are doing something they cant do that looks difficult, impressive and often impossible looking.

I say impressed its not their fault that they are sometimes impressed by 'the wrong things'. Others get it as well, jugglers with eating the apple is the classic, difficult poi moves, isolations and the like, mean more to poi swingers than outsiders. etc.

[Ceri-Anne]

I think whatdraws people to the diabolo is that eeryone played with one as a kid, yet never got further than throwing it in the air and catching it (or not!).

True, I've often heard people say things like "Oh, I've done that when I was young", "My sister has a diabolo" and "Whaa, I never knew you could do that kind of things with a diabolo". I think that at first they find it interesting because they recognise it, and secondly they get impressed by what you're actually doing.

[Sean]

I think that's an interesting discussion topic, Juggling_Arcs. I'm always amazed by the number of people who don't understand that diaboloing involves freely spinning objects on a string. Many people, when they first see it, think it's some sort of magic trick. I think the popularity of the string climb plays into this.

I think nezzybaby and Ceri-Anne are onto something in mentioning the childhood experience thing.

Personally, I have consciously tried to learn stuff that I want to learn and not be too influenced by what is impressive to others. (I'd rather impress myself ) So much of what we learn is not in any specific way impressive to the public. But, I think one aspect that does impress the general public is the smoothness and demonstration of competence that comes with being able to do a trick well.

Judging by people's reactions, people are most impressed by high patterns. The higher the better. The number of diabolos impresses a bit, but mostly it's just how high they go.

Sean

[Juggling_Arcs]

I think whatdraws people to the diabolo is that eeryone played with one as a kid,

Hmm I think my family got jipped. They did not now what diabolos were until they went and saw a show with them (diabolo) in it.

Thanks for the anwsers

Juggling_Arcs

[MattF]

i think you can adopt two different styles for two different types of audience.

1. You have an audience who don't know much about diabolo tricks. These people will be easily impressed by tricks such as the string climb, cats cradle, neck bounces etc. Which is great for us (the performer) because the are easy to do, and can be set into a routine which is quite long, yet consistent without any mistakes.

2. Other diabolists/jugglers. People who appreciate that tricks like string climbs are default and do not care to see that sort of trick. These will be more impressed by either tricks that are difficult or tricks that they themselves have not seen before. People like this like to see the diabolist maybe drop the diabolo a few times during a performance as it shows the diabolist is really pushing themselves to their limits.

[nezzybaby]

You have an audience who don't know much about diabolo tricks. These people will be easily impressed by tricks such as the string climb, cats cradle, neck bounces etc. Which is great for us (the performer) because the are easy to do, and can be set into a routine which is quite long, yet consistent without any mistakes.

i always try to do a bit of both when performing, its always a good idea to start off by accelerating without any wraps and just throwing the diabolo a few times. Then do all the crowd pleasers like string climbs etc. It s nice to slowly up the difficulty as the performance goes on, this way the audience build up an appreciation for what you are doing. Letting people have a play often helps .  I generally dont show off any 2 diabolo stuff till right at the end, that way people dont just think that two diabolos is the standard.

One thing audiences love more than all the string climbs and high throws in the world is a good long sprinkler, and if youve built up their appreciation a lot this will be very impressive.

I'd think it would be much more satisfying to perform to other diaboloists, though I've never done it cos I've never actually found another one of around my standard

I sympathise with having no diabolists to compare tricks with, have just about got one of my mates doing 2 consistently, but everything hes learnt ive taught him, would be nice to learn tricks from places other than the internet.

I say impressed its not their fault that they are sometimes impressed by 'the wrong things'. Others get it as well, jugglers with eating the apple is the classic, difficult poi moves, isolations and the like, mean more to poi swingers than outsiders. etc.

People will always be impressed by the 'wrong things' discovered that a 3 ball shower gets as many cheers as a 5 ball one so long as you throw the balls as high. And people will always laugh at me for dropping balls even when juggling 7.

