Peek at Paraguay #2 Circus Convention

 

The 8th Convention de Circo Paraguay 2017 in Minga Guazu was rich with talent, skill and style from all over South America and beyond. If you think how each country has is unique when it comes to food, fashion and music, imagine what happened when you rolled a bunch of circus freaks together for 6 days.

For the past year or so I have been plodding along with the hula hooping, taking more time to fine tune my performance and current bank of tricks. I’d felt a bit stagnant in my personal practice and the convention came along just at the right time. I made an effort to really dedicate my time training with my core discipline and the many hula hoopers that had gathered to do the same. I saw people training with the hoops in ways I had not previously seen inspiring me in my own investigation of the object. I learned new tricks that filled me with a joy right inside my belly that made me squeal with delight as I played with the new possibilities.

I taught two workshops, a beautiful exchange in the both groups that I taught. The workshops I had really taken the time to construct, drawing on all my personal experience from the past 8 years of play and for the first time didn’t find myself apologising for my level of Spanish.

I won two new hula hoops in one of the competitions ‘Resistance Hula’, this is where hoops are tossed onto the body from a distance and you have to maintain the spin. I smashed it, if I’m honest, all the other contestants working up to two or three before they lost the spin the hoops fell, I made it to 5 hoops before the 6th hoop lost me my spin but crowned me a clear winner.

I presented at ‘Ladies Night’ an all female variety show and it was an intense build up to an excellent performance, everyone enjoyed my number ‘Ama De Casa‘ and many people congratulated me on my number over the days that followed. It was a real honour to perform alongside so many different female artists from various countries such as Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Brasil and Uruguay.

As far as circus conventions go this was definitely one of the best ones I’ve been to. It was so well organised and the variety in the workshops and the shows in the were a real broad taster of what is going on in the current world of circus.

The convention was held in a recreation center so had a pool, barbeque pits to cook in the evening, breakfast and lunch was provided for us which we had to cue long as we were 600 strong at the convention. There was a main hall, an upstairs hall and then the grassy areas where the workshops took place in the day. Behind that we had our tents, and there were various shower and toilet blocks. At the very back of the center the circus tent was erected which housed the nightly performances such as ‘Freak Night’, ‘Ladies Night’, ‘Kids Night’, ‘Experimental Night’, opening and closing galas and spectaculars.

I took workshops in Hula Hoop, Body Consciousness for Handstands, Acrobatics in Duo, and this amazing spring board thingy where two people jump on one end and you do a backwards flip. And of course there was hula, lots and lots of hula.

Take me to Peek at Paraguay #3 Chipa