I didn’t get to post this before Firedrums, so I’m posting about both events together.

Kinetic Fire

My body movement workshop at Kinetic Fire

After a lot of excitement and anticipation (and 4 flights), I landed in Chicago airport .I met my lovely host Ellie, and we drove back to her place with Alex.

We spent some time around Chicago, and when we got back we made some signs for Kinetic Fire, I made what was possibly the best sign ever made for the greeters’ station.
That night I also met Ellie’s roommate Julia, and her friends April and John. All 3 of them are totally awesome.
The next day April picked up Rem from the airport and we headed for Kinetic Fire at night. We got there around 2AM, met Jon, Nicky, Grimm, and a few other people who were there, and went into our cabin (which was really nice).
We woke up the next day and helped with setting up everything around the festival. Later that night some people started arriving, and we all played with glow toys in the Main Play area. I was experimenting with some body movement and floorwork a lot that day.

The festival started the next day. This day had no workshops, but we had a pretty large group of people practicing together. That night was the first Fire Jam of the festival. I had a few sessions, including a tunneling session with Charlie.

More from my body movement workshop at Kinetic

I started the second day of the festival with my Body Movement workshop. It was a very big workshop, somewhere around 50 people would be a good guess. The workshop went great, the students really enjoyed it and people said it opened up a lot for them. That was also my first time teaching this workshop after a lot of changes to it, and I felt that it worked a lot better now.
Later that day I did my Contact Poi workshop. The workshop went very well, this is the furthest I ever got with contact in an hour, so I’m really happy about this.The fire jam that night was great, I had some very good sessions to insanely good dubstep.
The third day started with my first throws workshop, this went really well, we got through all the basic types of throws and had some time for variations at the end.
The second throws workshop also went great, we went through many 2 handed combinations, including some particularly crazy stuff towards the end.

Ellie spinning fire at Kinetic

The last fire jam of the festival was amazing. I had some great sessions, including a nice tunelling session with Drex and a fun improvised poi/palm torches session with Julia. Other highlights for me were Marvin and Jonah tunelling with Club Swinging torches, watching Ellie’s awesome spinning style and Kate and Mike doing a great choreographed tunelling set that blew my mind

Huge thanks to everyone who came and made this festival so perfect, even despite the rain and cold weather during the last 2 days.
To Marvin, Zan, and Drex for their great workshops that I took a lot from.
To Ellie, April, John, Rem, Drex, and Charlie for being awesome roommates in my cabin.
To Ellie and Julia for being awesome hosts, and to April for driving me and Rem to the airport.

Firedrums

After Kinetic Fire I spent a couple of days in Chicago and flew to San Francisco, I got to the Vulcan in Oakland and met up with Greg and Margaret, who picked me up from the train station near the Vulcan.

The Vulcan was already full of amazingly talented spinners from all over the world. I was staying at unit 56, with Greg, Margaret, Jordan, Axel, Tom, and Jerome.

We went to San Francisco the next day, we were about 20 people (most of which are on my youtube subscribe list.) and went spinning in Golden Gate Park.

A couple of days later we left for Firedrums, I was driving with Grimm, Chris Rovo, and Tom. We ended up getting slightly lost and getting there around 7PM. The location this year was a scout camp, with a big play area and lots of big trees all over the place.
That night I had about 10 fire sessions before going to sleep.

My throws class at Firedrums

The next day I taught 2 back to back throws workshops, which went really well. I covered all of my material in both workshops, with some time to spare for variations towards the end.
I also took Keith’s negative space workshop, in which he taught a few really nice basic moves, as well as his workshop on Partner Poi Manipulation with Meg, they taught us a fun 2 person sequence based on a lot of cool manipulation concepts.
I had a lot of fire sessions that day, including some tunneling with Drex.

My class on body movement and performance

The next day I did my Body movement workshop, it was smaller since I clashed with a couple other dance workshops at the time, but we still had about 15 people. It went really well, we ended with getting some of the students to show off what they learnt.
Next I did my contact poi workshop, it went great, I taught some new variations I never got to teach, which was a lot of fun.

