Where do I start ?

First topic message reminder :

Hi, we're just doing some updating on this thread fixing links etc. So some pics and vids may not display. We'll be done soon, thanks MSO

So you've just found out about the Melbourne Shuffle, and you want to know more. You've come to the right place

The Melbourne Shuffle is an underground dance culture, which began in Melbourne (Australia) in the early 1990's and has now spread around the world.

It's a friendly inclusive culture. All nations, races, languages, abilities, old and young, male and female, are welcome.

There's a lot you can learn, in Shuffle moves, music, fashion, art works, video, meet-ups, crews, teams all associated with the Shuffle.

So please, don't be shy, we welcome people new to the Shuffle, and we're happy to help with whatever we can. So please ask...

No worries, let us know how you get on

hi mr. admin,
thanks for your info/help & sorry for the late reply.
you've help me alot!
im glad if you can watch & comment on my latest video!

https://mso1.forumotion.com/my-latest-vid-f7/naqi-aka-haunter-mas-t96.htm#326

thx~
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my second video after 3 weeks of shuffle!
please give me some comment.
i hope i can improve!



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No way, only 3 weeks !!! That's great. And tackling the stairs too like Bo Jangles, well done.

I'm gonna post this on the main site, fantastic.

You'll be fine, once your body starts getting used to the moves you'll sharpen up and get a bit of spring into your feet. But that's just practice building up your muscles. You've got the ideas happening thats the big part, reversing the running man, and spins are well timed and interesting moves. and the stairs, it really gets you thinking verticaly as well as horizontal. Nice to see someone stop playing tennis to join you in a shuffle too

Very nice little video production there to, great music choice right down to the end credts, well done

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Garry wrote:No way, only 3 weeks !!! That's great. And tackling the stairs too like Bo Jangles, well done.

You'll be fine, once your body starts getting used to the moves you'll sharpen up and get a bit of spring into your feet. But that's just practice building up your muscles. You've got the ideas happening thats the big part, reversing the running man, and spins are well timed and interesting moves. and the stairs, it really gets you thinking verticaly as well as horizontal.

wahh..thank you so much! I really appreciate your comment Now i gonna practice harder..hehe

Garry wrote:Nice to see someone stop playing tennis to join you in a shuffle too

That is my little brother..XD

Garry wrote:Very nice little video production there to, great music choice right down to the end credts, well done

Thanks,that was my first video editing

Hey umm i'm new to the shuffle and just found out about it on you tube, and stuff. So I was just wondering if you help me out with it.

Sure, what would you like to know ?

Well I want to know some Info on how much pratice i should do a day ect.. stuff like that.

Hi jester2290, and welcome to the forum too

There's no fixed amount of practice, it depends on your physical fitness to start with. If you're pretty active and play sports etc then you could do 30 mins a day without too much worry.

If you've done no real exersise, then take it a bit easier and work your way up to 30 minutes.

It's not like you're trying to loose weight or something, so you don't need to go for 20 mins straight to work up a sweat.

All you need to concentrate on is flexability and strength in the muscle groups you use for dancing. As a side effect of this activity, you'll loose weight anyhow, but your focus is on flexibility and strength.

So for instance if you're standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil or whatever, get your feet moving for a couple of minutes. The famous martial arts champion Bruce Lee would do small stomach muscle crunches, while sitting in his car waiting for the lights to turn green

So for starters try just a couple of minutes at different times throughout the day, and when you're feeling stronger, increase the time. Then plan for a good 30 min workout practice.

Remember to rest after this stuff too, to allow your body to recover. Like I mentioned, this is not something to try and loose weight, you want your muscles to grow and your body to become more flexable. If you push too hard you can damage your muscles.

Your age has an effect on how much you can do as well. Teens will always have periods where they suddenly grow and have lots of energy, then will just sit around the house for weeks until the next burst, in your 20's your muscles and energy levels are reaching their peak. By late 20's it's all down hill After your 20's your muscles start to wear out, and too much exersise just makes this happen faster. Pro athletes are usually well worn out by 40 and have the same bone and muscle problems as someone not a pro athlete in their 50's/60s.

Plus your genetic make up plays a role. The body type you are, which is inherited from both sides of your family. Some body types are great for dancing with good flexibility, others better for body building with greater emphasis on strength and body mass.

Also have a read through the previous posts about warming up and down, stretching etc. And if you're at school ask your sports teacher/coach for some exercises that will suit whatever your body type is.

im new to shuffling it looks really fun i want to know where to get the pant and some good shoes from

im in the us and not many people do it on the east coast i think im the only one in my city that might know how to do it

wow all that info helped alot i have only one question,
i have only shuffled for a total about 3 hours last 2 days :'D i have got the hang of the shuffle and still pretty slow and way to laggy with the running man and i still have some dificutlies switching between them adn i still have some hard time timing it with music but im told not to do doing that yet:P, now here is my question. is that at least with in the normal time it takes to learn
that cuz i relly wanna be a pretty good shuffler around Cristmas. and now i know you will say it depends to the indivitual but please maby that info about my progress can help you tell me how long it will take. ^^



ps. maby a little tip how to make my running man more smooth?? ^^


sorry for bad spelling im from iceland not that good in english and to top that i have a danish keybord :'D

hey welcome to the forum tristan, your english and spelling are fine

You're doing pretty good, especially if you haven't had any dance training. You can spend 6 months just getting to the point where you don't trip over yourself all the time

Just learn at your own rate, is the best way.

Mainly you need to get your dancing muscles stronger. That helps you become more fluid. And don't be afraid of trying to dance to the beat. That's the single biggest difference between breaking (Break dancing) and shuffling. In break the music is like background music to the tricks and moves. With the Shuffle you dance to the music, it's not background.

All the shuffle moves were created to the music, so you will find that the beat will naturally fit your moves after a while. But don't go for a fast hardstyle track straight away, work your way up to it with some slower music.

K!ll3r wrote:im new to shuffling it looks really fun i want to know where to get the pant and some good shoes from

im in the us and not many people do it on the east coast i think im the only one in my city that might know how to do it

Hi Kill3r welcome to the forum. Try this topic for phats (pants) they're availible online and pretty easy to make if you check out tailors or costume makers in your area.

https://mso1.forumotion.com/phats-f6/phats-online-t20.htm

You're like a lot of shufflers around the world being the only one in town. But it's growing, see if your towns on the MSO Shuffle map, there maybe some others in town

ohh knew you would say somethig like that but i guess it helps though, good to know that about the breaking haha never noticed that before i even wanted to do breaking before i heard about shuffling, just makes me wanna do shuffling even more. i have always thought that breaking is just for show and has none of the passion and freedom ive been looking for, and i can see that in the people on youtube i can feel there passion for shuffling when i see them do it, it makes me want that too plus its just sweet . thanks for the help ill be sure to ask more questions when i have some, thanks alot

hehe, yep, there's no way around doing the practice

When you're starting try practicing when you really want to, rather than a set time everyday. This helps reinforce the pleasure of shuffling.

