"Forever Young"

Just a quick mix of haphazard footage tossed in with little regard to rhyme or reason.

Summer Lovin' 2006

To the tune of......ah, I'll just leave it as a surprise. Enjoy! It's the first out of a few summer camp videos I hope to make before the end of the year. Maybe you'll even see some that actually has some gymnasticking going on there!

Paula Huntanova (?!?) Comedy Gymnastics

Paul Hunt is just amazing. The comedy is fine, but I've always been impressed by his actual physical talent. There is grace and skill in his clumsiness.


Bar routine from 1981 Nadia Tour:



Two more to check out:

1988 comedy beam

1988 comedy floor

Hat tip: Rick McCharles.

Theanthropology

Thea and Oona graduated from intermediates to level five team at the end of 2005. Since I hadn't been working much with team, I haven't done as much filming of Thea as I would have liked to have done, this year. And when I do work with team, I'm too busy actually coaching to do much in the way of filming.

Thea has been a favorite subject matter for me to video-chart for a few reasons. One is that she seemed to take an immediate liking to me from day one, when she moved up from Sara's intro class to my beginning/advanced; and whenever that happens, it's hard not to like someone back. That was over 2 years ago. What I remember about her is that she had really long hair and would tap my shoulder and say, "Watch Michael...I can do 20 chin ups." And she loved doing them. Not so much anymore.

So that brings me to reason #2: she's a pretty strong kid. Not the strongest I've seen, but she could be if it were the primary focus of her gymnastics; which it is not. She only trains about 9 hours a week; about 4 when she was in intermediates.

I've always been attracted to the beauty of a gymnast's strength. When I was young and strong, I felt superhuman, being able to move my body around, suspend it, seemingly defying gravity. It was like my body weighed a feather. I miss that feeling. When I watch Thea, I think she is experiencing some of that feeling. It's her physical strength that has helped her progress and acquire her skills as much as anything. I think she is actually lacking a bit in the coordination department; yet her physical strength is able to compensate for that, and she is capable of acquiring skills pretty rapidly because of it, in many instances. She probably takes her strength somewhat for granted, not knowing what it is like not to be so strong and light; it's kind of like one's fast twitch and slow twitch muscles, where you either have it or you don't.

Thea's biggest weakness still is her understanding of body shape and artistic form; once she grasps these things, she should blossom into a very elegant and powerful gymnast.

The third reason why she now has 4 music videos made of her when some of the kids I have worked with over the past 2 years (I've only been doing this film-making for about that long) have yet to see even one of themselves made, is that the music I originally selected and the theme I had chosen for her, is ripe for movie parody sequels. Usually what dictates what project I'm going to do next is artistic inspiration. For some of the girls, I just don't have a particular theme or song in mind, to tell a story. For Thea, I have it all charted out, based largely on the music. I have a number of favorite "epic-feel" soundtracks in mind. And there's just something fun about making a series; I do it so I can listen to the music as much as anything else.

I was going to include footage of her doing level 5 routines; but it didn't seem to go with the music (and I've been squeezing everything I like out of the two Basil Poledouris soundtracks I have- Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer). I've pretty much exhausted these two soundtracks and will either go with Last of the Mohicans or "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Not sure if I'll keep the "Conan-like" main titles. But I do like consistency...



I'm not absolutely satisfied with the footage; but it's the footage I have. I rarely get to "stage" what I'd actually would like to film, from a cameraman and cinematographer's strandpoint (remember: I'm usually supposed to be coaching, not playing film-maker). Or ask for a second take. So usually what I put together in the videos are from scraps and a roll of the dice of what I happen to capture on film, at the moment, good or bad.

If you've missed the previous episodes and are too internet/blog-navigation-challenged to check the sidebar and figure it out, here are the previous vids:

Riddle of Strength and Thealogy

Theatricks