That night was great, my friend gave me a pair of gloves from Trick Concepts, which I used to do some simple contact moves with fire, which was a great change for me, and made the many fire  sessions I had that night a lot more fun. I stayed up spinning and hanging out with awesome people until sunrise, and we left Firedrums after getting some sleep.

Huge thanks to all the Firedrums and Kinetic Fire organizers for inviting me over, helping me with everything I needed, and organizing these perfect festivals.
And to Greg and Margaret for hosting me before FD, and Kyle, Bri, and Brian for hosting me after that.
To Keith, Meg, and Kevin, for their awesome workshops.
And to all the awesome people who came to Firedrums and made it so awesome.

It’s that awesome time of the year again. After packing everything we needed, Elhanan picked me up at 6AM and we headed towards Gan Hashlosha (Sakhne), where the Israeli juggling convention is held every year. When we got there, we met all the volunteers and organizers who showed up early to help with setup. We set up our tents and got inside the gym.

I spent most of the first day practicing my routine, as well as meeting new people and catching up with old friends. Later that day we had the Avi Rosenberg competition for creativity with 3 objects. This year it was for 3 clubs, and there were lots of amazing things in that competition from both local jugglers and guests from abroad. For me the highlights were Florent from France, and Bram from Belgium.

The next day was full of shows from the afternoon. First we had the Special show, which was the full show of Compagnie Ea Eo, a group of 4 insanely talented jugglers from Belgium. I simply have no words for how awesome this show was. It was a perfect blend of juggling, dancing, comedy and theater, perfectly synchronized routines between those 4 amazing jugglers.
Next we had a show by Shake That, another group of 5 from Belgium doing insanely good flairing. Again, a good combination of insane skills with comedy and theater. I missed some of this unfortunately, but what I saw was incredible. I later got to drink some of the stuff they made =)
Then we had the Open Stage, I was the final act, and my routine went well, despite a few drops and mess ups, I felt pretty good about it, and the response from the crowd was great and that’s ultimately what matters. I didn’t get to see all the acts, but one that did stand out for me was an act by 3 kids that will definitely be the future of the Israeli juggling community.

My poi routine

The next day was the Israeli Gala, with some of the best jugglers in Israel. This year it was directed, with all the different acts flowing into each other. The highlights for me were Amit‘s staff routine, combining 1, 2, 3 and 4 staffs with his amazing dance skills, Noam‘s great club juggling act, Yano and Talia with a good and playful contact ball+dance routine, and Tobi with a great ball juggling routine.

On the last day I did my Body Movement workshop, which went really well, I changed this workshop a lot since nice year and I could see that the students were improving faster than before.
The last night of the festival had the International Gala, which year after year makes me look for my jaw on the floor. This is the show where all our guests from abroad show their amazing skills. I got to see Stefan Sing doing both his solo act and his act with his wife Cristiana, I saw both of these at EJC, and they’re even more amazing the second time – so well written and perfectly performed. Matt Hall from the US did 2 great acts – a Diabolo act and a tennis balls act. Joris from Shake That did his amazing solo routine (Dropless!), Florent Lestage from France did an amazing routine with clubs and a cane, Eric from Ea Eo did a great dance/juggling routine, Ines Brun closed the show, doing insane acrobatics on a bicycle.

This was an amazing festival, thanks to everyone who came and made it awesome, thanks to everyone who organized and volunteered, and I hope to see everyone who wasn’t there next year!

Lots of photos are available here

Hi everyone,

I’ll be traveling in the US and Europe again this summer, Charlie and I will be teaching workshops all over Europe, here’s our plan for workshops and Festivals, tickets will be available once I have final details on workshops.

