Medieval days in Luleå - workshops, fire perfomance and midnight sun!

Every summer the Medieval club Frostheim arranged the fantastic event of the Medieval Days at the open air museum Hägnan, close to the World Heritage of Gammelstad in Luleå. It was an amazing location with old buildings bathing all night in the midnight sun.

Together with Phire I hosted a jester and juggling workshop twice a day to let both children and adults try some equipment. I sometimes think that the parents think it is as fun as the children, but need an excuse to start picking up things and trying them. 

Cleaning after circus workshop. Photo by Robin Forsman

The poi with the colorful tails was always popular, as well as the spinning plates. Among the 9-12 year olds quite many had tried the diabolo before and was able to pick up some new understanding and skills of that. Some years ago I did not enjoy teaching as much as practising myself, but this time it was very fun to teach and spread circus to people that maybe otherwise would not ave had a try. I think it is important to let people try juggling and circus sin order to raise both the status and appreciation of circus skills.

When I was not holding workshops I was enjoying the other things the Medieval days offered. I looked at amazing handcrafts, listened to music, watched people's great costumes and clothes and talket to all the nice people. I watched heavy fighting, attended dance workshops and played nyckelharpa to another dance workshop. One night we had some spontanious acro yoga workshop!

The other nights we were having barbecue, singing songs, listening to the band, trying out medieval drinks, dancing, and talking in the big house to escape the mosquitoes.

Doing acroyoga performance with Riia. Photo by David Granberg

The last evening Phire had a fire show that was among one of the best we have done together so far. I did an acro yoga routine, a fire fan dance and a partner poi choreography and was very happy with all of that. 

I some ways I was more nervous for this fire shows since the audience had seen many other fire shows before and could actually compare more fair than the general audience. I was also worried that the fire would not give the same effect in the sun, since the sunlight never disappears, but it turned out just fine and it was nice to not freeze while performing. The fact that one of the best jesters in Sweden was in the audience would maybe have made me nervous, but since we had been hanging out during the week I was surprisingly relaxed about that. I often think that since I dont judge people that are not as silled as me, people more skilled than me probably don't judge my performances either.

Fire fan dance. Photo by Kristina Espmark

Performing together really does a lot in getting closer as a group as it both puts some pressure and stress, and require a lot of cooperation. Being a part of a group has really helped me to move forward in circus skills, expand my comfort zone and doing circus with great people!

 

Group photo with all performers from Phire! Photo by Phire

Preparing for Riga after a nice start in Luleå!

I have now moved back to the north of Sweden! It is so nice to back and continuing my studies and meeting all my old and new friends at the university circus club Phire!
I started my first full day in Luleå with creating a staff routine with my partner poi partner E that we then performed in the evening at the dinner for graduates from Luleå University of Technonogy!

Back to a snowy Luleå University of Technology

We went to a martial arts room with mirrors and since we had such a short of time we did a speed version of our usual method for creating choreographies. We also practised our old partnerpoi choreography and it went on without any mistakes at all. It seems like I will never forget how to do it!

We also played around with our encore with some special poi that involved glasses and water that was supposed to look like champagne.

A blurry picture when I still have the nice hairdo and clothes from the LED show at the graduation dinner.

Later at night at the venue I met up with the rest of Phire to do some fire mingle before the stage LEDshow. It feel so nice to be back! Luckily this was just before the cold hit Luleå so it was not too cold, and we wore our medieval clothing made from thick wool.

I am not sure which one I like the most from fire mingle or stage show. During fire mingle there is a lot of room for improvisation and interaction, but in the choreograph there is other possibilities to create things that needs some planning and practising.

Phire is doing fire mingle before the show! 

The days after the fire show it got really cold. I was a little bit unused to this after some time at the Swedish west coast in the south.

Now I am preparing for going to Riga on Thursday to attend the Nordic Baltic Circus Network workshop in how to work with objects. I am so excited to go there and develop my understanding, get inspired and meet other circus artists!

My 2015 circus resumé!

Another year of circus has passed! I realized that I have not blogged as much as last year, but that is because I have been doing so much circus!

Here is a resume and some reflections on what I have been up to 2015.

Going back to juggling and visiting SJC in spring

In spring, a new member in the circus club had the patience to practice club passing with me. I already liked circus things that could be done in couples, and club passing in no exception. This also motivated me to practice juggling on my own.

Photo credits: Simon Dunder (who also filmed Evelinas and my partnerpoi choreography). Here we are doing a partners weave.

Together with my partnerpoi partner I visited the Swedish Juggling Convention in Linköping, which was very small compared to the BJC, but I got to now many nice people there. I performed my worst performance ever at the SCJ opening show, woth a poi flying off stage. It was awful when it happend because it was one a the few times where the audeince almost only consist of other circus people but now it is just a funny story to tell.

Phire doing a Phire performance for Luleå Jujtsu club 5th years anniversary

I performed quite much with Phire, and realized that I was going to miss them so much when I was moving to Göteborg.

Performing partner poi with Evelina

A summer of teaching circus

During the summer, I was teaching a lot of circus: one at a children's camp in Vänersnäs next to the biggest (and coldest) lake in Sweden and one at a family camp in Pieksämäki in Finland.

Me and my circus teacher companion at the childrens summer camp

Spending so much time teaching made me reflect both on how I did to learn things, how to teach circus and how to make an interest for circus.

