Thursday 14 February 2013

Gonzalo el malabarista


Excitingly for all you poi players, jugglers and circus folk out there, unicyclists and jugglers seem abundant in Chile.  Playing with my poi on Playa Drocas last Friday morning I met a Chilean lad Pablo who was juggling clubs and was traveling north on a long journey. Then back in Valpo on my way home I met Gonzalo busking with juggler’s rings at a set of traffic lights. We chatted for ages and he showed me some great tricks with the rings, explaining that he was specializing in manipulation tricks that keep the rings close to the body because of the windy conditions of Valparaíso (until then I hadn’t been aware of Valpo being particularly windy but began to notice the coastal breezes a little more afterwards).





Gonzalo is Chilean, from Santiago.  A huge fan of cinema he has been studying film in Argentina for the last few years and is due back there in March for his final year.  His enthusiasm for film and books was huge and I left his spot at the traffic lights probably an hour later with a page of my notebook filled with his suggestions of musicians poets and writes to look up and my head full of ideas and wonderings about how to integrate the photo and film footage I am gathering into this art-docu style film work alongside animation that reflects the story of the dreams an tales of the individuals like Gonzalo that I am meeting.

(One odd experience in this conversation occurred when  a lovely friend of his stopped off and after saying hi said she’d just seen a dead body in the street.  She didn’t know how long the body had been there nor if the person had died from hear attach, being knocked over or what.  When I recounted this to Emma she said she also thought she had seen a dead body in the street the other day.  If really dead bodies then it seems odd that they are left unmoved?)

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