May 12-15 – Kinetic Fire in Illinois, USA

May 19-22 – Firedrums in California, USA

June 7th – Poi workshop in Tallinn, Estonia

June 9-12 – Kiev Fire Fest 2011 – Kiev, Ukraine

June 14th – Poi workshop in Tampere, Finland - Tickets available here!

June 17th – Poi workshop in Helsinki, Finland – Tickets available here!

June 19th – Poi workshop in Stockholm, Sweden

June 25th – Poi workshop in Göteborg, Sweden

June 30th – Poi workshop in Malmö, Sweden

July 1st – Poi workshop in Copenhagen, Denmark

July 8th – Poi workshop in Basel, Switzerland

July 15th – Poi workshop in London, England

July 17th – Poi workshop in Manchester, England

July 27-31st – PLAY Festival, UK

August 6-14th – EJC 2011 – Munich, Germany

My friend Keith from Edinburgh doing awesome things with poi in Bristol. Pure awesome!

I found out last night that I won first place on Home of Poi’s “Circles of Light” competition.

I’m still incredibly happy, this is a dream come true for me!

Huge thanks to my friends in Poland who helped me film this

Congratulations to Meg and Keith for winning 2nd and 3rd place, both of them really deserved it.

The DVD is available for download on HOP, and also for sale – here.

I really recommend buying it and supporting the awesome people at HOP, they deserve it!

My COL entry

My good friend and amazing juggler Eden had a birthday party at Sandciell circus school in Israel. It was pure awesome, with workshops, an amazing cabaret show, and lots of beautiful awesome people.

This is my routine from the cabaret show.
Big thanks to Ronan, Cyrille, Keith, Sa, Rastaxel and Nulleamai for being my inspirations.

Happy birthday Eden, thanks for organizing this amazing party and inviting me to perform, keep being awesome!

Encycolo-Poi-Dia 2 Box Cover

I’d really like to recommend this DVD by Zan and AlienJon, I’ve learnt a lot from it, and it changed my approach to learning, teaching, and doing poi in a lot of ways.

This DVD suits both beginners and advanced spinners, it starts off with some basic concepts like planes, timings, directions,  and framing, and builds up to the different driving styles of poi – cateyes, isolations, extensions, antispins, and inspins, as well as c0ncepts like stalls and zero points, floaters, hybrids, and CAPs. There’s also some great parts about body movement, how to structure your practice, and how to approach learning and exploring poi.

The profiles section alone is great, and includes interviews and performances of some of the world’s best spinners.

This is one of my favorite learning resources available right now, I knew a lot of the material covered in this DVD before buying, and I learnt even more about things I already knew, as well as  a lot of new things.

Enjoy!

Spinning glow poi after the last workshops at Speevers

After the success of the last double workshop in Yaffo, I’ve decided to run 3 more events there in the near future.

On December 19th I’ll be teaching another double workshop, this time about Pendulums, and about Body Movement. More details here.

On December 24th I’m doing a free Introduction to Poi class, focusing on fundamentals like planes, crossing, and turning. This is for complete beginners, and will help them learn everything in the beginners poi course. More details here.

Starting January 2nd, I’ll be teaching 2 poi courses in Yaffo, one for beginners and one for advanced students. More details here.

Cyrille Humen recently made an amazing new video, which inspired me to go out and film this video. Some new poi manipulation moves, new bits from my routine, and new sequences.

Watch it in HD!

Enjoy

Coming soon – the Forearm Transfers tutorial, and another poi article.

The 2 workshops last night in Yaffo went great, we had a pretty good turnout of 5 students, from all over the country (as well as Norway!), as well as people watching online in the first streaming Poi workshop (that I know of).
After the workshop I performed my poi manipulation routine, and we had some free spinning with glow poi.

The students spinning glow poi

Huge thanks to everyone who came to the workshop, it was great meeting you, teaching you, and spinning with you! And thanks to Shahar for helping organize this.

In the near future I’m planning on running some poi courses at Speevers, one for beginners and one for intermediate spinners. More details will be announced soon.