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.