What do we want to see? (Closed for comments)
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From what I've been reading on previous posts, it seems to me that we should first all agree on what we want to see. Because then (and only then) we can discuss the rules in order to "force" riders to show us what we expect. So, let's talk about what we want to see!
PS: I'm sorry to take part so late in the discussions, but I agree with Gossi, the time limit for discussions is too short. Since everyone agree the current system isn't working and almost nobody has plenty of time to think and write about this, we should have more time to discuss.
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Here is what I think:
I think that through Unicon history, the community of unicyclist has always wanted to be considered "not as circus". Because everyone (in the world) has a shitty vision of what circus really is and, when they see us, they immediately think of the clown juggling on his wheel with a spoon on the nose whistling "the f*****g song that you associate with circus". So, we say to them: "no, we are not in the circus. What we do is a full sport of its own" And, I think we're right to do so (I mean differentiate us from what people think). But, now that we are a "large enough" community, I also think that we shouldn't forget where it all started: in the circus, for the audience entertainment (I don't like this word, it stinks of TV) or just pleasure (prefer this one). For me, ARTISTIC freestyle is the only way to still have a trace of that history at Unicon. Be reassured, it doesn't mean I want to see what was done in the circus back in those days, but just something that could go on a stage (a circus-one or not) and don't look silly, empty, "non-stage-like", boring. (a good series of adjectives that fit pretty good with what we usually see at Unicon).
If you want examples of really good modern circus, just search for "festival mondial du cirque de demain" and enjoy! (I don't like every artists, but they're all "on stage" so much, that you could actually take the stage away and it wouldn't change much...) Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that's pretty much what we want to see and this festival is actually a competition. So, why don't we try to copy circus instead of ice skating or gymnastic? Which, in my opinion, look both boring, without surprise. It's true that they're both very impressive and "beautiful" sports, but do you seriously think that what they do is art? There is absolutely no thinking, no research, no innovation, no great human emotions or ideas, no story, nothing. (I may be a bit harsh here, but I don't see the athlete's touch in his performance) That being said, I still prefer the ice skating judging system to our current one although I don't like the wording of it (and it may be because of that wording that skaters can't be artistically innovative if they want to win). But back to the question: why not circus? I remember reading stuffs about riders not being performers or artist. Well, then they should maybe reconsider doing artistic freestyle and focus on x-style (or anything "only-technic-like"). Or, they could also include dancing and clown (not the way we usually see it) into their training. I personally do "stage stuff" since I'm 4 years old and practiced dancing and clowning once a week for 8 years in order to be who I am on stage. Just saying that one can't be artistically good if he didn't train for it. Those stuffs are just as hard as technical ones.
Back to the main question: I want to see art, because artistic freestyle is the only place left for it. I want to see someone who thought and worked the artistic side just as much as he worked on his tricks. I want to see people that are "on-stage" and not training with music, costume and assistance. I want to see creativity, beauty, emotions, stories, imagination. I want to be taken away from that gym for a trip into the riders ideas. I want to see humans expressing themselves.
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"I want to be taken away from that gym for a trip into the rider's ideas."
That's good. I like that a lot. And just "art". And maybe we *do* need to explain this to our rulebook readers. Maybe they don't get it; don't realize the possibilities of Freestyle on unicycles. Most people have to travel really, really far to see a bunch of unicyclists doing "art" together. Or even just one, doing it for a non-unicycling audience. I have been around variety and circus entertainers for many years, but even I haven't seen enough of this. It's pretty rare.
I want to see Thomas Tiercy. I want to see Kazuhiro Shimoyama. I want to see Kan Sayaka. And many others; that was just a quick few off the top of my head. There are many different styles to unicycle Freestyle, and all are valid, when done well. I want creativity, I want comedy, I want to be amazed.
The rules for Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain would be great to see. Do you know if they have anything published? Theirs might be much more generalized, if they have to cover the whole range of circus-type entertainment. But if we can find them, they may offer great guidance for us.
Lastly I'd like to offer that everyone (in the world) does not necessarily have a bad vision of what circus really is. From what I've experienced, the vast majority of people have poor opinions of circus perhaps because they have seen poor circuses. Or no actual circuses at all; just clips, bits, silly references and everything but the actual thing. Some places have a great tradition of circus, like Russia, where people probably have a much better opinion of it as an art form, because they have access to it. I guess what I'm saying is that, in the Freestyle arena, we don't reject circus at all, but we prefer "good" circus.