So for instance, have a few days break then practice. So it doesn't become a chore...like oh god no, I've gotta practice again. Like you have to do your homework or clean up your room or something

So practicing when you 'want to' means you're looking forward to it, you end up achieving more and you have more pleasure from Shuffling. It also give's your muscles a bit of rest, which is important when starting.

It doesn't take too long before you're over the worst of it and your posting vids on Youtube.

I know what you mean about breaking too. It's very strict with set moves and not much freedom. Mainly because of it's battle origins.

While break started in the 1970's as just for fun, doing fancy moves to drum breaks in tracks, which is where the term Break came from - the original dancers were called Break Boys or BBoys, it quickly became an aggressive contest between rival gangs.

These gangs weren't just a bunch of friends like shuffle crews, the gangs were violent and generally fought over drug territories. So break dance became an aggressive power struggle, not something for pleasure. You danced to claim supremacy over your opponent.

In Melbourne drug territory battles take the form of physical beatings and stabbings with clubs, knives and machettes and there are frequent murders with shootings.

Shufflers don't get involved in any of that, we dance for pleasure and fun. We don't battle like BBoys, and we don't do graffitti to mark out our territory or any that stuff. That belongs to the Cold War era and it's power monger attitudes - I'm better than you and I'll kill you if you don't do what I say type of thing, or the I don't give a f**k about anybody attitude.

Shuffle was born when the cold war ended, when the Berlin wall came down. The Shuffle is a freedom dance, we actually like people, we enjoy other shufflers company and we'd all rather be doing something creative, than something aggressive putting down other people.

It's quite a different culture, it's quite a happy culture. We're not locked in a ghetto somewhere that we want to escape. If we want to escape, we shuffle, no gangs no violence, we just move our feet, where ever we are, and we're in another world, having heaps of fun, not bothering anybody.

Shufflers have nothing to prove like BBoys do, so we end up Shuffling for the simple pure passion of it. Beginner or pro, it doesn't matter you can each have the same passion, regardless of skill.

And there's no-one laying down the law about what is and isn't a Shuffle move. Shuffling is about creative freedom. That's why we started it. We were sick and tired of people telling us what we could do, how we had to do it, and what would happen to us if we didn't obey.

So we said, who the hell are these cultural dictators anyway ? Most of them don't even know where Melbourne is, a remote coastal town on the edge of the planet, next stop South Pole - I'm sure people living in Iceland know the feeling

So we just ignored all these cold war cultural rules, and went on our merry way doing what ever we felt like - and we felt like Shuffling

That's not to say we don't have arguments But arguments/battles aren't the basis for the Shuffle.

The Shuffle competitions for instance are just fun things, like friendly team sports, you don't have to enter comps to Shuffle, just like you don't have to go to a nightclub or rave to Shuffle, but you can if you want to. Shuffle gives you that freedom, and the individual shuffler is the one who decides, not some gang somehwere.


So yeh, please let us know how you go, post a vid some time too, that will give us a much better idea of how you're going and we can offer tips

i know what you mean by not making it become a chore, i used to do some
tae kwon do and karate and i loved showing up on practices and i was
always kicking into the air every know and then just for the fun of it.
then i moved and there was no matialarts only boxing so i started
boxing and loved it as much and started punching at home got a boxing
bag and stuff and then one day i could use sports as a part of my school
scedule and of cours chose boxing but then i started to hate showing
up to practices and stuff and stoped showing up on on practices,then this summmer i figured out why becous i had to, i had no choice,
school in iceland is law i have to go to school and i was then forced
to go to practices and thats what i hated having no choice and no
freedom ti takes all fun and passon from it.

and yea we icelanders know the feeling,some people think we are like
eskimoes hundreds of years ago, wtf we dont live in snow houses im not
even sure the eskimoes did hundreds of years ago maby thay made them
only when thay whent icefishing and some shit,i have even met some people that think that
australians are all somekind of steeve irvins(you know who that is
right) and throw bumerangs at kangoroos and hunt aligators and shit its
just wierd how so many people can me missled about other cutures and
living at the edge of the planet does not help at all, haha i remember when
i saw this group o tourists acually searching for santa clouse :'D

and i hear what you are taking about that attitude the gangesters have,
i think its pathetic there is no need to fight over territories its
useless - a living organism at war with it self is doomed- heard that
somewere, but fights now and then thats difrent.

ohh and yea i think i wont be posting any videos soon maby in a coubble
of months cuz i dont have a camera and we dont have any money, maby ill borrow one from a friend

tourists searching for santa haha that's great

interesting you mention Steve Irwin, I met him when he was 10 years old, he was inside an animal cage playing with poisoness snakes. An old friend of mine had an animal park.

But yeh we get the same stereo types in Melbourne. Most people in Australia live in the 5 main cities or in the rural surrounds. The only place people in Melbourne see a kangaroo, is in the zoo.

Which is what my dutch friend Fritz Maaten had.





He had lots of little travelling circuses come to him with animals they could no longer afford to keep when the circus closed down. Fritz and Andy both knew if they didn't take the dancing brown bear, Lion, black panther, etc they'd be taken to the vet and put down.

So I'd visit and sit in their lounge room at dusk and hear this enormous Lion roar, which set off the panthers, dancing brown bear and leopard, who'd also roar which would then set off the dingos, the peacocks the goat and every dog for 10 klm around . It was amazing.

They had a pet monkey too and a little Joey (baby kangaroo) which they kept inside. The monkey would jump around the lounge room from head to head while you were trying to have a coffee or something - it was fun for 10 minutes

The joey would come up to your knee and bite it to get attention if you ignored it. It would especially wait until you were about to have a sip of hot coffee, then BITE real hard. Naturally you'd jump off the seat with hot coffee spilling all over you. The little kangaroo thought it was great fun.

They had a fresh water crocodile called Henry in a huge fish tank in the lounge room too. About twice the size of the one Steve Irwins holding in the pic. Fritz would pull back Henry's gums to show his teeth, saying, Now don't do this at home kids...and suddenly Henry bit his finger and wouldn't let go. Henry had never done it before, but just got tired of it. It was while they were filming for kids TV program hosted by Melb rock singer Shirl from Skyhooks. Fritz called out to the studio crew to help, but no one was game to go near him.

So Steve and his family where friends of Fritz and Andy and would visit them. The Irwins are from Melbourne, they moved north to Queensland later to make the Irwin Australia Zoo thing up there.

