If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Spiral‘s recent piece for the Flowshow. The Flowshow, produced by Khan Wong, is an annual showcase of prop manipulators set in a formal dance theatre environment.
Spiral’s piece was of the highlights of the entire show. Consistently pushing the boundary of the art, she continues to develop and cross pollinate her hoop dance skills with formal circus training. And as always, her precision is unparalleled. She did trim about a minute of the most impressive portion of the piece.
Since we’ve been working so intensely on the DVD I was able to witness a lot of her process. I have yet to fully create a solo choreographed piece that I can run through over and over, dialing it in further wirth each pass. I don’t know of anyone who works harder and perfecting their performance as Spiral and it’s an inspiration for me to take my performance further.
Or… maybe not. I’ve seen what she put’s into her process. In order to take this as far as she does, you have to be fully committed, training hours everyday. It might not be for me. I always try and weigh the value of my performances as a contribution to my friends, my community and hooping as a whole. That needs to be compared to the value I create through blogging, diagramming, personal connections, etc. If I’m going to continue performing it’s important to me that I do it to the highest standard and maybe that’s too costly. This is something I continue to wrestle with.
spiraldancer — May 18, 2010 — http://www.spiralcircusarts.com
My hoop piece for the recent Flow Show. The last minute+ of this act is a work in progress so, in the interest of further development and creative preservation, I trimmed some of the transitions. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to Rich Porter for camera work & support.
Life has been insane. I’m finally starting to feel as if I am leading my life again rather than my life leading me. It’s good to take control and with that I’m recommitting myself to Isopop.com. I have a back log of stories and inspiration that I want to share. In the last 6 weeks I taught a new workshop at Firedrums and Hoop Convergence 2010, merging Hoop Technique theory with an idea I’m calling “micro-accelerations”, I participated in a new FireDrums DVD, performed at the FlowShow, taught a weekend long Hoop Technique workshop, premiered the Hoop Technique Trailer at a Flowtoy’s party, all while holding down a 9-6 architecture job. During all of that craziness I’ve spent a lot of time at Flowtoys working in the editing room while watching some of the most talented spinners in the world geek out. It’s been intense to say the least; insane to be more accurate
The timeline is a bit blurred in my memory. Lack of sleep does that to me. It also tends to make me more emotional and handle life’s little bumps far less well. Luckily my friends and family have been patient with me, realizing that this madness will subside and normalcy will return. Thank you to each of you.
I guess I can start with the Flowshow. Neither Brecken nor I could fully commit to a detailed choreographed piece so we strategized for maximum impact and minimum investment of time. She’s been touring the country with Bax of the Hoop Path and her schedule has been packed. Coordinating was challenging. Our piece was basically a hip-hop style hoop battle. We got a kick out of the fact that she and I each won a Hoopie this year, male and female hooper’s of the year. We were hoping to hang our Hoopie’s on gold chains and drop them in a chalice at the beginning of the piece as a joke but decided against it (not to mention it hasn’t come in the mail yet, Philo ;)
It was great for me to rehearse with Brecken. She and I have spent hours talking about how we are to some extent opposite in our pursuits. She’s looking for fluid expression and dance. I’m usually trying to express precise platonic patterns. On top of that, it’s so different collaborating with her than with Spiral. Spiral and I share similar artistic visions. Brecken has a different approach and admirably hold’s true to her artistic vision. It’s a good exercise for me to be tested by someone I respect as much as her. The piece went well, not perfect, but respectable. I wrote a bit on that and you can see the video: here
I’ll continue to catch up with everything in the coming days. My blog topic to do list:
-Flowtoys
-Spiral’s Flowshow Piece
-Thomas Johansson
-The Glide-Cam (something I built)
-The Hoop Compass (a gizmo I built and was playing with at HoopCon)
-Hoop Convergence
-FireDrums
-DVD update
-Yuta
-Okotampe Contact Juggling
-Lightning In A Bottle
Less than two weeks from the DVD release…. then I’m posting a ton of new music here. Isopop is about to drop the hammer :) In the meantime, here’s Brecken and I’s Flowshow performance.
This was a pretty amazing. Hah… we need more wardrobe malfunctions in the hooping community…. just sayin. I usually prefer videos to be 2 minutes or less… but this whole video packs it in. My set was fairly short but I was happy with it. I’d rather be short and sweet personally. Shakti opened with elegance, I dropped in some tech weirdness, Spiral broke it down with the sickness, fortunately including her top, then Shredder brought us some classic circus energy combined with modern hoop dance…. last but not least Brecken tore it the f*** up.
There is a lot of back story on the whole event but it was amazing to have this much hoop skill on that stage at one time. The crown loved it. 10 minutes of hooping without a moment too much.
This is ridiculously amazing, but WTF is the paper thingy Brian… seriously. The Vulcan crew headed up to north for the Humbolt Juggling Convention and Poke and Brian go casually throw down some next level hoop manipulation like this. Well played gentlemen.
Here is some footage of Spiral’s last gig, Castle Carnevale in Jamestown, NC. This is the same Camera Hoop Technique purchased for shooting our DVD and Demos. We’ll also be bringing it out to the Love Them Phishes party tonight to see what we can get it to do. The camera is a bit challenging to operate but if you know your photography, you can get footage that in my opinion, eclipses anything else in the price range. These guys obviously know there $h!+.