[Jack_12325]

Yeh it really annoys me when im doing my routine for my dad and i do complex arm moves which took ages to perfect and the only thing hes impressed with is a genocide  or string climb!

[Hoop]

Great topic.   I always use the high throw to engage the crowd.  It's usually kids, but I toss it up a bit over my head and say, "Who wants to see it go higher?"  Then of course they all scream, "Me!"  So I throw it a bit higher, which is followed by their cries, "Higher!!!!"  I keep going higher the louder they yell until I can't throw any higher and then I say, "That's as high as I'll go nowadays.  I don't want to lose another one in outer space!"  They all laugh and say, "Whoa!"  This really draws a crowd.  They see something flying way up, and they hear a lot of screaming.  I actually once watched a street performer juggling for a crowd when I first started diaboloing.  He brought out a diabolo and I got really excited.  He started it and threw it way up, caught it and put it away.  I waited until after his show and asked him to teach me some tricks.  He said, that's the only one I know.  I ended up teaching him a few.  

[mrpink]

I think that you shuld save the advanced technical stuff for performing in front of other diabolists/jugglers, they are the ones that will appreciate your skill.
The average audience doesn't really care if a trick took you fiften years or fiften minutes to learn. All they really want is to be entertained and have fun. I belive that the personality and charisma of the performer is more important than doing "hard tricks" to achive this.
In my experience a good diabolo routine is often better recived than a juggling routine of the same standard, maybe because juggling is mutch more common (and thus predictable)  than diabolo in my corner of the world.
I remember the first time I saw someone perform with two diabolos back in 1998, I had never seen annyting like it before and I was so amazed I almost forgot to breathe... I Think the diabolo is a better prop to perform with than ordinary juggling things. Diabolo is kind of a mix between juggling and dancing combining the best pars from both of these diciplines.

[Jukka]

Yeah...I think it's now the time to make the debut.

This is really interesting topic indeed.
Today I was juggling with diabolo in a local amusement park and thought these things. It's really frustrating when audience don't appreciate your technical tricks, that you have just learnt to do smoothly.
For example I did some leg orbit combos with routine and then some other easy tricks. The audience liked them alot. The idea is, that people saw all the time what was happening. It is not hard to notice that diabolo is going around your leg. Litlle bit harder to understand what it is happening when doing monorail, lot harder to understand for example some body moves.
There is lot of "magic" in diabolo. No one has ever understood the string climb when i do it first time. Also some magic knots are irrational stuff. People really loves this kind of tricks.
It is really frustrating and irritating that best tricks for normal street show are string climg (maybe with pedal) and high tosses. Today when I was performing I first made a routine with one diabolo, including tosses and climbs. After that i took another diabolo. I made double sprinkler with stick release, which is the hardest trick that I can handle. I was really satisfied that those hard tricks went well. Just after that sprinkler release one little fella comes to me and asks if I can toss one diabolo again. I just laughed...and threw it high. The fella was happy.

Ok...lot of text without meaning. The summary: Easy and magical tricks for normal people. Technical and hard ones for jugglers. That's the way it's and we have to accept that.

[GbH]

Today I was juggling with diabolo in a local amusement park and thought these things. It's really frustrating when audience don't appreciate your technical tricks, that you have just learnt to do smoothly.
For example I did some leg orbit combos with routine and then some other easy tricks. The audience liked them alot. The idea is, that people saw all the time what was happening. It is not hard to notice that diabolo is going around your leg. Litlle bit harder to understand what it is happening when doing monorail, lot harder to understand for example some body moves.
There is lot of "magic" in diabolo. No one has ever understood the string climb when i do it first time. Also some magic knots are irrational stuff. People really loves this kind of tricks.

<snip>

Ok...lot of text without meaning. The summary: Easy and magical tricks for normal people. Technical and hard ones for jugglers. That's the way it's and we have to accept that.

I think that there's a lot of truth in what Jukka says here - but I don't agree with his summary...