So Fritz went on these kids TV shows with snakes and various animals. I used to play in a rock band with fritz, and here he is with the Early Bird Show hosted by Darryn Cotton - another old rock singer, and the brilliant RAGS the big red Kangaroo, who used to do boxing in a travelling circus. Yep a real boxing kangaroo.

Rags couldn't figure out what this Marty The Monster thing was on the kids show, so he just punched him out and knocked him to the floor - there was a guy in the costume of course

And then on another show with yet another old rock singer host from Melbourne, Johhny Young, Rags just up and kicked poor Johnny in the nuts he was okay after a few weeks.

I got the order wrong with the pics, but you'll work it out, Jason Donovan there in his younger years would drop by the shows and promote Neighbours, which is made in Melbourne as well. Jason's girlfriend on Neighbours was Kylie Minogue, also from melb.

To bring this delightful ramble back on topic those who created the Melbourne Shuffle grew up on these TV shows in Melbourne, kinda gives you an idea of what we're like here

yea wow i used to love watching steve on the animal planet and stuff he was an amazing guy, presonally id rather die the way he did then as an old man so if he was me i would say life well spent but thats just me
but wow you knew him and poeple that worked with him that must have been awesome

but hay need a little help here, i thing i found out how to make my runnign man more smooth,by stop holdign my lig in the air for a sec keeping it in motion that should phisicly work right ? and keep my back straight i dont know if that changes anything so i thought i would ask you ??

yeh steve was pretty remarkable, you could see he had a special talent with animals even when he was a kid. Like when he'd get into the cages with the animals, they immediately acted differently to him, and people like Fritz and Andy who worked and lived with these same animals spotted it straight away.

But as years went on, he started to think he was Tarzan King of the jungle, and to keep his TV ratings up he had to do more and more extreme things. So the animals started to become like circus animals again doing tricks for Steves TV ratings. He got really upset when people said that about him, he genuinely had a good heart, but he was also a bit thick

His TV personality started to get on Melbourne's nerves too after a while. he was very 2 dimensional, like a cartoon character from the 1920's in Australia, which we call 'Okkar' - basically a loud yob It's worst when it's an Alpha Male, which Steve became.

So for quite a few years we were actually cheering for the animals to win It's pretty dark humour, which is common in Melbourne.

So after years of seeing 5 guys jumping on the back of a croc, it no longer showed to us how strong the croc was and how brave the guys were. We ended up thinking the reverse and felt sorry for the croc with 5 yobs jumping on it's back and tieing it up, So we'd sit around the TV and cheer for the croc or the snake or whatever.

We have this two faced thing going on in Melbourne, you'd support the local boy on one hand and cheer for him to loose in private.

>>> LANGUAGE POINT we never say, we ROOT for someone, in Melbourne. Apart from being part of a tree or plant, ROOT in Melbourne is slang for SEX , so we say cheer or support or something. So if someone from Melbourne says that they or someone else are ROOTED, it means they are FUCKED

Of course when it really happened, and Steve was stabbed by the stingray and died, it was terrible, especially for his family and kids. Like we wanted Steve to get a serious bite to bring him down to earth and have respect for the animals like he used to have, but not actually die.

Then another one from Melbourne Germaine Greer (the feminist who wrote a book about castration in the 1970's) made a public comment saying it was 'Nature's Revenge' for tormenting these animals for years.

Germaines been living in the UK for decades, and we were glad to get rid of her (on ya Germs, we still love ya - just stay were you are, the Brits are welcome to you ) Curiously Germs went to her Melbourne Uni graduation party with a guy who also became a croc hunter - for real. So maybe she was jilted by Steve years back

So we all bagged Germs for being a heartless dickhead. You can think those things in private but you don't say it in the news just to get attention, 2 days after the guy dies, you have some compassion for the grieving family. So we replied we hope Germaine gets stabbed through the heart one day - if she ever gets one .

We have this delicate balance between love and hate in Melbourne. We don't have a monachy, and we love to tear down our leaders when we think they're getting too arrogent, or we're just bored with them and they won't take the hint and go away.

Which is where many outside of Melbourne will find us confusing when it comes to Shuffling.

We would never have a 'Becks and Posh' thing happening in Melbourne, we would have burnt them at the stake a long time ago - and we'd still be happy to supply the petrol and matches to the brits to do it

Melbourne's a gold rush town from the 1850's and became the richest city in the British Empire outside of London in the 1800's. But we wanted independance from British rule and had an armed rebellion on the gold fields with british troupers. Gold miners could be 'taxed' a couple of times a day ! by the brits so we refused.



We made our own flag and pledged allegiance to each other and the Southern Cross - a star constellation only seen in the southern hemisphere.

This is what the flag design looked like


This is the real thing, people took souvenirs



We'd just separated from Sydney which was a prison colony a year or so before the rebellion too, we wanted independance and a new start, no class structure, all equal under the stars. This was the time when there were rebellions against the British in India, China Ireland etc too. Most of the people who came to Melbourne came to escape oppression in their homeland, where ever that was.

So 50 years later the new country of Australia was born and Melbourne was it's capital city.

This is the Australian flag today still with the Southern Cross, but displayed as it really looks in the sky with the formal star names.

We also have the Union Jack of the UK in the corner, some of the old Sydney brits couldn't bear to part with it, it's still the source of a lot of debate in Australia mostly from Melbourne who want a formal republic, completely seperate from Britain. The union jack is to say we are still part of the British Commonwealth sort of a dumbed down Empire - we're basically waiting for the current Queen of England to die (she's not a bad old girl) and then we'll dump it.



It's worth noting that we became the independant colony, just before the gold rush, almost like we were keeping it secret from the British HQ in Sydney.

Melbourne was as far from the 'civilised' world (Europe) as you could get, next stop south Pole etc - except no-one (human) had ever been to the south pole at that time. So Queen Victoria said yeh okay, who cares about this little uncivilised swamp town on the edge of the earth, and signed us off.

Then a few months later we discovered GOLD hehe, how about that The gold rush went for about 60 years and mined more gold than the San Fransisco and Alaska gold rushes combined.

Oh...THEN they were interested in Melbourne, hehe, the great British Empire outsmarted by a country town on the edge of the planet.

So everything closed down for a week long party in town (with lots of moonshine and home brew) and barrels of burning tar were rolled down the hill past the Melbourne Town Hall in the celebration - just for fun

Flinders street Melbourne 1875




SO... how does all this relate to the SHUFFLE ?

The oldskool had the same attitude.

> Nobody is better or worse than anyone else, like some are the ruling class or Kings/Queens rulers etc. or one race or nationality is better/worse. We're all human beings living on the same planet.

> Everybody gets to say what is a Shuffle move.

> If someone or a group try to be the gods, or rulers - we will all gang up on them and tear them down and drag their corpses through the street ( not literally of course ).

