Andrea Russell
Canada/Thailand
No one who knows Andrea is the least bit surprised to find out that she has run away with the circus– it was kind of expected actually !! Andrea has been the director and ringmaster of Spark! Circus( formerly Laughing for Life) for about five years. She spins poi, and also performs with palm candles and fans, though she considers herself far more of a behind the scenes organizer than a true performer!( Luckily, the kids aren’t too picky! ) She loves bringing the smiles to the faces of the children, and witnessing how the experience with this volunteer circus stimulates beautiful growth and awareness in all the performers. It is like watching people bloom like flowers…. She is deeply honoured to spend her time with such an amazing group of people each year
Jo Mondy
Jo Mondy is a hoop dance teacher and performer based in Brighton, UK. Jo was trained in a combination of traditional Russian/Chinese circus hula with the fluid hoop dance of the US and now spreads the hoop love as a certified Hoop Empire teacher, teaching adult and children’s classes, running kid’s parties, making hoops and performing. She also works with the local not-for-profit organization, Circus Seen, which opens up circus training to all children in local communities. Jo is excited to combine her background in social justice, community building and activism with her love of teaching the joy of circus.
Dawn Monette
Dawn is from Vancouver, Canada and has been training as a juggler for the last 10 years. She is also enrolled in the BSW (Bachelor of Social Work) degree program at the University of Victoria. The hope and dream is to combine the practice of social work and circus professions, to help give confidence to empower underprivileged children. Spark is helping achieve that dream for the first time!
Her professional juggling career began 5 years ago and since has participated in many shows around Canada since, including the Vancouver and Victoria Children’s Festival and the Olympics. Dawn began her career as a street performer, and has been performing on the streets internationally ever since. Dawn has co-created 3 juggling festivals in 2 different cities, which has given her a chance to understand the organization of circus shows from the ground up. Spark Circus will certainly be a mind opening understanding of the dreams that she looks forward to, creating more joy and play in children’s lives!
Ariel Amara
Ariel has been exploring performance art her whole life, having found her favorite channel for outgoing creative expression. She has been moving and grooving since she could walk and has dabbled in many different arts throughout her life, including mixed martial arts, belly dance, ecstatic dance and yoga. Growing up in Vancouver, BC amid a thriving arts community, Ariel found her passion in practicing hoop dance, object manipulation, fire dance and stilt walking. Ariel began developing her professional performance career in 2001 and she has worked in many environments, ranging from corporate events and clubs to community shows and festivals, in roles such as performer, mentor and tech. In July 2011, Ariel completed her second round of Clown School at Fantastic Space. These two intensive trainings brought a new level of depth and connection to her performance and teaching, emphasizing expressive body language and openness to play. A desire to share hoop bliss and silliness has spawned years of experience performing and teaching to a variety of audiences in a variety of settings, mesmerizing and spreading joy throughout. She loves teaching children and being involved in community arts projects.
Ariel brings a wide variety of skill sets: management and tech, costume creation and make-up, choreography and show development, skills sharing and performance, laughter and play. Ariel’s experience at home and during the last Spark Circus tour has shown her the value and joy of bringing circus arts to those who would not experience it otherwise.
Ken Romero
Ken Romero brings a smooth style of martial-influenced physicality to his fire performance. Although Ken grew up in Hawaii–where Polynesian fire dancing is part of Island culture–it wasn’t until he traveled to the remote Nevada desert in 2003 for the Burning Man festival that he first embraced the world of the fire arts.
Known throughout the West Coast and Hawaii as a venerable flow artist with staves, swords, and fire whip, he also earned a reputation as an inventive fire tool maker and performance group organizer. Ken helped establish fire dancing community in The Hawaiian Islands, and led several groups of performers from around the world to the Fire Conclaves of the Burning Man festival–which are some of the largest fire shows on Earth.
Ken rejoins the Spark! Circus for his second tour, after successfully leading a group of over 50 fire artists, musicians, and safety personnel in what has become known as the *Spark! Circus Conclave Collective* at Burning Man this past Summer.
Jewelz
Jewelz AKA Jewelz-a-hoopz has been hooping since 2006 around Australia and overseas. In 2008 she was inspired by a yoga teacher and art therapist who suggested hooping would be an great way to help people. And so in 2009 she spun her way back to Sydney and started teaching in the Australian Sports Commission After-School Care Communities program.
Today, Jewelz is working on bringing the hoop to all people, especially to the disadvantaged (special needs, youth groups, mental illness –combating depression).
