Doing a footbag demo

Posi-Cole · Post by **Posi-Cole** » 19 Sep 2004 13:49

At the end of the month, there is a coffee house/talent show type thing in my university residence.

Sergey (ling on the forums) and myself have decided that we want to try to do a footbag demo at this event. Neither of us have ever done an organized demo like this, so I was just looking to get some advice/feedback from some of the people who have done demos of this nature before, or just anyone with an opinion at all. The main question I have is:

What format would be best to hold the attention/impress the age group (17-21 year olds). Would it be best to do some sort of informational, describing the basics and showing demos of clipper/toe, etc etc, and then maybe go into a little bust session, or would it be better just to bust the whole time to music, or what?

If anyone has any specific things that they know has worked well before for them, I would love to hear it. Other than that, any random tips or bits of information anyone else has for doing stuff like this would be more than welcome in this thread.

Thanks.

Posi-Cole · Post by **Posi-Cole** » 19 Sep 2004 13:57

I should also mention that it will probably only be about 3-5 minutes in length.

zachatree · Post by **zachatree** » 19 Sep 2004 15:49

im doing a footbag thing for my school talent show, i didnt want to at first but all my friends said it would be awsome way of spreading kicking threw school, so with some thoght i desided it was a good idea and plan on doing it

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 19 Sep 2004 18:28

This is how I my demos these days.

I sometimes give a little speech before the demo - but prefer not to.

I find some really pumpy music without controversial lyrics (like swearing) that I think most people will like (as background music - not to stand around listening too) - stuff like The Prodigy. Hopefully that builds up throught out the song - so it starts light and gets bigger/louder/thicker/faster or whatever towards the end.

I then basically do an improvised routine to the music.

I start with really easy stuff - maybe just some consecutive kicking and stuff like that. I then do some tiltless easy stuff and some "party trick" kind of moves. This part gets everybodies attention. I then move onto a guiltless section and like to finish off with a big impressive move like PS whirl or something ducking (pheonix).

The guiltless section starts with mainly bops, then slowly builds into mainly shuffle. - so off the top of my head something like this:

butterfly>butterfly>ss butterfly>butterfly>ss butterfly>pdx mirage>butterfly>pdx mirage>ss butterfly>osis>butterfly>whirl>pdx mirage>smear>butterfly>blur>butterfly>ripwalk>blur>dimwalk>osis>osis>butterfly>ducking clipper>diving clipper>butterfly>ripwalk>sidewalk>ripwalk>crispy dlo>smog>dimwalk>barfly>osis etc.

My game is based around shuffle so that's what I tend to do a lot of it - only do stuff you are confident of doing without drops. Take a few risks - but only small ones and don't feel constrained by adds - I often put in far legovers and clippers as way of catching my breath and getting ready for a hard section. The most important thing to do is not to drop the bag. Don't worry if you do, but don't make things hard for yourself doing stuff that you might drop. Also the more complicated a move is the less likely the audience are to understand it. I find very little difference in diffilculty between barfly and blurriest and if I were in a shred circle I'd hit a few blurriests but doing a demo it's very rare - barfly looks more impressive because they can understand the move more - the dexes are slower and there are less of them. Try not to over do things that you think are impressive - they'll find them more impressive if you don't do them much because they'll be something different and the fact that you don't do it much will mean that they'll think it's hard. I get more reaction from a single diving clipper than I get for doing something like toe ducking clipper>diving clipper>ducking clipper>ducking clipper>diving mirage>phoenix>ducking butterfly - because you keep doing it lots, they'll think it's easy and it won't stick out so much.

My demos usually go for about 3 - 5 minutes and I tend to have around 5 drops. I always try to pace myself and I know my body well enough to know if it's worth attempting certain moves or not. It would be much better if I choreographed the whole thing to the music - but that's a lot of work and I can't really be bothered

I always try to have some hands outs with information on them at the end - in particular I have http://www.footbag.org http://www.modified.ca http://www.ausfootbag.org http://www.flipsider.com http://www.acefootbags.com and my email address - I put owheelj at footbag.org or owheelj at ausfootbag.org as my email address since these both look more professional than my other two - lizard_king207 at hotmail.com and beast9 at gmail.com

I hope all that helps!

