Friday, April 3rd, 2009
gissa pound, gissa pound mate, I got a knife! I’ll cut yer I’ll cut yer!
er no.
Not blades of the chavvy mugging variety, rather more like this:
I’ve been dabbling in some sword choreography lately and really enjoying it. I’m going to delve further into some training…
delvey delvey stab stab.
That’s my new mantra, I may base a new school of training on that. I think its catchy.
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
Tall houses, all stone and plaster, obscure much of the light, but not dull - rather dark, moody and romantic.
Balconies, plant boxes, a few people idly lean and chat (employed by the tourist board to stand around with floppy hats and not-so-floppy bicycles looking eternally artisan and irreparably cool.)
Maybe their hats were designed by Dali.
A little pink wind charm flower rotates on the side of a building and the people are gone now as cold raindrops pierce the gentle air. And the washing hangs on the balconies slowly getting wetter.
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
Yet another saturday night wow-factor entertainment show from the Beeb is coming out. It is imaginatively called Tonight’s the Night and hosted by the ubiquitous John Barrowman.
Mass-produced TV entertainment cynicism aside… why is this worth blogging?
Because this one has kick ass fire spinning choreography from Cutting Edge Circus that’s why! Hoorah!
So, who are Cutting Edge Circus? A new fire troupe on the scene?! welllll kind of - a couple of Bristol’s finest Chimaera members remixed, re-shaped, re-branded, and turned into a fully blown circus agency with its own select fire troupe. Hoorah! And I have the honour of being part of that troupe for this project.
That means performing not just on stage to an audience as we’re used to, but also to a whole host of moving cameras and hopefully a good number of TV screen-viewing eyes on top of that 
Showing fire performance to the general public on a large scale - that’s really exciting! I would love to see it develop further as an artform, and getting it out there on Saturday night prime time is certainly a good way to get it noticed - I hope it starts a continuing trend!
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
The fireshow choreography for Flaming Fun is coming along nicely. I worked on it into the early hours last night, I got so sucked into it!! I’m playing with what I’d call a “telegraphing” choreography technique, whereby sychro movement phrases throughout the initial segments of choreography come together later to form parts of an interactive choreography towards the end… maybe you just have to see it, but it makes me smile very geekily.
Tom (my awesome sound engineer) and I have been recording some extra bits and pieces to add to the bouncy latino-ish soundtrack. We spent all evening last Monday recording the awe-inspiring sounds of Bristol Samba’s powerful drumming!! Yes!! (that picture is not them… nevermind, when have my pics ever been relevant?)
The show will start with a call and response drumming section and it was great to see them doing this live - it was all I could to not to let out whoops and cheers onto the recording! We’re also using some of their drumming rhythms to add some extra power to the first and last segments of the show… building to a powerful finish raaaaa!@*£&$£!*
We’ve also recorded one of my housemates doing some beatboxing to add some spice to another track. Nice.
So now it just comes down to finalising the details of the choreography. We have a week from the 16th to the 20th in Brighton to train it all as a group and tweek things that need tweeking. tweek.
Monday, January 19th, 2009
May.
How far away is that? Woah, just four short months and I will have finished my FdA dance course. I’ll be really sad to stop the technique training, I love it more and more as I get totally carried away with the geekery of body mechanics…
( hmmm if I pull from my shoulder just here and squeeze through my abdominals, can I lift this truck?)
((maybe if I wear the right bra…))
…to that end (for a new career in truck lifting) I’ve been training with a professional fitness instructor - if I can just maximise my physical facilities during these next few months I should be able to loads more out of this term of dancing.
He’s been helping me “normalise” as he calls it (bah! never! I say) still, its starting to sort out imbalances in my body, and generally just getting stronger and more toned. 
Lithe I tell you! Svelte like a tiger! ha-HA! and I shall devour you all with my thighs of steel…
that reminds me of a James Bond panto, “For your thighs only”…
anyway, I’m getting distracted… crush crush crush ahhahahahhah!
oh, and apparently I need to eat loads more! Great! um nun yumhmgrm munchy.
tired now. G’night mum (yes I know you’re the only one who reads this), love you! 