This year she worked with A Moment 2 Shine special needs adults performing arts group and will also be working with The Cerebral Pallsy Alliance performing arts group.
You will often find Jewelz teaching workshops at festivals and once the workshops have finished you’ll find her on the grass dance floor rocking’ it out with her hoops.
Anna-Lena Hofmann
Anna-Lena AKA Bjerkana is an Occupational Therapist and Fire Artist from Germany. In 2000 she discovered the Fire Arts as her passion and since then has been practicing, performing and – for a few years now – teaching. Her main tool is poi, but she also use fire fans, firefly, hula hoop, mini hoop and levi stick. She always aims to link passion and profession and to show the connection between physis and psyche. “In learning you will teach and in teaching you will learn!” is her motto and so she is proud to learn and teach together with the children and the Sparkles in 2012.”
Karina Strong
Karina Strong is the Troupe Coordinator of VestaFire Entertainment, the circus troupe in Nanaimo BC Canada. She is a Social Worker trained in workshop facilitation and community development. Mother of two, she plays with, and teaches, poi, contact staff, hoop, stilts, and flow wand, as well as fire performance. Karina enjoys sharing her knowledge with others in order to create joyful community.
Jenna Strong
The youngest member of Spark Circus this year, Jenna Strong (8 yrs) holds her own as a hoop dance performer. She enjoys assisting with teaching children’s’ lessons and performing on stage. She is currently interested in Hip Hop dancing, and loves learning new tricks with her LED Hoop.
April Mietz
Still new to the world of fire dance and flow art, April has hit the ground running! Ever since her first encounter with the hoop three years ago, she has been completely hooked. She has taught and performed hoop dance on four continents, making and gifting hoops every where she goes. After only one year since her first burn in Indonesia, she has performed at shows in the US, Indonesia, China and India. She currently plays fire with double hoops, levi stick, fans, and fingers.
Combining her passions of dance, flow art, travel, environmental protection and social work, she has volunteered many hours working with orphans and at-risk youth during her travels. Her dream, one day, is to have an Eco-circus traveling and teaching around the world spreading bliss, inspiration, and education on how to live in harmony with ourselves and our planet. Since learning about Spark!, she knew that it was a match made in heaven and feels completely ecstatic about joining the team this year!
Alita World
Alita World has lived in Asia for a decade, mostly in Taiwan, where she founded Rock in Hose Burlesque and Cabaret in 2009.
The group performs live song, dance, skits, visual theatre, and sexy comedy at the biggest indie music festivals, clubs, and events in Taiwan, including two years at Gay Pride in front of 30 000 people, and three years at Spring Scream.
By day a school teacher and freelance reporter, she also hosts small fund-raisers, most recently gathering school supplies for a school in Mozambique. By night Alita makes up for novice skills by adding unique twists – in one act she transforms from a little old man into a sexy girl while hula hooping with a drink balanced on her head. She’s responsible for leading and organizing her talented group of performers who have introduced burlesque and cabaret to Taiwan.
Alita is a little of this and a little of that: a little hooping, a little balancing on her head, a little song and dance, and a lot of fun! She loves to learn, to trade, to share, to care, to play, to love, to laugh. Future goals include learning trick and fire hooping, making more original music, and giving something back to a world that has treated her so generously.
After taking a year off to live on a beach in Thailand, and another year traveling in India, she’s spent the last couple years working… now it’s time to run away and join the circus!
Anna Silverman
Anna Silverman is a children’s performer and educator dedicated to the benefits of play for children. With a deep conviction for cultivating child development through play, Anna has accumulated over a decade of experience working with children and young adults. Her experience is widely varied and she has worked both domestically and internationally. Her experiences includes performing and conducting programming for children, parades and festivals, birthday parties, administrative and counsellor duties at summer camps, teaching at private and public schools, and designing museums exhibits and play areas for children. Originally from the United States, Anna currently resides in Taipei, Taiwan, where she works as an Early Childhood Educator teaching English as a Second Language and is a coordinator for the daily sing-along and exercise program at her school.
Jerina Hintikka
Jerina Hintikka is a circus artist and teacher from Finland. She started circus as a hobby at the age of 11 in Haminan Teinisirkus and continued in Circus Helsinki. In 2008 she graduated from Turku Arts Academy circus school and has been working as a professional circus artist ever since. Her main disciplines are hula hoops and aerial ring but after over 15 years of circus she has lots of experience of other circus skills as well. Jerina has been performing in numerous events and festivals in Finland, Sweden, Russia, Germany and Belgium. And she has also spent 2 months studying hula hoops and aerial ring in Circus School of Kiev in Ukraine. Jerina is also a great circus teacher and has been teaching kids and adults in many different circus schools in Finland.