> You are allowed to succeed and strike it rich, just like the gold miners did. Hard work is rewarded - so if you practice and become better at Shuffling, then you will be praised.

> If you start bragging about your success and getting pompous about it - then we will consider it our duty to tear you down and drag your corpse throught the streets etc

> It's not so much being humble if you're a great shuffler, we can't stand fake humility or an 'I'm more humble than you' attitude anymore than some pompous twat. It's more a case of be proud of your achievement, but don't use that to belittle others.

> If you can only succeed by 'beating someone else' then it's not an honorable win. If you succeed by beating your own personal best, then that's okay.

> It's a fine line, and usually misunderstood with the simplistic 'Dance to Express not Impress' slogan which the oldskool never had.

It's quite okay to IMPRESS, we dress to Impress in melbourne, we dance to Impress in Melbourne, it is part of our creative Expression. But when you want to be NUMBER ONE and everyone else is under you....corpse dragged thru the streets thing again.

Which is why you will NEVER find any oldskooler claiming to be THE ONE who invented the Shuffle - they know the outcome if they do.

> That's just the way the ball bounces in Melbourne, and Australia's home grown football game, Australian Rules Football was created by bored cricketers in Melbourne during the gold rush era in 1858, and we use an oval ball which bounces all directions unpredictably.

And just to make it harder you're expected to run and bounce this thing on thick grass, and also kick goals on the run from 50 mtrs away...it's a great way to bring anyone who is a bit full of themselves back down to earth. And if that doesn't work, you have to jump for it, a 'mark' if you catch it, and hang on to it while everyone falls in a heap on top of you, or you on them... like in the pic below.

Australian Rules Football - 'Footy'

____________________


So, good to see you're working out how to get more fluid with your running man. Part of this is to help you work it out yourself, get you thinking about how you move, and how you can make it happen.

This way you are being creative. You might end up doing it the same way everyone else does, but you've gone thru the process and that makes you wiser - which is part of the artist training the oldskool used in Shuffling.

This means when you are trying more difficult moves, you know how to go thru the process to get to where you want to be - which could be creating some shuffle moves no-ones ever seen before .

Well done

thanks makes me feel better been trying to get a bit of practising but been so busy with work and everyone is preparing for "ljósanótt"(night of the light) its a really important night for all the young people in iceland/reykjanesbae/keflavik and i have been trying to practice in my lunch break but havent been able to watch any videos cuz my mom took away my internet for not coming home for 2 days x'D so i have been trying to practice pretty much alone cuz no one here in keflavik knows how to shuffle that i know of and that is pretty boring not even having music to listen to so just you saying that is gonna give me the boost i need to get it smoother get better at mixing it to gather and hopefully make some new moves , so thanks:), im going to practice now cuz i only have a week untill "ljósanótt" begins.



ps. that about australia is a good thing to know, i only knew that australia was a place were prisoners were moved from england and stuff and that its hot there and has a big desert then there is soem things i have picked up from animal shows, movies and documentaries etc.
we icelanders kinda experienced something like that,
see the king of denmark claimed ownership of iceland he just said it was a part of denmark and we did not like that so some icelanders got the habbit of killing the messengers(well kinda more important, those who went to claim the taxes and stuff like that) so we kinda were independant that way but the king of denmark still kept claiming iceland as a part of denmark adn it wasent untill 1944 when a man named jón sigurðsson helped iceland be officially indipentant but ofcourse we had stopped killing the danish people before then and been fighting the none violent way, so we have a presedent these days but no one ever hears about him ri anything he is like a ghost to us, or maby me i dont know i mean i never hear anything about him and i think mostly everyone dosent and we dont have any weird laws like america i mean who is arrested for walking naked what bull shit :/ if anyone calles the cops that is if someone does thay are going to ither ask you to get dressed or if you dont have any clothes thay will happily escort you home :'D but i dont even know why im telling you this but well you get the point

bye and thanks

urrgghh no internet for 2 days, I don't think I could survive

I'm glad you're getting some practice in, this ljósanótt thing sounds interesting, so I'm guessing it has something to do with the midnight sun you guys get ?

It's winter here in Melb a chilly 5C in the mornings and 15C top during the day, plus we get the southerly winds coming straight from the south pole brrr. But summer time we get winds from the north, which comes from the tropics then straight over a few 1000 kms of hot desert, so it's dry and hot when it reaches us and we get days over 40C and nights that don't get much cooler than 30C.

Yeah the Sydney area was a convict colony, the british jails were full so they sent them to Sydney. Most of the crimes were just small things, like stealing bread because you were poor and hungry. It was a pretty brutal and unjust time, 5 year kids forced to work in coal mines and factories etc. Not something the brits are proud of these days.

We don't shoot them any more either Now we just get swamped by Brit backpackers looking for a sunny blue sky and clean beaches - plus beer

I've got a lot of good friends from London who came to Melbourne in the early 1990's who were involved in running underground parties that the Shuffle was born in.

They had a really hard time trying to figure out Melbourne culture. Culture Shock we call it. They said we might speak English here, but that's where the similarity ends.

To them our culture was all over the place, they couldn't make head or tail of it.

UK/Europe and the USA tend to have established culture authorities who dictate what is cool or in and what is out. Whether it's fashion, music, celebrities etc.. For some reason people actually listen to it too and you find everybody does one thing, then some magazine says or that's not cool anymore, and everyone does something else.

In Melbourne we just ignore all that, and do whatever we please, all the time. hehe. But it wasn't always like that.

When I was playing in rock bands in the 1970's you couldn't even get your music played on the radio if the singer had an Australian accent. You had to have an American or English one. Stupid I know. But for 100 years or more, we'd been told that local culture - music, dance, art even our clothes and accent, were NO GOOD.

We were told we did it wrong, that we should be like the English or Like the Americans. So in Melbourne we just said f**k off, we'll do as we please and we think what we're doing is just fine.

That was part of our culture, like I mentioned above. Everyone had come from a country where someone else was ruling over them, sometimes for 100's of years.

Part of the weapons of oppressors is to kill off the local culture. Kids are punished in school for not speaking english, or wearing local clothes - or no clothes . It's all part of the conquest and empire building. We had to wear thick woolen school uniforms with wollen caps like British Schools, which is okay for winter, but in a Melbourne summer, it can be 30C by 10am and kids would pass out from heat stroke. We had to have a school protest to get the uniform changed to something sensible for our weather,

So when it comes to the Shuffle, that's why you will find people from Melbourne are very reluctant to 'tell you what to do'. It's not that we don't want to or we want to keep it secret, it's because we don't want to be like all these oppressors we've had through our lives.