When I first started to perform with diabolos, I pretty soon realised that few people have any idea about the technical difficulty of what you're showing.  On the one hand, there are some people that think ANYTHING's impressive, and thus will be no more impressed with difficult tricks than easy ones.  On the other hand, others will completely fail to relate to what you're doing and thus not appreciate the skill either.  I don't even think it's safe to separate 'normal people' from 'jugglers'.  Apart from fellow diabolo players that are working on a similar wavelength, I've found that many jugglers also seem to have a problem in understanding the finer points of diabolo technique.  

As such, if you're going to be performing with diabolos, I think it's pretty much essential that you learn to disassociate actual difficulty with perceived difficulty.  If you want your audience to think that you're doing a hard trick, you've got to learn how to make a trick look hard, which is a whole different skill to actually being able to do a something that really IS tough.  Whilst the 'route 1' method of doing this is to verbally tell someone that you're going to be trying something that's difficult, it's more likely that a mixture of exaggerated movements, facial expressions, tempo variations and audience contact is what'll be required.  What I'm NOT saying, though, is that you should be only concerned with making easy tricks look hard. If you can execute a genuinely hard trick and make it look hard to an audience, then why not do so?  Thus, the main reason why I disagree with Jukka's summary.

As Jukka also suggests, though, I do think it's important that an audience has an understanding of what it is that you're doing.  However, this understanding doesn't have to be at a technical level, more of a conceptual idea.  As an example, it doesn't matter that someone knows how a string climb actually works, just that they appreciate the concept of it climbing.  To test this out, I'd suggest that if someone can roughly explain what they've just seen you do, even in vague language, then that's a pretty good indication that you've sold the trick correctly and maintained their interest.  To this end, I think that high throws, whip catches, suicides, sprinklers, numbers and magic knots all stand a good chance of being understood, whereas long complex combos probably won't be.  I also think it's a good plan to give an audience time and space to comprehend and respond to what you've done - something that many diaboloists seem to forget.

So, as an alternative summary, I'd suggest just 'do stuff that you can make look good and that people will understand'.

Guy

[Hoop]

Nice post Guy.  I think this is a great discussion topic and I know I could definitely use more tips on performing.  Maybe Sean with the line over his name could archive this and similar threads into a performing sticky??  I didn't set out to put on shows, but it seems like I often find myself doing them.  I'm sure lot's of other members here share in this.  Diabolo isn't very common, so you end up drawing a crowd of interested yet uneducated onlookers.  How can we make things seem more difficult?  How can we involve the audience more?  How can we give an idea of what it is we are actually doing?  Which tricks translate well to different audiences?  How can we go about getting a gig, if we so wish?

[seán_]

I'll start to gather them together in a section of the trick sticky.

As for making stuff look difficult, believe me that aint too hard

[CM]

When perfroming with the diabolo, I've found that explaining to an audience what a diabolo is and then explaining some of the basic tricks helps them to understand what I am doing. It doesn't take very long and it makes the people feel involved with the show. Doing two diabolo tricks such as sprinklers and fans also seems to impress people alot. For doing tricks while performing, I'd say that the flashier the better.

[eggy900]

I'm sure you can all relate to me here, on a number of occasions whilst performing diabolo to an audience having pulled off a crazy combo or a hard trick like genocide, all they shout is throw it higher, The easiest trick ever and they find it so amazing. Do they not appreciate the complexity of hard tricks or do they prefer plain boring high throws?

Has anyone else experienced this?

[Chiok]

Some people's views and frustrations are in this thread here about performing diabolo to general public.  Makes some people just plain angry,

Chiok

[keksie]

String climbs and high throws is where its at although i've never really performed but theres always some people staring at me in the park.. the amount of 2d high i can manage (usually less than 5 throws..) is better than any of the other tricks to them :f
someone was impressed by loop diabolo too, although i cant do that stuff really.. i think that could look pretty impressive in dark with lit up diabolo.