Doing acrobatics at Balance Camp

Starting the gymnastics and finding new circus friends in Göteborg in autumn

In the end of summer I attended Balance Camp in Gagnef where I picked all the acrobatics workshops I could. That inspired me to sign up for a beginners class for adults in gymnastics at Göteborgs cheer och gymnastik to learn some basic gymnastics. I also got to know new friends in Göteborg from SJC, and from the open training that are held every Wednesday night in a gym in central Göteborg. I tried acro yoga for the first time.

Photo Credit: Stefan Lindkvist People attending my juggling workshop at Höstglöd camp

Winter - practising for the Christmas celebration opening fire show

I attended the Höstglöd alternativ art's camp outside Alingsås and spent one weekend doing a lot of different things. I met more poi spinners and got very inspired in their different workshops i stalls and expression with tools, as well as workshops in stage fighting, acro yoga, fire jam, massage and other things!

Together with Vindla eldkonst I made a duo fire show for the lightening of the Christmas tree in Vänersborg, and started to do some fire fans again and made a nice partnerpoi choreography.

I also got involved in creating a opening fire show for the Christmas celebration of Göteborg, which has been very interesting as a project. I did chorography planning in a small group, did choreography i parts together with the others, bought and built equipment, had late night fire trainings and a wonderful time. I learnt a lot about how to make a big project as a group and how to build equipment for the show. Too bad the show was cancelled because of the storm Helga, but we made a film of the show instead!

Circus performances I attended

• 7 fingers - Cuisine et Confessions
• Karavan circus festival: children's performances, Circo Eia, Cia el Crue and Jay Gillian
• Cirque Inextremiste - Extrêmités
• Cirque Alfonse - Timber
• Cirkus Cirkör - Limits
• SJC shows

Among these ones, I must say that Cuisine et Confession was my favourite because of the joy and big involvement of the audience! That is a tradition from "old" circus that really makes circus different from other art forms such as dance or theathre and I liked how Cuisine et Confessions involved and played with the audience.

I hope there will be as much circus in 2016!

Happy New Year!

The anti climax with the cancelled christmas performance

Last weeks I have been so busy with practising and preparing for the opening ceremony for "Chrstimas Town Gothenburg" (Julstaden Göteborg). But due to the storm Helga that hit the west coast of Sweden last week it was cancelled, and it was like a relive but also somewhat disappointing since we had spent so much time doing choreography, practising, building fire equipment, clothes, transportation, and late evening freezing fire practises. We got to know each other as a group and make a good show that no one got the chance to see.
But the good thing is that I have learned quite a lot from the process of making the show as well since this was probably the biggest show I have been involved in. The show itself only lasted for five minuets, but since we were eight fire artists we made some nice group syncronized choreography that displayed torches, dragon staff, single staff, double staff, partner poi, fans, snake poi and the single staff again. A lot of time was spent to coordinate us and make sure that the switches and lightening of the new equipment could be done in a safe and smooth way.

Another thing that has been really awesome with this project is that we have had a dedicated leader that has used this project as a reference project in her studies for a "cultural projects manager". She has done a great job managing everything and since she was also reflecting on how we were doing she made us conscious on what was happening in our group and how the project was going, which was very instructively.

Circus update

It has been a while since I last wrote on the blog, so here is an update of what has happened in terms of circus lately.

Since I came back from Greentop this spring, I spent a lot of time writing evaluations of the course and studying for a reexam. During the summer I went back to my previous summer work, and on my spare time I did some poi spinning and took up unicycling again.

The best circus thing during this summer was the visit to the Medieval Week at Visby at the Gotland Island. It is like a medieval themed city festival, and during that week I saw more street and fire shows than I did in total the last five years. It was so inspirational to see them all, and see their different styles.

We also spent a lot of time doing fire at the beach, talking to other people who also liked the flow arts.

As a circus artist I think we spend more time developing and practicing our own material than watching others, as opposed to other art forms where relatively more time are spent at looking at others work. In Luleå where I live at the moment, the scene for circus is very small so it is not very accessible to get to see it. I actually think the student jester group which I am a part of stands for a lot of the circus activity in Luleå.

This Wendsday we tried to do some fire outside the students night club, as it was the first day of the introduction period for the new students and therefore a lot of people waiting outside the club. But after just an hour we couldn't stand the rainstorm so we had to give up.

The flying teapots and fire spinning

It is already week five of the course. I am really getting used to do this and I really like going to Greentop every day.

I have had a beginning of a cold this week so this Monday I didn't go to beginners evening trapeze class. instead, I went for Sheffield University juggling club "Flying Teapots" juggling practice session. It was very nice to see a room full of enthusiastic jugglers and object manipulators. I learned some new nice devil sticks moves and also some new poi moves ("the wrong weave" and "the antispin vetruvian man").

In poi, I have reached the point when it can sometimes be difficult to know what to learn next or where to head next, but there were some really skilled and nice poi spinners there that I talked to. I have never been to any juggling conventions but now I understand how you can learn a lot from them!

After the practice session we headed to West Park to do some fire practice. I had brought my fire poi from Sweden so after I had watched the other people I also had a go. My poi was burning a lot more than usual, and I don't know if it was because it was hot in the air or if it was the paraffin fuel that was different.

At the end A did some fire breathing. It looks really cool, but I think I will never dare to do it.

When I first started doing poi, I don't know if i was even aware that it was possible to do fire spinning. I had been doing poi for many years (hmm summers) when I tried fire for the first time with the jester club in Luleå, and I was really scared of the fire.

Now, I quite enjoy spinning with fire, but I still have a lot of respect for it. I like the sound of the flames when they move through the air, and still get a little adrenalin when I do it, even if it is not as much as when I was less used to fire spinning. It was a good evening.