Petra Schütt
After a long career in rhythmic gymnastics Petra found circus a natural way of expressing herself. Her specialities are contortion and juggling, and combining them in different ways. Original ideas and learning new things delight her immensely, and so does the performing. She also enjoys teaching and sharing the joy of circus with people everywhere in the world.
Garret Flowers
Garret is a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Victoria in British Columbia by day. By night, he is an aspiring circus performer. Primarily, he plays with hula-hoops but he also dabbles in juggling, poi, diablo and staff spinning. This will be his first circus tour, and he is incredibly excited about the experience.
Jessie Quon
Jessie Quon AKA Sheraka Sphere was first enchanted by the art of Contact Juggling in 2003. Since then she hasn’t stopped growing with this form of contemporary object manipulation as a movement artist. Having a background in Martial Arts and Contact Improvisational Dance has influenced her style as a Contact Juggler. She also started incorporating elements of mime after a brief stint at the Montreal Mime School in 2009. She enjoys the intimate and interactive qualities of performing for diverse audiences, invoking magic and expressing with movement as language. Her style has been described as playful, poetic, grace ul, and sometimes deeply internal. One thing’s for sure: she rocks a sphere!
Fleassy Malay
Fleassy spends her days living on a small tropical island in the South of Thailand. Her passion is creative expression, encouraging others and herself to access the innate creative spirit which resides within. She studied Performance and Visual Arts at Brighton University, before that studied Theatre, Art and Media at The BRIT School of Performance Arts and Technology. After dabbling in many areas of performance, production, circus, stage, street and conceptual visual arts she finds herself carrying a metaphorical basket of tricks and bits. Her main performance outlet these days is as a Performance Poet and she has performed in venues and festivals all around the world.
She focuses on play, improvisation, voices, vocal expression, physical theatre and movement, costume design, fire poi, didgeridoo playing, guitar playing, “Acting”, directing, guitar playing, general noise making, climbing things, fooling, clowning, a dabble in hula hooping and other toy based circus skills, face painting, game playing….. oh and puppetry…. She travels with a friend called Googley Swan who has gained a little following of buddies around the world and videos too… and meet her in due time you shall!
Seraj Tannir
Seraj Tannir had his first memorable exposure to the fire arts at 16 and has been fascinated ever since. He started teaching himself poi at 17 and has also started experimenting with contact juggling.
As far as traveling goes, Seraj was lucky enough to grow up in a family that valued the knowledge gained from traveling over any other method of teaching. He has extensively traveled Asia, the Middle East, Europe, N. America, and some of South America.
The older he gets the more he has a lust for adventure and the second he heard about the Spark Circus he knew this would be an experience of a lifetime.
Catherine Witten
Cath was raised in the Australian countryside, spending her childhood chasing butterflies and floating in the channel staring at the clouds. While in university she was introduced to the art of fire dance at a friend’s backyard barbecue and was instantly enthralled by the flame. Upon graduation, Cath left Australia to satisfy a deep seeded sense of wanderlust, learning more about the flow arts on her travels throughout Asia. After a brief hiatus from the art, Cath discovered a flow community in Seoul a few years ago, picked up her poi, and rekindled her affair with fire. There, she has turned her passion into a lifestyle, teaching classes, hosting workshops, performing and sharing her love of flow in open spin jams. Cath is looking forward to combining her passions for flow, asia, and activism while on SPARKS! team in 2012. She is ready to sparkle!
Thomas Reich
Thomas is from Zurich, Switzerland. He came across his current passion, poi spinning, five years ago while traveling in New Zealand. Back home he continued practicing enthusiastically and patiently whenever he got time and was fascinated by the unusual movements and the huge range of possibilities. He got in touch with other local flow artists and together they founded a weekly meeting place to improve and share their skills and to connect people.
Now Thomas builds his own poi, performs with fellow fire artists and is enjoying sharing his love and joy with others!
Jonny Rose
Jonny is from London. He has been around all kinds of performance events for over a decade and can’t wait to join the circus. These days he is a partner of the Lizard Stage festival space in the UK and a core organiser of the Rollright Fayre festival. In the last year he has started performing with his ukulele, including a gig with the infamous “googly swan”. With a little experience in fire-staff he is looking forward to developing his performance skills, putting smiles on the kids faces and helping the wheels of the circus run smoothly.
