Archive for the ‘Performance/Performers’ Category

Mugged (at some school) 2005

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Mugged (at some school):
At Puj’s school about kids too scared to cross the park coz of the gangsters. Quite realistic… in this case they killed of the Indian dude. Then there was the Chinese Whispers lol and of course the Preacher man/boy I couldn’t stop convulsing from laughter… even though Meera POKED MY PALMS OUT! Of course it was with love. Had Thai after that and reminisced about my ‘experimentations’. Yo Hemil had cracked me up earlier ‘Paras does your cousin think I’m a Robert?’ LMAO! So I retold it and Puj thought I said rowboat.

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Comedy Night for Leukemia – Trent Golf Park

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Comedy Night for Leukemia – Trent Golf Park
When we first got there we felt kinda out of place as Oakwood is mostly Greek and what I recently found out… Greek from Cyprus. And then a bunch of black folks took the table right in front of the stage so that was gonna be something lol. The setting was amazing, we got finger food and sweet things. Ordering drinks at the bar was a mission though and after a few drinks most of the folks there I guess knew each other so it would turn into a social every now and then. My suggestion to stop that and focus on the act is something I learnt from Ray Charles’ movie where you turn down the audience lights completely since we got candlelight on the table anyway and that should do the trick.

As for the acts… we agreed the MC/presenter (Philberto) was the best. Excellent improv and natural delivery. The first act was a German dude (Henin Wen) and his stuff was painfully awkward and pretty Nazi. In my note’s I’ve put low jpm (jokes per minute). Second act was good. His one liners were good but talked too much… as in his jokes should have been oneliners but the words turned them into more than one.

Break.

MC comes back with one amazing line I gots to use somewhere… it goes something like I got a big dick but in your mouth it’d look small… coz some lady was talking too much. The 3rd act (Julian Deane) was not bad… I think by now the audience were comentating or just mingling so maybe it would have been better if they were quiet. His execution could have been better. MC gets a bit of crowd participation before bring on the 4th act. Joe Rowntree was electric… Picture Dane Cook’s energy and Ben Stiller’s looks. Great execution and rapport, material people could identify with in real life and lots of creativity… he’d get more props but the crowd were getting verbally rowdy.

We thought that was it but we had a surprise appearance by the dude that sold us the tickets. Chris Mousicos… he does stand up too! And he gave us a bit of history about how the Marathon has it’s roots with Greeks. See the Greeks were gonna fight Persia but they had to honour some rule of not fighting on a full moon and some dude was made to run around… and by the time the Greeks reached Marathon… well you can wiki it coz Chris kinda turned it into stand-up so I don’t know which bits were authentic.

After that they had a raffle thing with lots of footie signed prizes and auctioning items like a lifesize cutout of Tony Philippou in a superman costume… who is he you ask? He’s the dude that will be running the Marathon for Leukemia. At some point it started to drag so we left. But yeah big up Chris for hooking it up. The comedy night itself raised £3000! And Tony raised 7 grand.

Update: Just spoke to Chris and he says there’s an Indian MC too and he’s really good so gotta youtube Imran Yusuf.

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Blaze at The Peacock Theatre

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Blaze at The Peacock Theatre
One of the first things I learnt from my first breakdance video is there are 2 kinds of props/respect. One is from the crowd or you could also say newbies and the other is from your opponent or you could also say people who’ve been in the scene longer. So while newbies will give props to a b-boy/b-girl for the quantity of moves e.g. lots more spins, the experienced will give props to the quality of combos and different styles. This is where Viv, Kim and Debra agreed that it was more for newbies and lacked story… and I concur. Even when reviewing the whole thing I was like I can’t really call this breakdance… it was more street dance and watered down breakdance.

So it’s not that bad of a downer as the target market was a family audience anyway. The bits that impressed me was the tap dancing and belle they threw in. They played with fairytale music which was pretty entertaining. Lots of street dance, popping locking, glides and slides. So all that was impressive. What was really astounding was the backdrop of wall to wall and ceiling to floor drawers. And it was amplified with some brilliant lighting. Major props go to the lighting… making the drawers look 3D then lit up tiles like the Billie Jean vid. And it was a high wall! Bits of comedy here and there and a song and dance about vegetables. Some battles to ‘keep it real’ lol. And some beatboxing.

