Knife Fight!

Did I get your attention with this blog title? Hehehehehe. I'm feeling about the same. It's just that left ear stuffed up.

Now for the knife fight. I had a demo team practice tonight. I just recruited four new members and it was their first practice. They're all pretty young - about 5-7 years old. What's great about the young ones is that if they get out there in a performance and are really fierce, they steal the show. My older team members come up with some technically difficult and powerful routines. We hear ohhs and ahhs for their work but the audience is always charmed by the little ones so I keep recruiting them because they all get older and lose the kid charm.

I was trying to come up with a new routine for them. We use rubber knives in our regular training for my advanced classes. The kids really wanted to get the chance to use them. One kid said it would be cool to just find the weapons on the ground. That gave me an idea so now I have two knives on the ground tied with fishing line. Two kids pretend to be walking along and spot the knives but when they bend over to pick them up the two other kids pull them away; like the old money trick. Then the "pullers" pick up the knives and hold them up in a menacing way. The first two kids look surprised then reach behind them and pull two knives of their own out of the back of their waistbands. Now the the pullers look surprised. It goes on from there but they never do "fight" with the knives and at one point an older team member just walks up and takes them away saying "kids shouldn't be playing with knives" so the end up battling hand to hand.

It went really well. These kids are excited to be in our performance group. I really enjoy using my creativity in this way and seeing what my students come up with themselves. I love taking my team out to perform in the community. Our next gig will be for a group of mentally challenged adults who always LOVE our shows.