Monday, July 28th, 2008
bounce, dance, stiltwalk, choreo, setup, packdown, fireshow, party, hi nice to meet you, sleep?
I looooove the silly season. love it love it love it. I’m so busy all the time and going from show to festival to party to friends, with a dabble of chill-out and sleep thrown in for good measure.
I live an extremely blessed life, and I’m very appreciative.
I recently spent just over a week in Austria performing with the lovely FlameOz at street festivals; Linz Pflasterspektakel and Villach Street Festival. A 7-person troupe, we sarrived to train in the most amazing space - the headquarters of Phoenix Fireshows in Vienna. A huge renovated warehouse encompassing a mamouth beautiful training hall, changing rooms/showers, rooms lined with banks and banks of masks and costumes and props of all colours and hues, an equipment workshop, costumier space, kitchen and sleeping room - it is everything, just everything! (except maybe with the location in Brasil! 
)… so we played and trained for hours and somehow one day turned into the next and we were on the road in a big blue van, headed for Linz.
An open expanse of Hauptplatz cobble stones benevolently overlooked by centuries old buildings, the 
picturesque little town slowly becomes more and more populated by street-performers and eclectic audients from all over the world (I possess a comprehensive vocabularic license). Each night we gathered a buzzing crowd for our halfhour performances and our energy and shows fed hungrily off the incomparable energy of a street-crowd 
… 3 days, 6 shows, countless hours of rehearsals, show prep, de-briefing, dancing and insatiable partying later… we gathered, bleary-eyed into the van for the journey to Villach…
Villach festival was smaller and kinda cuter than Linz, and many of the same faces appear at both. The atmosphere and comradery is a barefoot dance, infectious laughter, local schnapps and a communal breakfast… the days once more start to merge together as we all perform through day and night and party, dance and sing at almost all times in between. Sleep? Is that a mixer?