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
Dear Agnes,
Tristram is just so tempremental at the moment, I can’t quite work out if he still likes me or not - he’s been switching off his heaters to make me freeze, and steaming up the windscreen so I cant go anywhere… is he just looking for attention? Or does he steam up the windows in an attempt to be more intimate with me?
Loz from Leatherhead
Dear Loz,
Don’t be too quick to point the finger! Maybe all he needs is a soapy massage or a quick oil change. Have you thought about getting others involved? Next time you take him for a spin try bringing some good-looking friends along with you, that might get his heaters flowing again!!
Aggie xx
thanks a bunch.
I’m calling the RAF.
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Quad bikes are very different from other four-wheeled animals I have experienced. To a quad bike a speed bump means speed-up not speed-down, they crave boulders and craters and boobly bits… oops sorry I meant bobbly bits ( I could have editted that out but instead I’ll just leave the unconscious psychology of that typo… what’s the definition of a Freudian slip? when you say one thing and mean your mother teehee…. shut up now Loz… ok). 
Where was I, ah yes bouncing and bobbling about on the back of a quad buggy! weeeeee!
Jonny and I bravely faced the blazing heat and sorching sunshine of high-noon Crete (someone’s got to) and intrepidly rode out to hunt down some local ancient ruins.
After a minor diversion of frappes by the harbourside in Hernissosissosos ( by the way if you want to pretend to speak Greek, just add about fifty superflious vowels, s’s and th’s…. ” I livethos in Brisostolissosissesos” - easy. ), ANYWAY… after we faced the extreme dangers of ferociously ice-cold coffee and ceaseless lapping of the untamable Mediterranean sea…. [pause for effect]…. we climbed for minute after treacherous minute to reach the dizzying heights of a mountain almost twenty foot seven inches above sea level, and discover the moderately possibly never before seen ( in the previous 5 minutes) ruinous site.
Wiping the sweat from our buttocks we carefully inspected the mosaics, pillar bases, series of small walls and concrete with an air of awe and respect for this ancient and knowledgable peopl.. hold up?!! erm, why is this mosaic filled in with plaster and concrete? and this pillar is crazy paved… nooooo!! …. we’ve been duped! It’s not ancient after all!!
It is a little known and even littler substantiated fact that Jonny and I are indeed experts in archeological detectivetry-ation-ism. Jonny with his immaculate powers in eye-sight carbon pruning immediately dated the crazy-paving to somewhere after the middle-ages while I with my immaculate heightened sense of taste… stood there looking very stylish in the sunshine as we jointly pronounced the site, “possibly old, but blinged up for the suckers” and wandered off to poke crabs in rock pools.
pokey pokey.
Monday, July 28th, 2008
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?
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Exciting new costumes are underway! I’m really looking forward to the creation of 3 new costumes for myself: a UV sexy one, a slinky and elegant hooping one, and a huuuuge stilts venetian mask costume. yess!
I spent a couple of hours with my latest gem discovery of a costumier here in Bristol (Pam Tait) and got thoroughly excited and inspired!
The UV cossie is going to be mostly white, with pale pink, green, and some black. It will be a corsett-style top and tight short trousers with various different material registers, cyber-y affixes, awesome funky lines and lace-ups, bits of skin showing in cool designs…. it’s really hard to describe in words, so I’ll attach an irrelevant photo. (see elephant above)…
The slinky hoop costume is black and velvetty red. Also corsett-style, but less risque! with little sleeves and devoire velvet patterns mmmmmm yummy. Oh yes, and long legging-type trews with matching designs… not like the exposed lady in the pic. She’s pretty though, eh?!
The venetian costume is a giant traditional period costume based on a mask brought back by my folks from Venice it is red, cream, gold and black and dreeeeeammmmyyyyy!!
