GYMNASTICS IN OUR CITY, SORIA.

Hello bloggers! I’m going to talk to you about the sport I practice and how it is organised here in Soria. I think it is very interesting to know more about sports and about what they are like from the inside, not only what we see in the exhibitions, so here I’m going to give you some information about my favourite sport.

In our city there are two gymnastic clubs, one is called “Club Deportivo Gimnasia Soria” and the other “Club Deportivo Duero” .These two groups used to be part of “Club Deportivo Numancia”, a bigger one that not only included gymnastics, but also had football, basketball, volleyball, hockey…

Well, going back again to my topic, my club “Gimnasia Soria”, I’m going to explain what it consists of and how we prepare for our competitions and exhibitions.

Our team is divided into two types of gymnastics: aerobic and rhythmic. It is made up of 140 children aged between 5 and 18. Our training begins in august and lasts until the season ends, which is usually around May or June. But don’t think this sport is just about being flexible, this sport requires a lot of training and perseverance. You must be able to prepare all the elements that together will form part of your dancing. This also requires, apart from flexibility, concentration and strength. But not only that, we also have to consider our trainers’ work. They have to do a lot of things, first when the season starts they have to organise al the new and old club members. Then they have to choose the music for each performance and later design all their leotards. But that’s not all, they also have to federate each person who is going to compete. Then in our exhibitions and competitions all the years’ work is shown, that’s why it’s so intense.

I hope you have found this piece of information about gymnastics in Soria interesting. If you know other clubs, I’d like to know more about them!

Stupid concert

Welcome to the opening concert of “my name is blog James blog”. Today I’m going to teach you all the stupid things that can happen at a concert. Please, turn off your mobiles; the director had just appeared at the scene. He´s there to make the job of the musicians a bit more difficult just by using his hands.

But don´t underestimate the dangers of the director‘s work. The famous French director Lully died because he refused to cut his foot after hitting it with his metal baton while directing.

The music is starting. Get ready for the most hilarious play of the history of music. Imagine the director so happy directing with his eyes closed and suddenly, one by one, all the musicians start standing up and getting down from the scene. Yes, it´s the “farewell “symphony wrote by Haydn as an objection against the musicians' salary. But it isn’t the only musical joke of this composer: it is the second movement of a symphony. The music is sweet and calm, so slow, everybody is getting sleepy ....and suddenly the gong sounds so strong. Any of these horrible people would fall asleep again in the second movement of this surprise symphony.

And finally the” interrupted intermezzo” by Bartok. In this concerto the clarinet would clearly be confused and all the other instruments would start laughing at it by copying its errors. Even the tube and the oboe. But they shouldn’t, seeing that they are the instruments of which there are more jokes about (but not the only ones as the musicians are people that love them most, laughing at themselves).

For example, the oboes are well known for sounding like ducks, the sopranos for being incredibly narcissistic or the viola for being bad violinists. This is confirmed in the play in “Peter and the Wolf” where the oboe represents the duck.

Never forget the technical problems for a proper and surprising end of a concert. It is always a good moment for having a very obvious mistake while paying. But don’t get nervous, instead look at someone else and nobody will notice it was you.

Jumpstyle

You have probably heard about this type of modern dancing or have seen it, but do you know its story, how to dance it or about its popularity?

Jumpstyle is a developed form of oldschool, hardcore dance from the beginning of the 90s. The Jumpstyle appeared like a musical genre in Belgium and Holland during 1997 and it was played in discos by the oldschool boys. Initially, it wasn´t very popular and it didn´t have great success, however, through the next years jumpstyle began to be danced by a group of boys called “The Jumpers” in Holland, and its sophisticated and elegant style was rapidly adopted in the country over next two years. In 2006, with the first contests in Holland, France, Spain and Russia popularised the dance and it travelled from Holland to all of Europe. Jumpstyle is nowadays “conquering” North America and Australia.

You can find Jumpstyle in your own city too, there are little groups of boys called “Jumpers”, who can be seen near your house, in your high-school (I have seen people in my high-school who are thirteen years old dancing), or in your city´s square. Sometimes in Facebook you receive an invitation for an event to take part in a big concentration of jumpstyle in a huge city. These concentrations take place in mostly the biggest squares of the cities, nearing up to 10,000 people dancing at the same time.

Although it seems easy, it is a complicated dance and you must control your movements in a precise way so as not to fall or to get lost. The first thing you may learn while dancing jumpstyle is to warm up your legs for 10 minutes as it requires a high concentration and flexibility of your legs. I´m sure you are thinking that arms are not necessary… you are wrong. When you are dancing jumpstyle the coordination of movements between the opposite arm from the leg you are moving makes the “magic” in this dance. When you have finished of warning up you can look for Patrick Jumpen's website and learn how to dance it with tutorial videos.

I am now practising to dance Jumpstyle, and it is really difficult! Would you like to dance jumpstyle? Here you are two videos I like!

Erik Johansson and his optical illusions.

Could you imagine a house lifted up by four strings? And could you imagine a fish whose upper part is an island? Or could you imagine a scissor dividing the ground and a house by two? Nowadays, with technology, all these “crazy” images possible.

Erik Johansson is a 23year old Swedish man. Nowadays he is studying computer engineering. However, he is a passionate about photography. Moreover, he shows a great talent manipulating images captured by his camera lens. Erik has made all the images above (and many more) possible with a camera and some photomontage.

The technique used by Erik Johansson to achieve these incredible and unbelievable images is image overlay. He makes you feel as if everything in the photograph is real, and maybe it is. A photograph made up by a real fish and a real island which he places together. Johansson’s’ images are never just one photograph. He uses several photos and fuses them into several layers.

His last creation took place in a square in Stockholm. He created a cliff in the middle of this square. Obviously, this cliff was just a result of great photo retouching and much imagination. Well, it doesn’t seem extremely difficult. Maybe one day you and I will be doing this kind of photography!

Here I leave you a link to Erik Johansson web site. Here you can observe all of his creations and be aware of every of his new creations!