Spark circus begins
On Sunday the 15th I finally got to meet my Spark Circus team in person for the first time. And what an amazing crew.
- Andrea – our fearless ringmaster, mother of Spark and my mentor and guide as a team leader
- Alita – hilarious clown and hot burlesque artist
- Anna Lena – poi queen, fan dancers and completely on-it safety officer
- April – world traveller, body mover and fire fingers and hoop extraordinaire
- Ariel – ,my dear friend from Spark last year, topsy turvy clown and all around organisational superstar
- Dreis – lovely, funny and grounded fire juggler
- Fleassy – mentioned above, clown, beatboxer, rhythm maker and allaround hilarious woman
- Garrent – stunning hoop performer, LED master
- Jenna – pint sized hoop star – she’s only 8!
- Jerina – incredible circus hooper (hoop handstands and 5 hoop splits anyone?)
- Jessie – contact ball diva and incredible body worker to boot
- Jewelz – my friend from Oz, a pink haired hula hooping bubble of joy
- Jonny – cool, calm, collected herder of hippies, master of the mikeand sound tech extraordinaire
- Karina – amazing dancer, choreographer, staffer and flow wand. Also mother of Jenna
- Ken – another dear friend from spark last year, unfortunately not joining us for the whole project, but his brief presence here made me immeasurably happy. An awesome double staffer and fan dancer and all-around great guy.
- Lukas – super skilled poi-ster and flip master
- Petra – the bendiest of our team, a mind-blowing contortionist (we literally gasped when she showed us her act!)
- Seraj – super cool La poi-ster
- Thomas – fire rope champion, flow wanderer and sparkle poi creater.
We’ll be meeting two more Sparkles, Dawn and Curly on our way to MaeSot, and they’ll round out our star studded team!
World class show in 3 days?
The primary reason we meet in Ko Panang, aside from bonding as a team, is to raise as much money as possible for the children we will be visiting up North. We had 3 days to put together an incredible fire show that we would perform here on Had Tien, and then at the 5 star hotels on Ko Samui.
In the space of 3 days we chose acts, put costumes together, created safety protocols, arranged dipping kits and fuel, made up group routines and finales, created set lists and rehearsed both with fire and without. Two of our team were also responsible for getting together an auction and pre-show party that would happen before the fire show (with caberet acts, face painting, silent auctions as well as live auction).
We worked our arses off! And it was totally worth it! The auction was a huge success, raising over 100 000 baht (beating last year’s total).The audience loved our cabaret acts and were blown away by the fire show! One person came up to me afterwards and said ‘not only was that the best Spark circus show I’ve seen in 5 years, it’s the best fire show I’ve ever seen on this island!’.
Many people commented that they couldn’t believe we’d done it in such a short period of time. The dedication and energy of this team is giving me incredible confidence that we’re going to rock the next month and a half.
I’m so proud of every one of them. Tomorrow we leave for Samui, to perform our show at 2 big 5 star resorts, raising (hopefully) loads of money for our cause. We’re also running a day show (full of clowny fun acts)for 500 kids and a circus workshop for 150 kids at a local school on Samui, which we’ve been preparing for over the last few days.
Then to Bangkok for last minute toy supplies for the kids (and costumes forus), then up to Mae Sot where the ‘real’ work/play begins.
Please donate!
If you’d like to find our more about what we’ll be up to and how to donate, please check out my website http://www.livelovehoop.com/
Every little donation helps and we’d really appreciate it.
