Official Kickstarter Announcement, WHEEEEEEE!!
Since I seem to have narrowed my career prospects down to "things I like that happen on a schedule that I can sustain", I've gone about trying to figure out how to start doing them with a budget of zero. It turns out that this is only really possible when I'm doing them for my own amusement. If I'm making them into a commercial venture, other people quite rightly want to be paid -- and even the ones that on the fence about it (ANNUSHKA) get offered money, because I am allergic to asking artists to work for free.
So I turned to Kickstarter.
As most of you know, I've been fooling around with dance hoops for a few years. I picked it up initially because the first thing everyone tells you when you're underemployed is 'don't let yourself sit idle', and I wanted society to shut up. Plus the circus performers looked neat. I found a dance studio that paid volunteers with banked rehearsal time, bought a $5 fitness hoop at Marshall's (and later cadged some old beaters from Lolli Hoops, who was moving and cleaning out her loft), and discovered that having some sort of moving object to throw around while I danced meshed really well with what my bizarre cross-wired brain thought ought to be happening to the music.
You might not realize that I've also collected a bunch of other inexpensive props to play with. Fan veils, twirling ribbons, scarves, a bunch of cane-handled umbrellas, some juggling wands and balls -- the full gamut of things I would need to accidentally re-start my career as a rhythmic gymnast, basically.
One of the simplest is a Japanese-style folding fan. Mine are covered in sequins, because I'm me, but they're still just an arc of fabric on some plastic or bamboo staves, that open and close with a flick of the wrist. Most people associate them with exotic or ethnic dances, like the Chinese flutter fans, but as it turns out, you can use even the smaller hand fans for swish, emphasis, and punctuation in a free-form modern pop-style dance. Which is what I do.
I have a Kickstarter running to cover the costs of renting the studio, buying enough props to hand out to a class, and paying a videographer to shoot a digital version of the workshops, so that even people who can't make it to Cambridge, MA, can participate. $15 gets you the video workshop, so you can learn at home; $25 gets you the file and your very own folding fan. If you're a local, $25 gets you priority registration for the in-person workshop, should you so desire.
I hope to make this a whole series of props-based workshops, but I can't do that until I can get the first one off the ground. It's crazy amounts of fun. I won't know exactly when the workshop will be scheduled until I hear back from the studio, but I've put April 2017 for the delivery date on the Kickstarter, as my best guess.
So I turned to Kickstarter.
As most of you know, I've been fooling around with dance hoops for a few years. I picked it up initially because the first thing everyone tells you when you're underemployed is 'don't let yourself sit idle', and I wanted society to shut up. Plus the circus performers looked neat. I found a dance studio that paid volunteers with banked rehearsal time, bought a $5 fitness hoop at Marshall's (and later cadged some old beaters from Lolli Hoops, who was moving and cleaning out her loft), and discovered that having some sort of moving object to throw around while I danced meshed really well with what my bizarre cross-wired brain thought ought to be happening to the music.
You might not realize that I've also collected a bunch of other inexpensive props to play with. Fan veils, twirling ribbons, scarves, a bunch of cane-handled umbrellas, some juggling wands and balls -- the full gamut of things I would need to accidentally re-start my career as a rhythmic gymnast, basically.
One of the simplest is a Japanese-style folding fan. Mine are covered in sequins, because I'm me, but they're still just an arc of fabric on some plastic or bamboo staves, that open and close with a flick of the wrist. Most people associate them with exotic or ethnic dances, like the Chinese flutter fans, but as it turns out, you can use even the smaller hand fans for swish, emphasis, and punctuation in a free-form modern pop-style dance. Which is what I do.
I have a Kickstarter running to cover the costs of renting the studio, buying enough props to hand out to a class, and paying a videographer to shoot a digital version of the workshops, so that even people who can't make it to Cambridge, MA, can participate. $15 gets you the video workshop, so you can learn at home; $25 gets you the file and your very own folding fan. If you're a local, $25 gets you priority registration for the in-person workshop, should you so desire.
I hope to make this a whole series of props-based workshops, but I can't do that until I can get the first one off the ground. It's crazy amounts of fun. I won't know exactly when the workshop will be scheduled until I hear back from the studio, but I've put April 2017 for the delivery date on the Kickstarter, as my best guess.
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