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I agree that if we want to see "art" we have to define it. Many people turn off when they hear of anything artsy, not because they are incapable of being moved or even against it but, IMHO, have only been exposed to "art" that is really bad or even inaccessible. For example I've always detested avant guarde art because it doesn't make sense to me and is often offensive. But, after learning it is designed to be experimental and cutting edge (the front guard) I've softened my opinion and even appreciate it to some extent.
I could wax philosophic about what is and isn't art, but my point is we need to define it in terms that are clear and achievable by the general public. Hence the question being raised: What do we want to see?
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When I think about art, I accompanying think about quality. For me, these two go together hand-in-hand. I think it comes to no surprise that John mentions three riders that I also associate with art and would recommend these three riders to somebody else, when I'm asked about art. I independently talked to Yuka and Satomi Sakaino about art. These ladies are amazing and I would encourage everybody to do the same if you have the chance. Unfortunately art is not very well recognized in the judging system and by judges and I often heard this as a reason for the demise of great riders in the competitive scene. If I should count the routines at german nationals that I consider art, I would have had more fingers on one hand than needed for this job.
That's why I think the recent presentation (god kill that word) changes Patricia proposed are the right way along with the cheatsheet. If Thomas could help with the refinement of the definitions, Patricia will heartly appreciate it.
One thing I'd like to add is that we damaged the rider's mindset over the past years with the broken rulebook. At the moment, the routines are created to get the most points from the rulebook and not created to be beautiful (well I can especially observe this in germany, japan has another tradition and these few riders that care about art). Also often in practice I hear sentences like "Oh, I really need to put all these tricks into my routine and I want them all", without questioning which tricks actually match the content of their routine. So, they value tricks higher than the routine. That is X-Style, not Artistic Freestyle UniDancing (which is the proper term). To be fair, before X-Style was born there was no alternative given to the riders, so freestyle was their stage to do that. Now, with X-Style it must become more clear to everybody which competition they really want to start. This Unicon we saw many routines that would have better been X-Style runs and we will still see them next Unicon. It is, this process needs time. What can we do, to help here? Put an explaining paragraph in the beginning of the freestyle section, that defines the competitions and also what to expect from each competition? Maybe.
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I completely agree with looking for more ways to encourage freestyle routines to be works of art.
The tricky part comes when turning art into something that can be judged. Thomas, do you have rules for the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain or is it not something that is judged?
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Sorry for that, but let me just first "correct" some of the things said there:
>Most people have to travel really, really far to see a bunch of unicyclists doing "art" together.
Yes, but they don't need to travel that far to see good circus. From there, they can take everything: mastery of body movements, facial expressions, poetry, etc but also, density of tricks (which is usually pretty low, but "that's what make it entertaining"), mastery of tricks (circus artists never show their latest tricks, only the one they really master).
>"art", we have to define it.
Hell, no! It's impossible to define art. Because "everything" can be art as long as you think it as being art. Plus, we don't need the definition, because everyone agrees on what's art or not (I'm thinking of the names given by John). I mean, it's obvious when someone worked hard on his body, moves, expressions and tried to touch the audience with some emotions, story or "message". Notice that I've used the word "try" (...tried to touch...), because whether he succeeded or not is a personal, totally objective thing, whereas the fact that he tried is subjective and, even better, can be kind of "measured"; there is a notable difference between someone who really tried and someone who tried but with no conviction. For instance, I personally didn't like Kazuhiro's routine in Italy, but I do recognize it as a piece of art and think he totally deserves his first place whereas Matt Sindelar's routine in Montreal was hardly the beginning of a try to perform art, but clearly wasn't and that's why I think he doesn't deserve his first place (with all the respect I have for the f*****g hard tricks he can do, he's a master at it). 3 last examples: first I think you forgot to mention Joachim Ciocca, who, just as Kazuhiro, offered us a piece of art in Italy (that I loved). Second, almost any german guy is a good example of a "no-try". Finally, a good example of a "fairly good try" would be Philipp Henestrosa.
>Artistic Freestyle UniDancing (which is the proper term).
No it's not. I would say that UniDancing is one of the possible way to do Artistic Freestyle, but doesn't cover it all. (AcB but B¢A, mathematically speaking)
>Put an explaining paragraph in the beginning of the freestyle section, that defines the competitions and also what to expect from each competition? Maybe.
