Firespinning

Last month, London Fire Spinners performed for the #TheMovement global launch party at ZSL London Zoo. It was a lot of fun for all concerned and we had a great time. I took some photos, so here they are!

Flow arts – poi, staff, clubs, juggling, contact, etc – are all arts for the body. Yet, this amazing, flexible, beautiful and vital piece of the puzzles goes ignored for the longest time! This is a recurring trait that I see over and over among new budding flow artists. It most often manifests in the tendency to plant your feet close together and pretend to be a tree while playing. ...

Nick finally OK’d Karen’s video that’s been floating around the Facebooks in secret (shh) for the last month or so and I can now officially share it with the world. Honestly, don’t go to Bali. It’s a horrible place and there is no fun to be had there whatsoever. It’s really cold, wet, boring and there are no fun people there at all. Oh wait.

I’m currently in Aberdeen, catching up with some creative folks I have not seen for a long time and among other things, we’ve been shooting portraits and images of ourselves performing with fire which I would like to share! Enjoy! Spiral Wrap  

My friend Max edited together his videos from Bali and posted them. Contains humour and hilarity and scenes of a fun nature!

I got to play with some rather hefty Moonblaze-style heads last week and they were excessively fun! The flames were enormous, the chain rig was pretty sweet and overall it was great fun to play with them. However, I did come across something that is, I think, quite a serious issue in poi head design sometimes. The kevlar was so loosely woven that the heads started to disintegrate as the fire had spread to inside the head. ...

After my lovely trip up to the Frozen North to catch up with friends long absent I brought back tunes, videos and stories! So firstly, massive thanks to my perpetually happy friend Corinne, I’ve been introduced to Blogotheque which has lots of delicious, crunchy and smooth music from all manner of artists on. Here’s one that I love especially As well as discovering new music, Corinne, Cat and I got to geek out over poi for about 6 odd hours which was many different kinds of fun. ...

October’s garden party was magical, crazy and exciting! Also, there was fire and pretty lights and awesome people. Skins shot some pictures – check them out here: Skins’ Blog. Here’s a sampler! Opposite 3-petal antispins!We all wore “Carpe Awesome” tshirts to celebrate Burning Dan’s awesomeness too! Videos will undoubtedly come soon!

So Kat and I shot a bunch of footage at the last Epic Garden Party and haven’t had a chance to edit it. We recently got together and did some hardcore Premiere sessions in which she taught me a bunch of awesome things. I did some tweaking and post-production of my own and we ended up with this: Pretty nifty, I feel! Watch this space for more!

Right. Now that I actually have time to post a real entry about SL, here goes. To begin with, I wasn’t going to go to Southern Lights as I was quite simply too poor to afford a ticket. Thankfully, the gorgeous Safire stepped in and offered me one of hers in exchange for hugs on demand. A fair trade. The festival kicked off on Friday the 11th, but I was booked that day to celebrate a friend finishing exams. ...

I can’t post a full writeup of the Southern Lights festival I went to but I did draw a map of what I roughly remember it being like.  A rough map of Southern Lights 2010

A couple of weeks ago, I travelled up to Aberdeen in sunny Scotland to catch up with (and meet) my friend Cat, whom (or is it who) I initially got to know through the Playpoi Bali retreat, and a bunch of other disparate strangers all of the flow arts persuasion. Since I could ill afford to travel by rail or air, coach was the only option. A 12-hour overnight one. With screaming babies. ...