Monday, September 30, 2013

Article on Devilstick "Boom" from 1996

Even High-tech Toy Industry Gives Devil Sticks Their Due

I found an article from March 1996 puplished in the Chicago Tribune about the increasing sales of devilsticks in the US.
Here are two of my favourite quotes but i recommend reading the whole article:

"Devil sticks ranked among the top 10 selling toys in speciality retail shops in late 1995, according to a survey published in the trade publication Playthings."

"In 1995, devil sticks became the No. 1 selling toy in Toys R Us of Canada and was picked up by a New York toy company called Happiness Express, which declined to release sales figures."

I hope that the "Devilstick Boom" continues, at least there´s no doubt that the amount of Devilstick-Vendors is still growing  and i feel like devilsticks become more common in the juggling community

Devilstick act by Kasper Jensen



I found that gem a few month ago and i was shocked how such an awesome act could slip my radar.
He´s doing technicly very challenging tricks (double balance to balancing one stick on the hand the other one on his nose) combined with great movement/dance and an very interesting (weird) character work.

if you´re interested in more off his works check out his channel, i especially liked his mime routine called "circusmachine"

https://www.youtube.com/user/nycirkus

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Devilstick Homepage Collection

Here´s a collection of all Devilstick homepages i am aware of, i hope the list is incomplede because it´s not that much and if you have a site to add just drop a comment and i´ll fix that

  that´s the only facebook group i know, it has about 150 members at the moment and is propably the number one place for questions and the hunt for new videos

www.devilstick.org

it´s pretty old but there are a lot of tricks described and also some other interesting content

http://www.devilstick.de/english/home.htm

is a old german site with a lot of animations and some other content

www.bravojuggling.com/en/

this is one of the most active site at the moment, they have a great interview series with a lot of "famous" stickers and a lot of interesting own content

http://www.stixguru.com/new/Tricks.htm

lot of trick tutorial videos

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/DevilStickForum/info

is the devilstick yahoo group, i don´t know if anyone is still active there have been a lot of people posting there in the past. if you want to know something it´s likely it has been discussed there before, unfortunetly its not always easy to find

http://www.sethoscope.net/devil-stick/

seth has tried out quite a few things with alternativ devilstick builds (including a triangle), you can also read about his trys to find a notation system for devilsticks. the sides quite old but theres still interesting stuff to find there

Devilstick Bonobo

Well the first Devilstick video has to be something special and for me there´s just one video that can earn this place.
I don´t know how many times i watched it, but it was propably the most inspiring juggling video in my life.

Most circusgeeks know Florent Lestage from winning silver at cirque de Demain and beiing a insane club-juggler but here´s a Devilstick video he posted 5 years ago which, in my oppinion, initiated the beginning of contemporary devilsticking.

http://youtu.be/RRWpwbZL-ng

If you are wondering why he hasn´t uploaded anything new since then, i have to tell you that he´s mainly doing professionel jugglers stuff and ain´t that much into devilstick but i saw him practising a bit at the ejc (european juggling convention) in toulouse this year and he can still do it.

for those of you who are interested here´s an interview from the awesome "stick heroes" interview series from bravojuggling

http://bravojuggling.blog.hu/2012/07/31/stick_heroes_july_2012

Welcome to my Devilstick-Blog

Hello and welcome to my Devilstick Blog :)

I´m sticking around for 12 years now and i´m quite confident that i´ve read and watched almost everything there is on devilsticks on the internet.
Sadly most of the Homepages seem to be quite old and havent been updated in years and some of my favourite videos are harder to find becouse there are so many stick videos beeing uploaded each day that filtering through got way harder in the last years.

So what i´ll try to do with my blog are these two things

1. Post an awesome Devilstick Video everyday
2. Write an article on any Devilstick related topic at least once a week.
3. Collect as much content on Devilsticks at one place as i can

I hope this will be interesting for people who are new to devilsticks as well as for sticknerds like me.
If there´s anything you´d like to read about, a video you want to see on my blog or anything else just leave a comment or write me a message.

Nevermind i´m looking towards a fun time running this blog and i hope your as excited as i am