Don't think so. The more we write stuff, the more people will want to stick to it in order to get points, and people can be pretty stupid when interpreting words for such purpose. (see the abusive use of props at Unicons due to the "props points" in the presentation sheet)
>I think the recent presentation changes Patricia proposed are the right way along with the cheatsheet.
I personally think that it's an improvement and that there are some good stuff in it, yes, but it's not the right way... Do we really want to "become" ice sakting? Cloned routines? Easier to judge, yes, but no art to me.
>When I think about art, I accompanying think about quality.
I agree that art implies quality (even though that could be discussed), but clearly not the opposite; quality doesn't implies art. (A->B doesn't mean B->A, mathematically speaking)
>Now, with X-Style it must become more clear to every body which competition they really want to start.
You got a pretty good point here.
>Encourage freestyle routines to be works of art.
You've got a pretty good word here. Thanks for it!
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Now, about the rules of the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain, they are very simple: there is no official written circus rules! No time limitation (and that's "what makes it entertaining"). Artists don't know what they will be judged on, they don't know the criteria, but they know them at the same time, they just don't name it. So the "competitor" have nothing to stick to because there is nothing written, just a few concepts that are obvious for everyone. PLUS, the jury is formed by 10 directors from the top 10 of circus schools in the world, which means they know exactly what they are looking at (artistically speaking) and understand each difficulty of any circus discipline. Plus, after seeing everybody, they talk all together to decide who should be first, second and third (that's it) and do this for each category (which are: individual, groups with less than 4 people , groups with more than 5 people) They usually spend the night on this and are sleeping during the gala show and award ceremony the next day...
We should inspire us from that. I mean, instead of trying to add and/or change rules, we should first suppress a lot of them! I'm currently working on a system and will soon open a discussion about it, but I still need to speak with some professional circus artists who went through festivals to get a real idea (divided into criterias with a good wording) of how circus and "art level" can be judged. So back to the main point: do we all agree on what we want to see? Even if we can't put good words on it, I think we all recognize a work of art when we see one, even if we don't like it and that's what we want to see. If nobody disagree with that point, then it should be something never to forget while making the rules and we should also remember this (just like Gossi said): competitors at Unicon are searching for victory and thus if they see something explicitly written, they stick to it. That's why I think we should write the very minimum and stay vague in the rulebook (but with very well chosen words) so that competitors question themselves and thus start doing art.
So if someone disagree that we want to see art, please say so. Whether you think we can or cannot make that happen, that's another issue.
PS: I'll start the discussion about judging it differently in 5 days, max.
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I agree that we want to see art, however, I am skeptical about how I would see it implemented into freestyle unicycling. Without criteria how do we differentiate very similar looking routines? For example, how would we decide who is better in two routines done by nine year olds, both with little to no artistry? Or how do we decide between two Japanese girl routines with similar music and costume and feeling in the same age group?
I am curious to see what you come up with.
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To those who say we must "DEFINE ART" I hold up my vampire cross to ward you off. Attempts to define art are never definitive. It's like trying to describe color to a blind person who has never had sight. But then others would say it cannot be defined (which is technically accurate); therefore we shouldn't have rules for it. Well that doesn't work either. What we have currently is pretty abstract; written by people who have watched Freestyle for a long time and maybe don't remember how to see it through the eyes of a newbie. Or a person with fresh vision, like Thomas.
In asking for Art, we must be open to many interpretations of what Art is. Many different types of performance can all be great works of art, while all being in conflict with each other. But this is what I love about Unicycle Freestyle. It's still new enough that lots of fresh ideas are still out there. And Unicon is the place where we see the largest collections of different Freestyle interpretations, making life difficult for both halves of the judging team.
The Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain, because it covers the whole genre of circus, is wise to not attempt to describe what "best" performances should be. They rely on their expert judges to know what works as a great performance. And Cirque de Demain is not a sport competition. It is the worlds most prestigious showcase of professional circus performances. It is an audition. It is business. While some of the winning act may be more esoteric or abstract than others, all are likely to be fully booked the following year. The judges not only detect what's the best "Art", they are also mindful of which acts audiences will be attracted to.
Unfortunately unicycling doesn't have anything to compare that to. The closest thing is Unicon Freestyle, but most of our judges have a limited or minimal background in watching or performing live variety arts. Many just don't have the background to be Presentation judges. Many people end up doing Presentation judging because they are not confident in their ability to do Techincal judging. This problem would be somewhat eliminated if the judging weren't divided (and you wouldn't need as many), but that's for a different discussion. I guess I'm just saying we are weak on the Presentation judging side.