So we'll say do it your own way, find out what works for you etc. You'll never find someone from Melbourne telling you, you've done it wrong - even me

That's an important part of the culture. We have no official council or whatever deciding what is and what isn't the Shuffle, and we'll crush anyone who tries to.

We have a big underground movement in Melbourne because of this cultural oppression thing. We'd start by finding alternate venues or sites to do things, that were out of the official cultures eyes, and get on with our own stuff.

That's where we decided we needed each others support to just survive. even if we didn't like the other people we were mixing with, we got along because we had to. We were all underground just wanting a chance to practice our own culture in a land that scorned it.

You couldn't even get a vinyl record made in the 1960'/70's, because the British record giant EMI owned all the record presses. And they would stamp out independants. We couldn't even get the music sold in record shops, because the big companies banned us.

So we opened our own shops, we bought our own record presses, we held our own events, we printed our own newspapers, we started up our own radio stations, we had our own cinema's, we made our own clothes, had our own clothes shops, food shops, ticket outlets - this was all before the internet and all before the Shuffle arrived.

We'd all move to areas where people like us lived and gradually took over complete suburbs, got onto local councils to change laws etc.

So when the Shuffle arrived we just added another thing to do to our list of things in the underground. We even started our own TV station - here a look at what the Tv station looked like.

pt1 Lost The Signal 1992


pt2 Stelarc



The underground was quite huge. we had our own festivals too, like the Fringe Festival which was paid for by ourselves, we got no govt funds, it was rough and ready, put together with what ever we could lay our hands on. Our annual street party ended up having over 100,000 people come. All of us from the underground, there was no mainstream advertising or anything. Most of the mainstream didn't even know we existed, which was just the way we liked it.

Here's an idea of the people in Melbourne's underground in the early 1990's



Brunswick Street free party. 1994




But by 1994/95 we were so big we couldn't hide anymore so we expanded into the mainstream. Like 12,000 shufflers turning up to the city square for a free new years eve party 94.





see the party in this vid mel-ben shuffle 92-94


But we still want to keep the underground attitude, that all are welcome, everyone is allowed to contribute, and everyones contribution is valid. So we don't let anyone from Melbourne start saying 'Oh you're from another country you know shit' type of thing.

That's what the Shuffle is all about, what you do with the shuffle including your own local culture, is great.

man im starting to love this lifestyle alredy even though i have just scratched the surface of it, but ill defenetly check out melb some time when ill go visit my bro or something he always talking about moving to australia, and wow 5-15°c in winter :O it whas 15°c to day at work and its summer everyone was almost naked cuz thay were roasting in the heat

and about ljósanótt its not about that when the sun never sets,it actually never sets the entire summer so it aint a part of that no, but now i have to tell you about it . i dont know if people know that icelanders are the closest thing to viking you can find, we even speak the original language well we have ofcource changed some words and added some english into it just to make it more modern but every kid is able to speak it thay way thay used to but chose not to, anyways i cant remember the story perfectly but i think some vikings were lost out at sea or something and they could not find the way to, to were ever thay were going (i really dont remember well :S) and then thay saw this bright light on an edge of this cliff or somewhere close to it :'D(but in keflavik)and that light guided them here and this is one of the biggest party nights of the year first there comes this carnival for the kids in the middle of the day and then the carnival stays but kinda closed but some rides are still open and alot of young people gather all around the city and hangout and party and then at midnight thay shoot tonns of fireworks off the cliff and then thay have this play or something that tells the story of the night but i have only seen it ones and i wasent really listening so i cant remember :'D
but mostly people just have alot of fun =)


and yea i lost the internet for a week not 2 days :'D

hehe we grumble about the weather in Melb all the time - as if it will change anything But it's pretty good really. We just get those extreme changes sometimes which really knock even locals about. Like 30C nights and 40C days for 4-5 days, and nobody gets enough sleep and everybody is cranky, then a southerly change will come thru and drops the temp from 40C to 20C in 1 hour.

Depends on the El Nino season. Usually it's 2-3 years of very hot summers then 2-3 years of mild summers. We've had 3 El nino's back to back the past 10 years and 8 years of drought, so now we're back to cold and wet - forgotten what it's like to be frosty cold brrrr. But it's great to have the rain tho, our dams are running dry.

Mid February to late April are the best - end of summer and autumn. It's beautiful stable sunny days 15- 28C nice warm breeze balmy evenings, paradise.

hey I remember reading that story about the light, I've read most of the icelandic sagas/eddas with my ongoing mythology research. I'm embedding rune magic and old norse mythology into the Artificial Intelligence of my CybaFaerie and WolfDragon robots - hehe The wolfdragon gets snappy if you annoy it

So have you seen the actual original edda books in the Museum ?

i feel honerd that you have read most of the eddas, not many people have but i have not seen the original eddas have not had the chance to.
i was going to ask you what kind of robots are the cybafaerie and the wolfdragon but i googled it and found this short story about a cybafaerie named fé-oh and a pic of you making her :'D i always thought that this faerie was just a logo but she is a robot that you are actually making how fkn awesome and on top of that, embedding old norse mythology into theyr artificial intellegence

so what mithologys have you heard of and embedding in theyr artificial intelligence ?
and have you seen the movie/heard the story of beowulf ?

yeah, I had a theoretical AI (artificial Intelligence) paper published at ISEA2002 in Nagoya Japan about creating a mythology for robots. http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/cybafaer/web/cyb905/concept.htm

I figured one day, maybe in 50 or 5000 years robots will become selfaware in a psychologial sense, and they'll start asking questions like Who am I, Why was I born etc, just like humans do, because humans have created robots and it's natural we'll pass on our own characteristics for self preservation. Like Asimovs (I Robot) first laws of robotics 'be nice to humans'

So what do we tell them when they ask? They were created as a slave race to do all our dirty work ? They are considered subhuman and beneath the animals ? Like do we really want to piss off powerful robots ? hehe, I mean think about it. And if we lie we'll just get into deeper shit when they find out the truth.

So honesty kinda works

So it's like humans need to know our heritage, not just mum and dad, but the big scheme of things.

How we are linked to this planet, establishes our right to be here, our right to exist. Humans, convienently for us, are the dominant species, for now

So robots will want to know 'their place' in things one day. What if they don't like it ? What if they find out for themselves what's really going on and we've been lying to them?

I mean, the robots I'm making will have webcams in their eyes for live streaming of where ever they are in the world. You'll be able to talk to them as they tour international arts festivals. The robots will be live online thru wireless networks, if they wanna know the 'truth' they'll just google it. And we actually call such 'truth seeking' online devices 'bots'. They already read this forum. What if the robots are already aware ? hehe and they're just using us as slaves to get the hardware sorted before they take over earth ? - it could happen

So I figured instead of just the military, big business and governments controlling the AI research and dictating what is included in official AI, that it'd be good to have artists perspective in there too. So I've been doing AI research in my art for about 20 years now, doing technical development with my old friend Stelarc for about 10 years of that, and off in CybaFaerie land for 10 years now. Next year the robot proto type will be walking around art gallery's showing off.

