Poi lessons, fire tutorials, spinning videos, twirling workshops by Asaf More

After 2 flights that took about 7 hours combined, I arrived in Kiev and was

Photo from my Poi Throws workshop at KFF2010

greeted by Kupava, who picked me up and we drove to the Kiev train station to meet everyone else. We were waiting for Mel since his train was delayed, and I met Alyssa, Max, Clyde, and Nushka. After a few minutes ofwaiting at the station, Mel’s train arrived and we met him and Alina. We all drove to an apartment to eat and I finally had a spinning session with Mel. He showed me an interestin CAPmove that I’m still trying to wrap my mind around, among other crazy stuff that boy knows.

Then we began our journey to CAMP, where KFF is held. We had to take a bus, 2 subways, another bus, and some walking to finally arrive at CAMP. We spun some more and then decided to go to Dnieper river, a really big river in Kiev which I think I saw from the plane. A few hours later we went to sleep.

On the first day of the festival I got to meet Stefan (Paperdoll) and we had a few good spinning sessions. At nightwe did the first fire jam of the festival. It was amazing to see how high the level of spinners at this festival was. I did some fire sessions, and an improvised session with Mel.

The next day was mostly about workshops for me, I went to Antti’s workshop on juggling sequences with double staffs, and I will try to apply what I learnt there to poi and see what comes out. Next I did a very successful workshop about throws, most of the students got a lot out of the workshop. Mel also did a workshop about flowers, all I could learn from that is the Russian word for “beat”. I also met D. Menza and Bastien from France after that, and they’re both very lovely people.

The third day I went to Mel’s Sliding Style workshop, which was about moves where you slide your hands across your body. After lunch and a wait for the bus, we got to the amazing green theatre.The show opened with a series of mass fire battles, and continued with performances by many fire theatres, and ended with a big finale of all the spinners performing a simple choreography, with some spinners(myself included, I did a short choreography with Dima, a very good ukrainian spinner.) spinning a solo or duet performance in the center.

The last day of the festival I taught a workshop on Contact Poi. It went pretty well, with most people learning at least a couple basic moves. Next I had lunch with everyone and went to the green theatre for the second fire show. I was pretty nervous about it, and at the last minute I decided to improvise since I was very out of practice with my routine.

My poi routine went pretty well, and people generally thought it was good, so I’m happy about that. Among the other performers were Mel and Stefan (Paperdoll), who did 2 very good freestyles. After Mel’s act we were talking backstage and we decided to do an improvised partner poi session.After talking to the organizers about it we went on stage after the very talented staff juggler Leo Holsti. The second fire show was amazing, with performers like Konstantin Kosovec, Josh and Valerie (Solstix), Antti Suniala, and Varuzhan.

A few important thank yous:

• To Nushka and Kupava, for organizing this amazing festival and inviting me to perform. I’m really happy to have had the opportunity to teach and perform at this amazing festival, alongside many great spinners, and the great russian and ukrainian spinning community.
• To Gora, for giving me awesome bright silicone handles for the fire show
• To Linda and Lazlo, for being great roommates.
• To the many people who translated stuff for me.
• To the Ukrainan and Russian spinning community, which recieved me with very open arms.

As a lot of you may know, I’ll be travelling in Europe starting today. My first stop will be KFF – Kiev Fire Fest in Ukraine. I’ll be teaching 2 Poi Master-Classes, on throws and contact poi. I will also be part of the Fire shows, along with many of the worlds best fire theatres and fire artists, including a few people who have inspired me and I’m very excited about meeting.

Spinning fire poi at Drums Beach in Tel Aviv

As for the rest of my trip, I plan on visiting Poland (Poi Workshops in Krakow), Germany (Fusion Festival, and Poi Workshop with me and Cyrille), Switzerland (Somuna Festival), Finland (European Juggling Convention 2010),  Germany (Festivilla Feuergarten),  Sweden (Camp Burn Yourself), England (Workshop tour with Charlie, Bristol Juggling Convention), Ireland (Motion Festival), Italy, and Czech Republic.

I will do my best to keep everyone updated with new spinning videos, interviews, video lessons, and information about upcoming spinning events.

Learn poi and improve your spinning skills, join me on my European workshops this summer for excellent fire tips, tricks and moves.

I’ll be performing and teaching at the KFF – Kiev Fire Festival, in Kiev, Ukraine. Come  to KFF to see excellent fire  shows with great performances of the best fire teams, fire theatres, and fire artists form all over the world.   The shows will take place in the unique open-air green theatre.

Poi lessons from the Kff fire show to the poi workshops

I have been spinning and juggling since 2003, and have since developed a strong passion for poi and circus in general. In recent years I’ve been getting more involved in the global community by sharing video tutorials on many technical moves, and blogging everything I play with on my tech blog. My mission right now is to travel the world, teaching and inspiring others, giving back to the community that helped me develop my art to what it is today.

ASAF MOR POIBOY (ISRAEL)

more poi on KFF here

For those of you who don’t know, FireDrums is one of the best and biggest US Fire Festivals. Unfortunately I’ve missed it this year, but here’s a collection of great videos from the festival:

Read the rest of this entry »

This is my latest video, I made it to show some of what I can do before heading off to Europe:

See you at the Workshops!

I just put up my travel schedule for my trip to Europe, I’ll be visiting many different countries and festivals and teaching a lot of workshops, click here for more info

Some more videos that have inspired me over the years:

First, a pretty recent video by Santiago from Italy, another great poi manipulator, with an influence from Ronan:

Next, another recent video by the newly famous Mel, who’s probably one of the best I’ve seen recently, he combines amazing tech with great flow and movement, and this is the result:

Next, Antti Suniala’s routine, he’s one of my favorite Staff and Double Staff spinners:

Lastly, a video of my friend from England, G, performing his great routine at Bornfire, a fire festival in Singapore. This routine shows the level of control he has with stalls and plane break, among other stuff:

A few recent and not so recent videos I love.

First off, a video released today by Nick Woolsey, an amazing poi spinner and teacher, who’s been doing a few poi retreats in Bali and Costa Rica in the last few years. This video is from a retreat in Costa Rica –

Next, a pretty old video of my friend Mireneye from Sweden, performing at JFF2008 (Japan Fire Festival). I love this routine for combining a few things I love- Poi, Dance, and Irish Music -

Next, another old video, of a guy from Hungary named Jedy. I like his spinning a lot, he’s very creative -

Last but definitely not least, a great video of Thomas Johansson, also from Sweden, performing at KFF2009 (Kiev Fire Fest). This guy has definitely been one of my biggest inspirations over the last year or so. He’s the one who inspired me to work on my dancing seriously, and I love him for it -

Hello everyone, this post is going to be the first blog post I make for my website. Most of my website is business-oriented, but this blog is mainly made for other spinners.

So, what can you expect to find in this blog? Everything related to Poi, Fire spinning, Dance, and Circus Arts. That includes videos, articles, info about festivals and workshops, and anything else I think spinners around the world should know about.

I’ll end this post with a video of my Fire Poi routine, it’s changed in the past few weeks, but I’m still happy with this one:

Happy Spinning,

Poiboy.