Brighton Flow Fest

Brighton Flow Festival is back and this time it’s for charity!

On Sunday 4th December 2011 you’ll get the opportunity to take workshops with some of the best hoop teachers in the UK, including Sharna Rose, Steve Bags (with a brand new workshop) and Gems Goddard, as well as enjoying some beautiful partner stretching and flying with Poncho Cottier. Plus you’ll have time and space to play with other friendly hoopers from the local area.

All profits from this event are going to support Spark Circus, a charity which brings the joy of circus to refugee camps on the Thai/Burma border. Find out more about Spark here.

When? 9-5pm, Sunday 4th December

Where? Brighton and Hove High School Sports Hall – Montpelier Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 3AT

Skill level? All welcome, from beginners to advanced

SOLD OUT!!!

 

Workshops

Sharna Rose – Exploring anti-spin

Keeping the hoop moving against all odds is something that Sharna Rose is well known for. In this workshop we will travel through the mostly unfamiliar country and language of resistance and anti-spin hoop dynamics (turning against the spin of the hoop).  By familiarizing ourselves with this state of balance between continuing processes you will find millions of new ways to keep that hoop moving. You will never be able to say that you have run out of things to do with your hoop after this workshop!

Steve 2Bags – Billions of breaks

This multi-level workshop will cover a wide range of breaks from the standard to the exotic. You’ll learn how to break the hoop both on and off the body and on the horizontal and vertical plane. You’ll also use a variety of different body parts to create interesting and unusual changes in direction. The workshop will start with the foundations of breaks then move on to more advanced concepts that you can take away and apply to your hooping for months to come.

Gems Goddard – Putting the DANCE back into hoop dance

Gems specialises in putting the ‘dance’ back in hoopDANCE. In her workshop, Gems will teach how to dance with every part of our body, using dynamism and various level changes to create flow and beauty as we move with our hoops. Gems will also compliment this with various elements of graceful sustained spinning.

Teachers

Sharna Rose

Sharna Rose discovered the joy of hoop dance in February 2006 and immediately her life changed.  Her once heavy and weighty soul started to lighten. Swiftly she changed from a depressed/overweight caterpiller into a beautiful self confident butterfly spreading her wings and glittering as she took flight in the light.  Hula hoop dance gave her purpose where there was none before.  It gave her passion and a great excuse to explore and share her creativity with a welcoming community of like minded beings.  Her hoop strengths lie in her adaptability and willingness to embrace her immediate feelings and learn from her mistakes.  This very childlike quality enables her to make the most of these ‘mistakes’ and even turn them to her advantage. She has been teaching Hoop dance to all ages in the UK since she began at various festivals and different cities across the world. Many have commented upon her lively and uplifting teaching style and have expressed gratitude having experienced it.  She has posted hundreds of  video’s online which document her progress with the hoop and taught many hoopers along the way. You will benefit enormously from the time that she has spent religiously exploring the multitude of dynamics offered from single, multi, mini, fire and led hoops.

Steve2Bags

Hoopy Award winner Steve Bags has been teaching and performing circus skills for the last twelve years. He completed the professional circus training and the teaching training course at Bristol’s Circomedia. He has just returned from an epic tour of the United States, teaching his new hoop material in San Francisco, San Diago, Burning Man Festival and the Lake Tahoe Flow Arts Festival

Gems Goddard

Gems of UK Hoop Gathering has taught and performed hoop extensively for 4 years, including for CirCairo in Egypt, Boom! Festival in Portugal, Performers Without Borders in India and Spark! Circus in Thailand. She is also the organiser of the UK Hoop Gathering hooper weekends which take place every summer in England.
What else about her? She writes a lot, when there’s a piano around she loves to play it, she once hula-hooped at over 4200m altitude, she eats too much muesli, she currently works as a primary school dinner-lady (rabbit shaped cookie anyone?) and a dreadlock-maker and a dance teacher and an eco-cleaning fairy and a hooper. She wishes she was better at climbing trees.

Poncho Cottier

Poncho, originally from Mexico City, chose to leave a promising career in marketing at the age of 23 to follow his dream of moving to Paris, exploring the world and becoming a photographer. Since then he has lived in different countries and has worked in visual arts for a number of years.

After practising capoeira in London for a few years, Poncho was drawn to yoga as a way of “getting more flexible”. From the first class he was hooked and quickly realised that the main benefits of yoga go beyond physical flexibility and strength. In 2008 he decided to pack up his life for the second time and embarked on a yoga/meditation journey through India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, which lasted almost three years.

Poncho completed his yoga teacher training in Kathmandu, Nepal and has taught in India and Thailand since. Additionally, he studied Thai Massage and Ayurveda in Thailand and Nepal.

In his teaching Poncho draws from different yoga traditions including Anusara, Vinyasa, Iyengar and Hatha. Although his classes have a strong physical element, the main focus in on alignment, empowering his students, opening the heart and bringing the benefits of yoga and meditation to life off the mat.