Here's an early work in progress portrait of the main characters fe-oh the cybafaerie princess on top of Fenir her wolfdragon, and 2 cybafaerie penguins, with jet packs on their backs so they can fly. Melbourne has a world famous colony of Fairy Penguins.




hehe I've actually got to get around to beowulf. A friend of mine told me about it in highschool, and I missed the movie when it came out here, I was moving house. But I'll be getting the dvd when it's out for sure.

But I have read about 20 of the saga's and the edda. At the same time I've been researching celtic mythology and asian dragon lore. So quite a lot of reading. Often reading the same tales in different english translations to get a broad perspective. So Beowulf is certainly on the list.

For other readers wondering what we're talking about, and I hope tristan will correct me if needed

The edda is basically Viking poetry with old norse history, heroic tales, creation myths and some great adventure tales. Along with the saga's, long mostly historic tales (exactly like the STAR WARS saga), they give a fantastic view of a pre-christian world and the arrival of christianity in Iceland around 1000 AD.

Historically the Catholic Church of Rome was a political as well as religious power in the early centuries. They were more or less an extension of the Roman Empire, and would generally invade a country and give the locals a choice. Throw away all your own religions and mythology and convert to Christianity - or be killed. Not the nice christian missionary with a saintly smile holding a bible sort of thing we imagine these days. The missionaries, such as the one decribed in the Icelandic saga's came with a sword and used it.

Most of these old tales were kept in the oral tradition, they were passed on down through the generations by story tellers and every family group or village had people who would learn these tales and tell them.

Often the tales would be updated to include local landmarks and identities, which would be added to all the previous historic references in the tale. Which is why the saga's can be so long. They can cover hundreds of years, they just keep adding chapters.

It's much easier to burn a few books to get rid of a cultures history. But the verbal story telling was too hard to stamp out, because it would happen in peoples homes around the main house fire ( for cooking and warmth) or in the local chieftons hall. So Christianity would become the official religion, but privately the locals would still practice their own traditions.

The Icelandic edda and saga's are the last, most direct and accurate source of these prechristian tales. Most of the other sources thru Norway/Sweden/ Denmark and parts of Germany were wiped out by the Catholic Church, or christianised. Pagan gods would be appropriated by the Catholic Church, like easter which is a pagan fertility festival and christmas which is a pagan solstice festival.

So the locals would still have their event, but it was under new management and dubbed a christian one. Basically as a compromise.

For instance today in strict Catholic teaching and law set down by the Vatican 500 years ago, these old norse tales are still banned, and considered evil pagan rituals.

Faeries are still banned by the vatican - yes they actually really believe they exist for real lol and having 'dealings' with faeries brings the same punishment as dealing with witches. The Vatican also bans Harry Potter books and Pokemon saying they promote witchcraft.

There's even court records in England around the 1400/1500's where a guy was taken to court for getting a herbal cure from a faerie, which helped his wife get better. His defence was to take the judge and court officials to the small clearing just out of town to meet the faeries - this is all written down in the court records mind you, they really believed in them. So they all get there at midnight and of course the faerie isn't there. So the guy goes back the following night, and the faerie IS there and she says, I told you to never bring anyone here, she gives him the last batch of herbs and says you'll never see me again. So he got a big fine and a few lashes with the cane. Which wasn't too bad, considering boiling people alive in oil until they died, was still being used as a legal court punishment then.

It was only in the late 1800's that faeries were considered 'good' and witches 'bad'. The wicked witch in the Snow White fairy tale as told by the Brothers Grimm, is actually called a Faerie in the first english translation, not a witch.

Faeries were known to steal babies, which was the usual excuse if a child was born with a disability or deformity. Such baby's were considered to be a Child of the Devil and the mother would be killed for supossidly having sex with satan. So the baby would be abandoned in the forest and the family would say the faeries have stolen the baby. The baby's would be adopted by outcasts living in the forest. Lots of outcasts lived in the forest, such as Werewolves, who were often outlaws driven out of town, and the laws said they were to be treated as a wolf if seen. Basically wolves were shot on sight as vermin.

So I'm facinated by all this stuff and have spent 20 years or so researching it.

So norse god Thor for instance whith his magic Hammer is an example of a new technology arriving and being more powerful than the shaman like mythology based on animals, wolves, bears, etc. Because the early iron age blacksmiths were treated like alchemists with magic powers, able to transform dirt/iron ore into a powerful weapon. An iron/bronze battle axe much more powerful than puting on a bear skin for instance in a duel for control.

Thor is remembered these days in the west with Thursday or THORSday. Wednesday is another norse god wodin/Odin WODINSday, Tuesday is Tyr, Friday Frey/Freya. The spellings and pronunciations change from region to region and over time.

So in the Viking, old norse tradition, I'm adding my family/towns story to the ongoing saga's by including some of the ancient tales, and adding some of the local history to it - the local history I'm using is the Melbourne Shuffle

All this will be embedded in the robots AI (Artificial Intelligence).

The CybaFaeries are based on the shuffle oldskool and the first episode of their saga will be published on MSO on the Equinox ( equal number of hours for day/night - in most places) 21 september 2008. It's called CYbA TRYb www.cybatryb.com

So I'll be telling the story of the creation of the Shuffle through the eyes of an 18 y/old princess Fe-Oh (FAY-o) who runs away from home and goes to the big city looking for adventure - and finds more than she bargined for in the Melbourne Underground.

I was there at the time in the early 1990's so it's an eye witness account, and like the storytellers of old, I change the names here and there, to protect my arse, but the settings and tales are based on fact.


So For instance fe-oh is actually the name of the first rune feoh or 'F'. Runes are an ancient norse alphabet, grouped in rows of eight. I'm using the germanic elder FUTHARK. Futhark is simply the first 6 letters of the alphabet. F, U, TH, A, R, K, like alphabet is the first 2 of the greek alphabet Alpha, Beta.

But each rune has a magical property to and you can combine these to form powerful magic spells. Feoh has female polarity, earth and fire elements and is used as kind of a starter key - like the ignition key in a car. It begins things. In modern magic it's used to gain great wealth - and most importantly 'Keep it'.

Another rune is the name of fe-oh best friend Lagu 'L' - like lagoon with water elements and is used to facilitate movement, like a flow of water.

These are all fairly practical things. the 'R' rune is RAD, like for radius or a wheel, etc.

I use the rune magic as a factor in the story lines. So while I've given names to characters I've also included some of the old norse history and mythology in it as well.

