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Circus Life
I am in love with the circus. I love my performance family. I love the shows we do and I especially love the kids we entertain. I love playing with fire. I love packing every day so full of action and emotion that 24 hours seems like a week. Our mission is to bring play…
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Spark Circus fundraising
Hi, I’m home! Not for long, though. In less six weeks, I will be in Thailand performing with Spark Circus. Joining the circus is a lifelong dream for everyone, isn’t it? Maybe it is just me… I’ll be involved in lots of different ways: helping with backstage logistics, making circus props, and being a general…
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WHD Dance Workshop Tour
From September 25 to November 21, I’ll be out in the world spreading this year’s World Hoop Day dance choreography at workshops in the US, Europe and Australia. It’s an epic journey and standing at the brink of it now, I can’t believe I’m doing it. 12 cities, 19 flights, 4 trains, 5 hotels, 2 campsites,…
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…And in Hooping News
Today is my 4th “hoopiversary” and I have some exciting news to share. I’m joining Spark! Circus for two months in 2013. I’ll be entertaining children and adults in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border in January and February. The team performers is illustrious and amazing; I’m equally thrilled and terrified to have been selected. It’s going to be…
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Making Music, part 2
Rob checks levels as Jesse strums my ukulele and Swinky vocalises in my bedroom. Months have elapsed in the quest to make a song for the World Hoop Day Dance project. Shortly after writing the previous post in mid-March, I gave up on the lyrics and turned to the music. Huw and I created…
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100 kids
Yesterday I participated in an event at the Sullivans School on Yokosuka Naval Base. It was a day of workshops and activities that focussed on multiple intelligences. You won’t be surprised that I was teaching a hoop dance workshop. In my 40 minute sessions, kids learned ten tricks and we strung them together into a…
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Unrelated thoughts
I keep having ideas for blog posts – topics meaty enough to be more than a tweet or status update on Facebook – but for whatever reason I talk myself out of writing up my thoughts. I’ve fallen out of the habit of blogging, and that’s a shame for me (maybe not such a big…
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Making Music, part 1
A couple of weeks ago I started casting around for someone to write me some music. I want an original tune for this year’s World Hoop Day Dance project and so I was telling to my musician friends about it. I never thought this would happen but my ukulele teacher, Huw, suggested that we work together to…
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Comic Hooping
Wednesday night at Hoop Lounge I did a first run of a new act that I plan to take up to Tohoku next month to entertain kids who were affected by last year’s earthquake and tsunami. I’ll be going up with Guy Totaro and the Smile Ambassador program, a part of the Tyler Foundation’s children’s…
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Celebrating my Progress
A friend wrote on Facebook today, “Be reflective and notice what you’ve learned and what you’ve accomplished this year. Celebrate your progress!” I think that’s a good idea. At first, I feel like I haven’t really done very much this year. And then I start looking at some of the things I made notes about…