Still the best way I can think of to improve this is to build a library of "top" Freestyle performances, and post them somewhere with open discussions about each, where people can talk about the specifics of what happens in each. Such a library could also contain links to other variety act videos. People could post their favorites, and maybe start off the discussion (for each) with why they think it's so good. At the same time we should encourage any potential judges (of either type) to get out and watch as many performances as they can. Not just on a tiny YouTube screen, but try to see as much live stuff as possible also. Live is how we do our competitions, and live is different from a recording.
I'm curious to see what Thomas Tiercy is putting together. Maybe what we need is to take a totally new approach. We seem to agree that we definitely expect to see Art. And I think we mostly all agree that we can't define that art with a set of written words. We have to give some descriptions, but they should be flexible enough to explain intent without being too specific about what to do. For every "rule" of good performing, there are examples of doing the opposite and having it work well.
Photography is similar. There are many "rules" of making "good" photographs, but they aren't intended as absolutes; they are guidelines. Such as the rule of thirds, how to focus, placement of subject within the frame, etc. While following those rules tends to be safe, breaking them often leads to the most interesting images. We must provide some guidelines, along with the caveat that they are just that; and not instructions.
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Thomas have you had time to develop something?
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Yes, but I have some university exams, and don't have the time to write about it. Sorry I couldn't write it before the exams. They are almost done, so I'll get back to it soon enough.
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> Thomas, do you have rules for the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain or is it not something that is judged?
>
Last year I briefly met the host, the owner of the circus building building made by Napoleon.
After seeing this question I asked an (reliable) agent (who's usually invited there, and in Monte Carlo to) on how things actually are ranked and judged. I still have no clear answer, and highly doubt there truly is a system.
Last year I also met up again with the last unicyclist to win gold there, by now 20 years ago.
> The rules for Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain would be great to see. Do you know if they have anything published?
>
At one point I have seen requirements about entering competition. But no rules about judging.
The only one clear rule about Demain is you need to be young.
An example of that, is my former "neightbour" - solo good for bronze, but when he finally truly had something they were only special guest performers, being too "old" to compete.
Now think of written rule-set that would create a system to fairly rank that duo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D1kTKZIKKY
against this act
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUhvTMD20ug - coolest visual trick around 3:00
(who I've once booked that family before the kids were born).
Despite the huge variety, one thing is common: almost anything at this festival is costing a dedicated lifetime, or even generations.
Sure I wish to see such a level in unicycling competition, but in the near future I don't see that possible.
What I'm always worried of, is that rules are pushing too much in a fixed direction, and so may potentially be restricting.
But another thing addressed here, and what I wrote in another post; I often wonder if art, in particular the not-so-candy-art, is not mis-judged due to personal taste.
> So if someone disagree that we want to see art, please say so.
>
Realisticly, how many unicyclists are capable of creating art, and how much are just another blend of [1] some catchy tune, [2] haloween-alike costume, [4] or two for the unwritten mandatory costume-change, [5] the background for the bonus points.
So yes, it's definitly good to make us realize what we want to see, though I think to translate that to a vision (down among competitors, coaches, etc) may go beyond the rulebook. I anyway do hope to hear from you.
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It's a good question, to wonder if art, especially non-standard art, is misjudged due to personal taste. But maybe it's a null question. As art moves farther from mainstream expectations, the ability to make "correct" interpretations goes away. Many artists like the idea of putting something out there, and seeing the various types of reactions, and interpretations, that people come up with on their own. This happens with Freestyle performances as well.
"Realisticly, how many unicyclists are capable of creating art, and how much are just another blend of [1] some catchy tune, [2] haloween-alike costume, [4] or two for the unwritten mandatory costume-change, [5] the background for the bonus points."
All are art, but some are much less generic than others. You have described what we pretty much get in each competition, a combination of all of those things. Were a "cookie cutter" performance in a common style, performed very well, often defeats a more creative, artsy presentation that lacks in the Technical, or execution areas. We welcome riders to bring us whatever they've got.
But in response to your last sentence, we do need to give some guidance. As judges, it is up to us to pick the "best" performances and to do that, we have to have some ground rules of what we consider to be good, vs. not-good. But like Cirque de Demain we have to keep it pretty open.