People are usually interested/excited when Andrew and I spin our poi. It's fire. People are drawn to fire, (a little like moths, really) especially when another person is crazy enough to fling that fire around their body. We don't advertise our fire spinning skills for hire, but if you invite us over to a causal house party there's a good chance we'll bring food and/or fire. We're kind of a great party addition that way. We'll feed you, and entertain your guests.
At any rate...
Back in the beginning of July we attended a board game party, and seeing that it was the Canada Day long weekend we thought it would be appropriate to bring our own fireworks (I made some good ole' classic chocolate chip cookies too). Our hosts agreed it would be a fun show and allowed us to use their backyard as a stage. As expected, the other attendees were amused and as it turned out, a couple of members of the Vegreville Fair organizing committee were amongst the guests. They wanted to know, did we do shows? How about at Vegreville? Since Andrew and I generally only spin a couple of times a year, and it's always fun to perform in front of people who are likely not to have seen such a show before, we agreed.
Now, fast-forward to the weekend before last. Since poi is best viewed in a certain level of darkness we weren't scheduled to appear at the Fair until 10:30-ish. We stayed at home for most of the afternoon and early evening (we completed a giant run that morning and our feet were TIRED) and didn't head out to Vegreville until around 8:00 pm. We'd never been to Vegreville before, but we understand it's the home of "The World's Largest Ukrainian Egg" (I only say "understand" as we didn't actually see it while we were there). We arrived in Vegreville at around 9:30, called our Fair contact to let them know we were there, and met up with them a few minutes later.
We walked over to the fairgrounds (only a minute or two away from where we parked), were shown where we would be preforming, then since we had time to spare before our show, we wandered around the midway. I love roller coasters. It's been a while since I've been on one (for several years I made an annual trip to Canada's Wonderland to ride the rides, but there aren't any substantial amusement parks in Alberta) so I thought it would be fun to go on a couple of the midway rides to pass the time. Sadly, I can no longer tolerate little fair rides that more-or-less just go around in a circle. I got dizzy and nauseous on both of the ones we went on, and I really hope this doesn't mean I can't do big rides anymore too. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one feeling this way. Our whole party agreed that little circular rides don't agree with adult stomachs.
By 10:30 we were back at the bandstand where we were to preform. Unfortunately a band was setting up behind us who required the stage light on, but we seemed well received anyway. We spun to music by the "Afro Celt Sound System" (we don't usually use music, and we picked it maybe 20 minutes before we left home, then decided which songs to use probably less than 20 minutes from Vegreville), which seemed to work well. I sort of danced around to it as I spun, and the afro-celt beat complimented our show. We did 2 rounds of spinning each, plus a finale where we spun at the same time. The folks in Vegreville seemed to enjoy our spinning and our hosts told us that people were pulling out their cell phones and telling people to come over and see us. That's pretty awesome, I think. Plus the entertainment organizer wants us back next year.
After we finished our show we hung around for another hour or so, heading over to the beer gardens with our hosts. We drove back to Edmonton that night (despite the 1.5 hour drive) since I knew I would sleep better at home. Overall we had fun, and I think both Andrew and are interested in doing it again next year.
Ciao,
Andrea
PS if photos taken during the show are made available online, I'll post a link. For now here are some old photos of us.
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