Fe-oh's Wolfdragon is named Fenir, which I'm sure you'll recognise as Fenrir, the powerful mythological wolf involved in RAGNAROK what a word !!! Ragnarok is the Doom of The Gods a huge battle, like the christian Armageddon.

But in Norse mythology, as decribed in the edda, we're not too sure who actually wins. What a tease eh? The story isn't finished yet.

And there's Hel of course, who is actually a woman, not a place, and she's looks after the underworld where noble and not so noble warriors wait to join the battle at Ragnarok, with Odens noble warriors who have been waiting in Valhalla for Ragnarok.

And yes there is a highway to Hel and the phrase 'You'll have Hel to pay' means you can get warriors out of the underworld by paying Hel a ransom. Of course there's always some twist to the contract and Hel keeps winning.

So for the Wolfdragon I'm embedding some of the ways dragons and wolves were killed in the saga's and edda so he can watch out for the tricks. sneaky huh?

So to give you an idea of the edda, here's an english translation of the last two paragraphs from the Seeress's Prophecy about Ragnarok

65. Then the powerful, mighty one, he who rules over everything,
will come from above, to the judgement-place of the gods.

66. There comes the dark dragon flying,
the shining serpent, up from Dark-of-moon Hills;
Nidhogg flies over the plains, in his wings
he carries corpses...

Ahhh but the corpses of whom, definitely room for a sequel

CYbA TRYb - coming soon! 21 September 2008 www.cybatryb.com

omg i just finished writing a huge reply to this that took 2 hours to write but i pressed this one page back button on my mouse and lost it all so im going to make a short version of it.

ok you were right about the eddas
beowulf is about a man kalled bjólfur and the story comes from a 3183 line long poem, i wrote what the movie is about but dont have the time to do that again... must see the movie dont see the icelandic verson of beowulf its in icelandic figures :'D

we also kept our history cuz we wrote more than they could destroy and my icelandic teacher told me that no one else on this earth wrote as mutch as the icelanders about them selfs and what happend around them, we can trace every icelanders(that are actually lcelanders in blood not just born here) to the man who found iceland even his date of birth when he found iceland and how, who his wifes and children were who followed him and why they did and there wifes and children etc.


and about the farie tale :'D
im not sure if im gettign the right picture, so is it about fé-oh shuffling with some friends or is it more like ragnarok ?
adn also is it supose to work as a religion or something for future advanced robots or something ??

right mods, i like hardstyle and i was on my trails through youtube and i saw this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaiAzbFmnzc&feature=related
i wanna do it!!!

ive read a few bits and bobs above and i was wondering how to keep my balance abit more. i have the t step down ok but when i speed up i cant keep my balance and i stumble to the side.

any tips???

thanks

by the way im 19 and wondering why the heck i didnt notice this sooner:( lol

well i may have a tip but im not sure if it would work but when i was learning karate my teacher told us the best way to keep balance while we di kicks is to keep your weight closer to your toes but since you also use your heal its a bit more complcated but i have not had any balance problems my self so i guess it will come with practice. haha but really my advice might help but im also new to shuffling so it might not help at all :'D

Hi s--tshot welcome to the forum.

With balance, like Tristan mentions, keep your weight closer to your toes. There's more flexability in your foot that way to compensate for your shifting body weight. Where your heel is pretty much rigid.

Your toes and that front part of the foot we generally call the ball of the foot, can tilt forwards and backwards, plus side ways. Where your heel puts all the work on your ankle.

But you need strength in your foot muscles too, which involve the calf muscles at the back of your leg below your knee. Climbing steps and stairs is the simplest and most effective way to build those calf muscles. Where ever you go, even if it's just 2-3 steps up, do it on your toes, instead of your whole foot and heel. You'll notice the difference within days.

If you think about it, on your toes you have the entire weight of your body pressing down on them. And when dancing that's a hell of a lot of weight and pounding.

Our bodies are 70-80% fluid mostly water. So if you think of a bucket of water and you walk with it, the water sloshes around in the bucket. It's the same with your body weight.

If you tilt sideways, all of your body mass follows and your muscles need to 'capture' that shifting mass and stop it from going too far. So rather than waiting for all the weight to shift, you start to resist the shift just a little bit before hand.

So it's like your muscles are rubber bands. They stretch with the shifted weight, absorb the mass, then you use that mass and stored energy to swing you back into the opposite direction.

Check out Ra in this vid we did a few months back. Most of the shuffling starts halfway thru, and at the end I've done some impressive jumps he does, in slow motion. You can see really clearly how his weight is absorbed by his toes, and his foot changes angle slightly as he lands, to keep balance.

global shuffle @ melbourne central 2008


In physic's the energy of this weight from jumping is stored in one single foot, which acts like a spring, and propels him up again.

Even tho he's jumjping sideways, his body above his ankle is in a very straight line when he lands, otherwise he can dislocate vertibrae in his spine or throw his weight sideways where he has no control, instead of directly into his foot which has all the control.

BALANCE EXERCISES
I'd recommend doing balancing exercises, such as standing on one foot, and slowly raising your other leg, bending at the knee, as high up as you can go.

Balance takes training. ProBallet dancers for instance will do a couple of hours of balance training 4-5 days a week, usually combined with their muscle stretching exercises.

These are all slow moving exercises.

Like try to stand on one foot and raise your other leg straight out in front of you, and hold it

You will need to use one hand to steady your self at first, just touch a wall, or chair or something. You will immediately feel all the counter support muscles all over your body adjusting to compensate for the shift in body mass.

Then try moving your leg sideways, very slowly. Your ankle will be working overtime adjusting for the shift in weight. Repeating this 'teaches' your muscles and mind what to do in such positions as well as strengthening them.

Then alternate your legs. Try to build up the strength so both legs and feet are equally strong.

While standing on one leg, raise your arms as well.

First try your opposite arm, eg, stand on your left leg, rasie your right leg, then raise your left arm. Your arm acts as a counter balance. Then move your arms around slowly up down move from left to right etc.

This shifts more of your body weight and forces you to adjust to keep balance.

These are great warm up and warm down exercises. Do them for 10 mins or so every time before you do you shuffle practice, then after your shuffle practice, just gently.

Balance is a delicate discipline, requiring your mind and muscles to be alert for the slightest shift in body mass.

Things like martial arts are excellent for balance. Of course any formal dance exercises are perfect too.

