Mayhap:
And so we kick off the month in the traditional way . . . by kicking.
Okay, maybe that's not everybody's family tradition. I admit there have been times
that even I have wondered whether my lifestyle is a little unconventional, but compared to most
people I know, I'm really pretty mainstream.
I'm doing a few more shows for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science--this time for the
"Viking Festival," adding that little extra bit of "living history" to the Denver Stop of the
Smithsonian's "Vikings, the North Atlantic Saga" travelling exhibit--and, just to make things
that much more challenging, most of the usual stunt performers were scheduled to
be jumping out of an airplane at the time.
A flying airplane, as it happens, which makes it all the more difficult to be
running back and forth between the two locations, especially since the crew with the airplane
wasn't planning on dropping the stuntpeople anywhere near the museum.
It would have made for a terrific entrance if they did, but then there'd be the whole wardrobe
conflict problem to deal with, because it's very difficult to make a single costume that is historically
accurate for both a ninth-century Viking warrior and a paratrooper.
So today the members of our new band of Viking marauders got together to block out the
basic choreography for the planned fight sequences (no guarantee that there won't be
any unplanned fight sequences too; sometimes when you have an especially
enthusiastic audience, you get the urge to do a little extra). This time I'm working with
Daryl Rolando (whom you may remember as the long-haired swordsman in Tiger Street
and the short-haired colonel in Dragon and the Hawk), the Tattooed Food
Critic himself. Bobby Black
[ www.noctul.com ],
who is probably the most famous pro wrestler/food critic around, and local artist Bryan Crump
[ www.angelfire.com/co/SilverArtifice ], who hadn't
previously done stunt work for stage or screen, but was keen to give it a try and didn't
seem to have any trouble at all when running through the performance in the training area.
Just one of the many occasions when it's convenient to have your own dojo on hand--in this case,
Warrior Quest International [ www.warriorquest.com ]--where the main training room has a
particularly large practice area with well-padded floors, much like the Museum lacks.
But that just gives you that extra motivation not to fall wrong at the performance itself. We'll be
dragging some of the padded obstacles, springboards, and crash pads over to the museum
anyway. They're just about as authentically ninth-century Norse as vinyl-covered foam can be.
I think that's important, don't you?