Movement Play has been one of my favorite events for the last two years. We’ll be coming out again. This festival is a labor of love for all those invovled and some the artwork created for it is amazing. Miss Rosie is trying to step it up, creating a foundation to fund local artists and art that can be brought to the microfestival. The art that’s created for events like this stay within our community and resurface at various locations and can become fixtures of the community, helping define the progression of our small subculture.
A Piscean Birthday Celebration for Miss Rosie, Spiral, Brecken, Rana Satori, Kurt Ruckus, and ALL Pisces!
…To benefit the Movement Play Arts Fund…
DJs:
Alxndr
Bombgoddess
Ra-So
Global Ruckus
Performances by: Shakti Sunfire
Spiral
Rich Porter
Brecken
Miss Rosie
GlitterGirl
The Samantha Giron Dance Project (returns to the Bay Area!)
Paige Wyatt
Megastar Anastazia
Matthew Breno
with many more!
Tea Libations by Om Shan Tea
Where: DNA Lounge – 375 Eleventh St., San Francisco
When: Thursday March 4th – Doors 8pm, Show starts at 845 p.m.
Advance Tickets: $15 at DNAlounge.com
At the door: $20 general; $15 if dressed in blue colors or a spunky hat (no baseball caps)
PISCES GET IN FOR 10 BUCKS at the door!
21+ with photo ID
About MPAF: The Movement Play Arts Fund supports Bay Area artists in creating visual,
auditory, and interactive art to share at the Movement Play Microfestival and beyond.
A few of us Bay Area folks were able to catch this show with Beth a few weeks back when she was in town. The show was so perfectly done that Lauren and I went back to see it again the next weekend.
They incorporated dance, prop manipulation, aerial silk, aerial ropes of their own design, contortion, “DIY tech”, a mannequin leg?! creating a surreal and emotionally deep atmosphere. The first aerial piece made me cry and desire to say out loud “I’m sorry,” apologizing both from myself and for the societal impact on women. It was intense.
The second time we went, I ran over to the Flow Space and grabbed our camera so I could record the piece for them. I recorded the whole show and downloaded the footage onto Poki’s laptop immediately after the show was over. Some of the footage made it into the clip here :)
Cohdi and Laura’s website can be found at http://www.ricochet.name and Poki’s website (with Brian) is at http://www.circusconspiracy.com
Last night I performed at The Monthly Rumpus. The event was magical. So many friendly enthusiastic individuals and a diverse crowd set in the surreal scene of the Make Out Room in the Mission. The Rumpus Monthly is a poetry/book reading/party/musical acts etc… sort of a high brow variety act of friendly creative people. If you manage to make it to the end of this post, there is a video of my performance.
Since all the readers were introducing themselves, I took the liberty to do the same, introducing myself as a designer who never intended to start hooping, but then applied my design background to my hooping. If you’re reading this, it’s probably old news to you but it was a great way to segway into my little performance. I hope that some of the people in the audience were able to follow what I meant when I said that I literally draw shapes with my hoops, just like I am when I’m designing. This was also a great way to take some pressure off myself. People love a backstory if the story is good.
The stage was tiny and challenging but I did well considering and everyone seemed to love it. I’m happy. It was another chance to practice my unpolished performance skills, and most importantly I feel like I actually made many people happy. Everyone was so profuse in their praise and seemed enthusiastically excited.
Making myself a person seemed to inspire more conversation. People were asking me questions that I’ve never fielded when I’ve performed as a hooper rather than designer/hooper. The conversations and lines of inquiry lead me to believe that people were actually thinking about what it was that I was doing. I wasn’t just the entertainment. I’m not recommending this strategy if you’re being paid to perform but for me, in this gig, starting off with something mildly effacing worked wonders.
Today some articles have been popping up about the event. The first blog entry about the event came from Steven Maynard (Thank Julie for sending me this). His word’s are humbling:
They were interspersed with a couple musical and humorous acts, but the “shining” moment, literally, was a hoopdance by Richard Porter. A guy with bleach blonde hair, in tight striped pants, dancing with glowing hoola hoops to Cirque du Soleil-esque music. SOOO COOL!…or should I say “sick”?
I linked to his profile, but check out the rest of his and his performance partner’s site. I didn’t know there was something called hooping, or that it has an international following and community, or that there could be instructional classes, much less a DVD, or that there are Hoopie awards. I know I saw Michelle Obama do a little hoola hooping, but that is nothing compared to this!
The second article was a write up of the event in SF weekly. This article does a nice job of capturing the feel of the event and their brief description of me was entertaining and accurate:
Where in San Francisco can you get a night of author readings about a pubic hair leading a teenager astray, “homogenizing the way the world goes mad,” and screwing a prostitute named Gretta; watch a “hoopdance” by an architect with a penchant for hip-hop and glowing hula hoops; listen as a musician-performance artist re-enacts a phone conversation from 7th grade; and enter a raffle where the prizes include free porn or free Ritual coffee?
As I’ve written this, another review has been posted, including video of the full four and a half minutes of my piece. The video is a bit long especially given that the dimensions of the space pretty much kept me hooping above the waist or off body. I do a few new things I’ve been playing with recently but keep it pretty straightforward especially given the rug that was sliding beneath my feet.
The night ended with Julie giving me a copy of Stephen Elliot’s book, the Adderall Diaries. Stephen was there and a super friendly guy. I can’t wait to dive in, Ariane has had wonderful things to ay about the book. Thank you so much Julie for the book, the opportunity, and not to mention your help editing the Hoop Technique script. The opportunity and you’re graciousness were appreciated.
