The Perks of Skill-Sharing, with Michal Čapek from T.E.T.R.I.S.
It’s easy to feel anonymous, lonely and isolated in a big city. On the other hand, big cities tend to be full of opportunities to pursue our various passions. You can bet that there is someone out there who shares your interests. I feel that in Prague, it’s very important to build platforms around our passions and interests. Where we can find each other and can share our experience, collaborate, and inspire each other.
I interviewed, earlier this year, one of the biggest personalities of the Czech visual performance world, Vojta Stolbenko, about his Roztoč festival (read the interview here) I found the huge community and skill-sharing aspect of the festival especially enchanting. In the search for more insight, I contacted one of my old fencing mates, Michal Čapek, who is a talented artist in juggling, fire and light performing. I hoped to learn more about his own experience with skill-share, which can provide inspiration to any of us in our fields of interest.
Michal
For the sake of convenience rather than an exceptional atmosphere we met with Michal at Costa Coffee at the shopping center at Chodov. While I’m savoring my americano, Michal plays with the straw of his iced-tea and starts unfolding his story, “Visual performance is my hobby number one. I do other things but this takes most of my time.” Michal comes from a small town right outside of Prague called Brandýs nad Labem. He has taught juggling for six years and is also part of a professional group of performers called T.E.T.R.I.S. I’m firstly curious how a person gets to a hobby like that, “I learned my first few tricks from a drunk friend at a party about 15 years ago,” Michal laughs, “And after that, I started looking up new tricks on the internet, YouTube mainly.”
Learning in a Community
“I studied alone for almost a year,” Michal says but adds that whenever his friends saw him practicing there was always someone who also wanted to learn a couple of cool tricks. “So eventually, after that one year, I was surrounded by a group of friends who wanted to learn on a regular basis. After about five more years we found out about a community in Prague where we could share our skills. It’s so much more fun to learn together!”
Nowadays, there is an even larger community of jugglers in Prague which has also a presence on Facebook or Instagram. “You can just come to someone and ask, ‘Hey, can I try that?’ And that works. I don’t know anyone who would refuse to teach you something. The juggling community is a very friendly one, and the first few tricks are very easy to learn. After that, it’s about motivation and time, and coordination of hands and other body parts.”
“Most people stay on their three tricks and are very satisfied with that. Because when there is a family event they can go, ‘Hey, I know this!’ And show off their three tricks. And after a year, ‘Hey, I know this!’… Still those three tricks.” Michal laughs. “But a few people learn step by step more stuff and start performing. If you have good people around you, you can quickly become a decent performer.”
Festivals as a Skill-Sharing Platform
“Skill-share is one of the main reasons for organizing festivals and large meetings. If you go to a festival, you have a big chance of meeting someone who will teach you something new.” Michal mentions the example of Roztoč fest, “I like that event. Because Vojta Stolbenko and all of the organizers have great contacts all over the world and bring together great performers and great teachers. People that a common mortal has no chance to meet otherwise.”
“The only downside is that most of the Czech festivals are for experienced jugglers, not for beginners,” Michal informs me about the room for improvement and adds, “But our group, T.E.T.R.I.S. co-organizes a children’s charity fire and movement festival targeted for beginners. It’s called Incendio and it’s in Litoměřice.”
New Tricks and Performance Building
“So how exactly do you learn something new?” I ask. “I see a new trick, I ask the performer to show it to me divided into smaller steps and when I understand the basic moves, I can step by step build the combo trick. And after that, I train and train, till my muscles learn those moves… and hope that I don’t fuck that up during the performance,” At that moment, Michal accidentally catapults his straw from the iced-tea in the air. We watch it complete a couple of somersaults before landing on the ground. “Ta-da!” I exclaim and think about asking Michal to break it down for me in smaller steps.
“Anyway,” he continues, “in our group, we build sequences to music. First, we need good music to build on.” Michal guides me through the show creative process. I learn they mix and match old and new tricks and also get inspiration from other groups. “We borrow a few tricks from other performers but the whole sequence is all our work. And the hardest part is to sync it all within the group so that we do the same thing at the same time.”
T.E.T.R.I.S.
The fire and light performance group T.E.T.R.I.S. established in 2007 and started with performing seriously eight years ago. “Our large milestone was our presence at big Czech festivals. We met some world-class jugglers and learned some nice routines which helped us to move our performance to a whole new level,” Michal says. Besides, they won a couple of contests which granted them a place among gala shows’ performers.
“And then I must mention the EJC,” Michal adds to the list of big milestones and success The European Juggling Convention, the largest juggling convention in the world, “because we were chosen out of 200 groups that were involved in the convention, to be one of six or seven performers that do a show on the fire stage of this event. Every year, we have some kind of target, some show to look forward to. This helps us to improve our performance, focus our efforts on this event, it is a great motivation to do something new, work on that, and after that sell that to our customers.”
“Our group performs at company events, weddings, town meetings, festivals… We have different shows for different amounts of people. We have two to six performers doing shows from five to thirteen minutes.” Michal describes. “Thirteen minutes? That’s a very specific number,” I comment. “Because fifteen is too long for people in the audience,” Michal explains, “You have only a limited chance to keep the attention of the audience. And after that, all they see is fire, ring, ring, ring. There are groups that have a one-hour performance, but it’s probably five minutes of performance and 55 minutes of boring,” he laughs. “You want to end the performance at the point of the maximum attention and leave the audience in the best mood.”
Sharing Is Caring
Two months ago I started to learn how to play ukulele (read the post here) and that’s one of the reasons why it really resonates with me to see a community of people, such as the Prague jugglers’ one, that excels at creating platforms for skill-sharing. Last week I joined group ukulele sessions with Maarten Crefcoeur (read an interview with him here) and found that learning in a group of people who can inspire and challenge each other is super fun and motivating and I will definitely check out what ukulele festivals and meet-ups are out there.
I hope you found something inspiring for yourself too and if you also got curious to see Michal with T.E.T.R.I.S. performing, book their show and/or follow them on their
The rest of September 2020 is in the name of Prague fashion (or the lack of it) and dedicated to thoughts about ethical shopping. So stay tuned, subscribe below and follow on Facebook. Thank you for reading!
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