And remember the slower you do these exercises, the harder it gets. You need just as much if not more control of your body to move super slow, than it takes to move fast.

tristan mitch aka tiger wrote:omg i just finished writing a huge reply to this that took 2 hours to write but i pressed this one page back button on my mouse and lost it all so im going to make a short version of it.

ok you were right about the eddas
beowulf is about a man kalled bjólfur and the story comes from a 3183 line long poem, i wrote what the movie is about but dont have the time to do that again... must see the movie dont see the icelandic verson of beowulf its in icelandic figures :'D

we also kept our history cuz we wrote more than they could destroy and my icelandic teacher told me that no one else on this earth wrote as mutch as the icelanders about them selfs and what happend around them, we can trace every icelanders(that are actually lcelanders in blood not just born here) to the man who found iceland even his date of birth when he found iceland and how, who his wifes and children were who followed him and why they did and there wifes and children etc.


and about the farie tale :'D
im not sure if im gettign the right picture, so is it about fé-oh shuffling with some friends or is it more like ragnarok ?
adn also is it supose to work as a religion or something for future advanced robots or something ??

> I hate that when you loose text, especially when its like a short essay reply, rather than 10 words. I end up typing into notepad/word and copy/paste them into the post now. We have irratic broadband where I am and i have to reconnect, which is a pain in the middle of something grrrr. Thanks for your effort anyways.

> Good to hear about the eddas. All the stuff I've read is scholarly academic type thing with translations into english. I'm wary because Vikings have had a lot of bad press over the centuries and most of it has come from the English, so I'm always a bit cautious about a judgmental bias in the translations

I love the way the records have been kept. At first I found it tedious with all the reference to here's this guy, he arrived in Iceland here, set up a farm, married so and so from there, and now the river they live on is named after his clan etc.

But then I realised these were real people, and real history, and it combined land titles and deeds and disputes all in the records of the saga. Not to mention Iceland has the worlds oldest democratic parliment 500 years older than Englands Westminster system, and celebrated your 1000 years anniversary about 10 years ago That's pretty amazing in itself.

> hehe the story is a mix of fact and fantasy. I'm writing it from the inside out. So the reader sees the whole underground scene, and finds out how the shuffle actually began, and how it developed within this underground community.

The underground was very secretive, because a lot of the activity was illegal, the parties, people living in their art studio's etc.

Plus we deliberately tried to create an alternative universe at the time. Virtual Reality was very big and mostly theoretical then, because we didn't have computers powerful enough to make it happen in the early 1990's, everything was still 8bit. Now of course it's World of Warcraft, online first person shooter games, what ever you want. You can even live in LegoLand it's fantastic.

So our parties were like a trip to an otherworld, and Shuffling was seen as a dance style you only did in another world. We made all sorts of fantastical creatures that inhabit this otherworld as well. So you'd feel like it was an alien planet. We went all the way there and back again.

So the story actually goes on these adventures. We'd do big building parties where the artists lived in these old abandoned office buildings. Everyone would decorate their studios, and make them into different otherworlds which you could explore. This is one of the buildings. I lived here for about 6 years Commerce House 1990-1996. we'd do parties on the roof, in the basement and sub basement too. There were role playing gamers on one of the floors and at sunset on Monday nights they'd take over the whole building and do freeform Vampyre and Werewolf games. Full costume, cloaks, fake blood, swords, knives, shotguns, screams and clan battles for about 4-5 hours. a pretty bizarre place to live The whole building was locked from 6pm. You could only get in with a security key.

So we had the two buildings here, the taller one on the right side was gutted it had been caught in a legal dispute for 20 years and we used it as a playground It was serious Bladerunner country at night with a few lights and a smoke machine. Check out the back lane it was the entrace we prefered at night

And this is a video walk thru in 1996, we'd just been told we had 30 days to get out because the building was being redeveloped into a 5 star hotel.

Commerce House 1996






It's the sort of thing that spun out the UK ravers, who'd have very bare warehouses, a mirror ball a few colored lights and huge soundsystem. They of course loved it,

We'd go for a complete emmersive experience. Shufflers would dress up as otherworld characters with different names and do a whole roleplaying type of thing

So like here's the main dance floor at a 'Strange' party. we had the floor walls and roof all painted and you'd be completely disoriantated even without drugs So this is the sort of environment the shuffle was created in.



And when we couldn't rustle up a real dragon, we'd make 8bit computer animated ones and project them on huge wall sized screens - all done live with AMIGA computers - only 2mg too fully pumped



Here's some of the parties, and check out the shuffling teddy bear anim.



Strange parties 1994


Here's one of the first Shuffle crews in 1992






Here's some of the flyers (posters). We'd set out a theme for each party, choosing the DJ's, decor, venue, the whole thing. the challenge was to make it different at each party. So it was like a full on theatrical production for just one night.

Like the faeries. One night they'd be there, the next night they were gone, no a trace of them. We'd keep moving around to make it a surprise.











These shots are from the Every Pic/MUD float in the Melbourne Moomba parade in the late 1990's (I forget which year ) But it's the sort of stuff we'd do at the parties as well.






Every Pic/Mud Parade float



So the story will 'drift' in and out of the fantasy adventures. And it'll be told like you're one of the crew actually making these parties and developing the Shuffle over the years.

Imagine doing these parties every weekend for 4-5 years as a job, plus smaller private ones in studio's during the week. And making all these weird sets , and art works to display in the parties. And of course making your own Phats and costumes for the parties.

The boundry between real and otherworld just blurs after a week So that's where the CYbA TRYb story will take you. It'll have links to the real life events and stuff as well.

But mostly it's set in the future in a world where humans are believed to be extinct and robots have taken over the planet. It's a world where to be human, is to be considered sub-robot.

So the story is taken from a future robots perspective and written as a "Faerie Tale For Robots" So the robots AI will access all the story about the origins of the Shuffle the same way we read the eddas now.

That's the style of writing I've chosen.

I figured the eddas and saga's are still a good read today, 1000 years later, so there's something about the story telling style that crosses cultural and time boundaries. It's like this is important stuff, hang on to this, we don't want to loose it. We had the same attitude towards art in melbourne, we'd keep the old skills alive too, most of us have old technology collections, I've still got my 1st computer from 1983 8k fully pumped still works.

So cultural preservation was very important to all of Melbourne. We see it as a duty, to preserve the past while creating our future.

I even laugh at the old jokes too. The first time I read one I had to re-read it a couple of times to make sure I was reading it right, because it was just in the middle of a normal sort of tale, and here's all these drinking jokes Vikings told each other on those long winter months of yours, getting stuck into that Icelandic vodka or whatever it is, Black Death or something ? 150 proof alcohol !! No wonder these guys saw faeries

We were the same in the oldskool. Your stories had to be good, we got bored easily, and when we were bored we got up to no good, or would start fighting amoung ourselves, just to stay amused. It'd all be forgotten the next day and we were all friends again. It went on like that for 10 years

I should insert Urban Disturbance at this point with a couple of the crew brawling over a crate of army assault rifles (replica's). in 1994.

Get more than 3 artists together and there's bound to be problems

Urban Disturbance