We were super happy to have a great, in-depth chat with Nik aka LCD aka Pingo aka Elsie Dee. A true pioneer of isolation and illusion based contact. He offered some fantastic insight into his role and his experiences during a major shift in the possible definition of contact, plus he’s really lovely.
In our current spirit of trying to do things until they work, it only took us two attempts to get this going (we’re improving) so if you don’t want to hear Dawn and Briney waffling too much you can skip to 13:00 to hear our interview with Nik in the first of our ‘Interesting Discussions With Interesting People’ or IDWIP.
IMPORTANT ANNOTATIONS:
Nik was kind enough to join us after driving from one end of England to the other, then back again, so he wanted to pass on a couple of extra little notes that he didn’t get round to mentioning in the discussion:
“I didn’t mention how excellent Ryan Mellors was in pushing the Iso style out to the community after he’d met Matt Hennem. He’s equally responsible for making this style popular as Matt and I were, if not slightly more so.
I also didn’t give Ed Adams enough props for pushing the boundaries regarding what can be achieved/bringing Aragorn’s dance techniques into contact/breaking down techniques into the fundamental basics/teaching really well/everything else he has done for the community.”
Finally because Nik was too polite/British to mention it, keep an eye on his lovely acrylic prop-shop and expect new and exciting things coming soon
https://www.facebook.com/DasIsobar/
Photo: theedege-uk.com
Hello 🙂 Here are a few random thoughts on the video.
First of all, really great video! I really enjoyed this, especially the history of how Nik got into it all. I’m enjoying the historical aspects of the discussions in general, like some of the old DotOrg history from one of the other videos.
I’m tempted to go back and read all of the Alarming Trend in Contact Juggling thread, as I’ve never read more than bits of it. I think part of the reason I never did was that, when I first joined DotOrg, I wasn’t into the dance aspect at all. Which in some ways is a bit odd, because I vaguely seem to remember that my first interest in contact juggling was the isolations. I guess just not in a dancy way, but just in a here is a palm-iso way. I suppose at the time, I was vaguely on the side of the people who thought it was an alarming trend, but I don’t think I ever held that opinion with much conviction.
It’s probably a minor point, but I was amused to hear Nik talk bridge rolls; I have this dim memory of ages ago Nik saying on DotOrg that he couldn’t do them. And I remember being shocked by this at the time because this was back when I had a naive view of contact juggling as a more-or-less full explored set of specific moves that you could just learn. I was shocked that somebody as good as Nik therefore couldn’t do one of the moves. Anyway, I guess I am making a rather silly point (if I am making any point at all), but it did amuse me hear Nik mention bridge rolls.
I was interested to hear Dawn talk about how there was a time when there the presentation of contact juggling was very much about here is the ball doing some nice stuff, and not so much on the interaction of the ball with the body (if I understood her point). I was a little surprised, because that doesn’t quite fit my memory of contact. I think, though I may have misremembered, that even back in the on the Contact Juggling part 1 DVD they make the point that contact only works when it’s about the interaction of the person and the ball.
And finally, just to reiterate, really great video 🙂