zachatree · Post by **zachatree** » 20 Sep 2004 04:42

ya ya this is just what i was thinking, i was thinking id go on stage just do some basic kicks few stalls then start doing 2 add dexs, like alot of butterflys/ss butterflys, legovers, far legovers, mirages, pixies, then start doing 3 adds and duck a few pixes maybe a pixie butterfly, and i was thinking of doing a phonix for my last move, i can duck my pixies, and i can do ducking butterfly from my toe, the talent show isnt till the end of school so i got a long time to train, i think in the next month or 2 i will be hiting my first few phonixs, hell maybe it will be sooner. I wasnt antisapating on hiting a ducking butterfly for a long while, and i did 3 back to back last night

ither way my main point is to get kicking out to my peers and school, maybe this is a good way to start ever ones summer off, i was thinking about geting a shit load of Dud sand bags for 2 bucks then sell them for 4 and make a announce ment at the end of my rutien. with the exstra money i make i was planing on spending on new lavers and few 32s

its all about the footbag.

Thanks alot jermey that really did help alot. I understand what you mean, think about a person watching us kick and see are moves, they probley dont relize the difficulty of the moves we are hitting bc they have probley no idea how are feet are moveing in some tricks, i mean when i first starting shreding every thing in videos looked basicly the same, but now when i watch a vid im all in to it calling out loud the moves and very in to it. alot of friends watch vids with me and are really intrested in learning.

lets hope that i can get as many ppl percusing lavers and a bag as i can this is my only goal ( if i win the talent show i win like 1000 bucks... thats like 10 new 32s and 3 new shoes

) for real i was planing if i do win any of the 1st 2nd 3rd place prices im gonna spend the money on geting my friends who are geting in to kicking shoes an a bag figared that be the best thing to do.

Its all about footbag

thoght id add down at the bottom here.. that my one girl friend, this weekend was her bday and she got some white and pink leather lavers

thanks again jeremy

Posi-Cole · Post by **Posi-Cole** » 03 Oct 2004 19:28

Demo successfull!

It turns out I had to do the demo on my own, as the time when it was Sergey had to meet someone to work on an assignment.

Anyway, I was the second act of the talent show, and the first one didn't go for very long, so I didn't have much time to warm up/stretch.

The crowd was very receptive, and despite being a little tight and not putting my absolute best foot forward, I think I played well enough, and the response was pretty strong positive.

I started off with a joke or two, then explained what footbag was, and the difference between it and "Hacky Sack". Then I just linked some easy 2's and whatnot for about a minute or so. Then I did some "hard trick" demos ... Which was just atomsmasher, ducking butterfly, spinning clipper, and spinning hand catch into a bow to end it all off.

For some reason I couldn't hit atomsmasher or ducking butterfly, they kept rolling off my foot.. gah! Obviously I chose these moves because they appear quite difficult to the average non footbag player, but I'm fairly confident in hitting them, but it took me like 5 tries to get atomsmasher, and it still kind of rolled off my foot. Oh well, everyone still kind of went pretty crazy when it rolled off my foot, so whatever.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post the review and say that the demo went well, and opened a lot of people's eyes to footbag.

I have people in my residence coming up to me asking quesitons, and calling it footbag, and telling other people that Hacky Sack is a name brand .. Good stuff.

So far nobody seems interested in learning to play though .. Oh well, at least they are more educated on the matter.

SlashC · Post by **SlashC** » 23 Jan 2005 14:40

The edmonton footbag club is maybe doing a demo for the YMCA next friday!

It'll be for their "teen night" because apparently they don't have enough programming and the teens are just standing around. (Kind of like one of those junior dances.)... The idea being, that some of them might be interested in playing footbag... even if it's just kicking it around. Hopefully, we'll find a couple people interested in freestyle. If there's enough interested people it may even become a YMCA class! (A weekly group school session of sorts)

I made a poster for advertising and it can be viewed here:
http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/3776

Has anyone ever done this sort of demo before? Any suggestions? Also feel free to comment on my poster if you think something should be changed. The proposed format for the demo is also on the poster ^

I was also wondering if anyone has taught a footbag class before? (like what kind of format, warmup stretches, curriculm, how to motivate?, ect.)

footbinc · Post by **footbinc** » 24 Jan 2005 08:42

Ducking is a basic concept???

Doing a footbag demo

Doing a footbag demo

Footbag Demo