Bringing Creativity and Intelligence Together

Over the past few months, many of my volleyball-playing friends have pooh-poohed my organizing wallyball for the Calgary Outdoor Club.  They believe that wallyball wasn’t a ‘real sport’ and had no place in pantheon of court sports.

They could not be more wrong.

After playing wallyball for the last 2 years, I can attest to the fact that the game is a great deal faster and more intense than volleyball.  The reason that the sport doesn’t receive the attention it deserves is because it is played inside of an enclosed area where there is no place for spectators to watch and witness the skill and intense play of wallyball.  However, because wallyball is the newcomer to the sports world, it’s up to wallyball to prove its superiority over volleyball.

For those not familiar with the sport, wallyball is volleyball played on a racquetball court.  The word ‘wallyball’, in fact, is a contraction of its original name, ‘wall-volleyball’ or ‘rebound volleyball’.  About 80% of the rules and 100% of the skills of volleyball are immediately applicable to wallyball, with a small portion of new rules to take into account the smaller playing area and walls.

” … one could say that the ‘scoring area’ of wallyball is significantly smaller than volleyball, making it harder to score points.  As a result, rally times are extended, leading to a more challenging workout and greater speed of play.”

Let us assume that, when we compare the two sports, the competing teams are intermediate or better.  They are able to effectively bump, set and spike reasonably consistently.  While beginners do play volleyball and wallyball, sometimes their lack of skill decreases the level of play and intensity for both sports.  However, unlike wallyball, volleyball tends to eliminate evern fairly experienced players through the use of the ‘killer serve’  — a serve so fast that any return attempted by the beginner knocks the ball out of play.

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Have you ever been intimidated by the sheer volume of art you get subjected to when you go to a museum?  Do you find that you don’t have the attention span for an entire theatrical performance?

Fret not, for the Art Walk in Calgary is for you!

The Art Walk is a monthly event held in conjuction with First Thursdays, the Calgary art community open house.  It will help you see and digest bite-sized portions of various art forms without leaving you feeling full.  Participants walk from place to place sampling tasty morsels of what the city has to offer.   Dishes  can be as prosaic as a  quick art gallery tour or be as unusual as  backstage tours of Theatre Calgary’s set building and costume creation shops  or as eclectic as  a presentation on how Holt Renfrew envisions and makes manifest its Christmas window displays.

The Art Walk is a creation of Art Proctor who created it as a vehicle to expose people to the plethora or visual and performing arts installations in Calgary; a kind of a cultural smorgasbord.   Once a person has sampled from a wide variety of cultural offerings, they are encouraged to go back and experience more deeply those events and installations that have struck their fancy.

Art Walk: February 3, 2011

This Art Walk was the first on that was scheduled and executed by me.  While Art provided advice and encouragement, the February 3 Art Walk was very much my baby.  And it went splendidly!

“It was fascinating to learn how technology, instruments and music have interacted and influenced each other in the past.  Fascinating.”

All in all, it  was quite awesome with approximately 25 people showing up.  We started at the Municipal Building and did a tour of public art installations located throughout City Hall, the Municipal Building, the Calgary Center for the Performing Arts and Olympic Plaza.  We were guided about by Anna, who was quite knowledgeable about public municipal artists and their benefactors.  It is a policy in Calgary that any building project over $1 million must donate one percent of its building budget to the creation of public art.  Sadly, there was virtually no information about any other art that we encountered during the tour that was not publicly owned by either the city or the province.  Apparently, The Calgary Core Group is in the process of adding it into their tours and will be available soon.

It ended up that we picked up some other folks from this tour group who were pretty impressed about where we went from there!

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Back in October, I decided that I needed to round out my evening exercise schedule from just wallyball and yoga.  Looking around, I saw that Duane Verity was running Dodgeball on behalf of the Calgary Outdoor Club.  The event attracts between 30 and 40 participants who play on four randomly determined teams in round robin and championship competitions.  Winners receive medals and the accolades of their peers and losers  nurse their dreams of revenge.  And all standings and photos are posted for posterity.

“… the prospect of evading a firing squad of 7-10 death spheres is enough to give one pause.”

Now, when I think about dodgeball, my memories go back to elementary school where it was either ‘kill or be killed’ on the court.  We played with one or two balls and hit players would move themselves to the ‘prison’ behind their opponents.  With throwers behind you and in front of you, you could face a serious crossfire.  You had to be fast, agile and be willing to sacrifice the body to make the dodge.

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