I took detailed notes about the performances but unfortunately it’s not earned it’s place in the review. In fact the outro was really long too and I aint trying to be clapping so much till you earn it!!! So yeah… it’s worth seeing the show for the lighting, but sadly that’s about it. Big up Viv for the ticks.

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Collabo ’10 at East London Dance Stratford Circus

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Collabo ’10 at East London Dance Stratford Circus
Been there and done it last year so I’ll stick to the the changes and interesting bits. The 3rd performance was pretty busy coz it was a collabo with Velocity, Laban Youth Dance Comany, Sense of Sound and Greenwich’s Youth Choir. It stood out coz the choir gave the whole performance a Motown feel to it with the acapella and beatboxing. Some dude called Botis Seva did a crazy solo performance… bit freaky but thats why we like Collabo. The best performer out of all of them were Trilogy for sure… I mean the other groups and crews looked like they were still counting the moves or not smiling while Trilogy not only looked like they were enjoying themselves they also pulled off some wild moves and made it look easy. Always a plus in my books. Now before Avant Garde performed the presenter (Ricky) gave out ‘freeness’. Basically some t-shirts. He picked 2 kids from the audience, Clinton and Claire. Man Clinton was so jokes he was meant to be on stage. Looked like a baby Eddie Murphy… and he had the purple jacket too! By the way Ricky the presenter himself is very captivating as a presenter… dude got jokes. Anyway so then Avant Garde performed and boy have they grown in number. Some kiddos in the mix too so big up Avant Garde Dance, ay’bady that played a part in it and Viv for the reminder.

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Jump by Ye Gam Theatre at Peacock Theatre 2009

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

GO! If you hear about it just go, don’t think. Till now I used to tell everyone Lion King was the best musical/play ever… now it’s Jump and they’ve set the bar very very high now. You know when you love something so much you wanna tell your peeps about it in detail… I wanna tell you every joke, sequence and sound effect… don’t worry I wont spoil too much.

Started of with this old man struggling to walk around in the audience. He gets crowd participation as he gets a girl to help him up the stairs so the jokes and laughs had already started. The stage and back drop was the same throughout, like a veranda and facade of a building… well Chinese tracing paper material stuff you know. The family is introduced with pimping Grand dad, Dad, crazy Mom, very Flexible daughter, geek boyfriend that turns into gangsta hunk when his glasses are taken off and party boy son. Mix Kung Fu Hustle with Matrix and as Viv said… cartoons… only their martial art is Tae-Kwon-Do. We laughed so much, hell it was so funny we were laughing like black folks jerking in their seats and all. I wanna go again and again man… like these guys had fighting skills, acrobatics, coordination and to go with it all they had the perfect sound fx. Sometimes there was no joke just sound fx and the crowd went in a fit. What else did they do…. oh yeah rewinding and replaying slow motion movie style. Got more crowd participation as they get this guy in a suit to fight and then a hottie. The son did some Jacky Chan drunken martial arts. And to end the first part the young couple get into a dance/acrobatic sequence and then the mom and dad get into a sequence too only the mom wants some, dad doesn’t so they end up doing their own version of the tango.

Also the story was very much like a situational comedy where there is a main dilemma/story, in this case trying to get girl and geek boy together. And then sub dilemmas like for the first part it was getting the place clean? And introducing the main dilemma. The second part was them getting robbed and of course getting the young lovers together. The thieves were so funny, especially the bigger guy with the afro. All of them worked the props just like Jacky Chan would. The music was interesting from hero like guitar that reminded me of Saber Rider, to songs with that twang you hear in Shafts music. Some excellent Matrix effects especially the wind one where one of them runs so fast all the rest actually follow. I was very impressed with the continuity especially when the old man was knocked out behind the couch but you gotta see it to know. They were pretty long with the outro through but it was still great, some swords and glowing fighting stick performance, then individual acrobatics where that big afro guy was too funny coz you think he’d do the same thing like the rest and use the walls to do a flip or something but … he’d surprise you ;o)

Notes: 1- One thing I loved about their jokes was they milked it just right. They’d do it once for the shock value, then again for familiarity value and finally a third one to milk out any laughs left in our funny bones or funny teats. 2 – During the break I went to the sound booth to ask what software they use for their sound fx. They were being evasive so I’m like you have a sound machine? Yes thats it, whatever you say. Lol forgot Indians and Chinese like stealing ideas to make money so don’t ask trade secrets lol.

Mega big up Viv for this one man, fo sho!

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