TRANSLATING INNOVATION INTO INSTRUCTION
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- JORDAN CAMPBELL
- NOEL YEE
- KRISSY HUMPHREYS
- GREG MALDONADO
- IAN SMITH
Jordan Campbell is a Vassar College Graduate with a degree in Mathematics. His interest in circus arts began at the age of 8 when he learned to juggle. Through his high school years and beyond he has grown as a juggler and expanded his repertoire to include acrobatics, partner balancing, contact juggling, fire twirling (poi, staff, juggling, etc.), magic (specializing in card magic), diabolo and more. Fire spinning became Jordan's main focus and when he went to Vassar he spent most of his time learning, teaching, and performing with the Vassar College Barefoot Monkeys, the schools circus arts and (once Jordan arrived) fire performance group. After college Jordan moved with 3 other Vassar students from the Barefoot Monkeys to the Bay Area to continue his work as a fire performer and teacher with A Different Spin. With a Different Spin Jordan performed in the Burning Man Conclave, at Club Med Resorts in Florida, the Orangeville Founder's Fair in Toronto, Canada, the Telemagica Festival in San Diego, the Union Square Fire Expo in San Francisco, and several colleges around the country including Haverford College near Philadelphia and Pamona College near LA to name some. Jordan is now working in the Bay Area as a Math Teacher, RPG game designer and fire performer.
Noel Yee, a member of fire performance troupe Vulcan Crew, has been involved in object manipulation for the past five years, focusing on poi, staff, contact staff, double staff, contact juggling and most recently hoop and meteor. He values his experience training and collaborating with many talented individuals and groups including MCP from Scotland, Wildfire, Temple of Poi and juggler Michael Glenn from Sphereplay. For the past three years, at the renowned Burning Man event, Noel has performed in the Great Circle with the Fire Conclave. Noel is a founding member of the Spinagogue that hosts workshops around the bay and the whole country. Additionally he has taught staff/poi classes in the SF Bay Area, SF South Bay, New York City, Philadelphia, Austin, Phoenix, Boston and Los Angeles. In the summers of 2006 and 2007, Noel worked at Camp Winnarainbow teaching children of all ages’ circus skills and performance techniques. As an instructor devoted to passing along his talents, Noel created and organized the schedule for FireDrums workshops. As well, he volunteered his time to instruct contact staff class for FireDrums in the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007. Currently Noel is a full time high school teacher in downtown SF. Noel has a talent for concise instruction and loves to keeps his students engaged. Keep your eyes out for his contact staff instructional DVD to be released in late January of 2008!
Krissy began spinning fire in March of 2006, a year after moving to San Francisco. Her passion for object manipulation grew quickly, and she now enjoys spending most of her time practing and instructing. In 2007 she traveled to Paris to attend master classes (UberParis). Krissy is a co-founder and instructor for the Spinagogue instructional school and has taught workshops in Portland, Santa Cruz and all around the Bay Area. She has performed at multiple venues including The Independent Theatre, 12 Galaxies, The Supper Club SF, Mighty SF, Latitude Lounge, Club Hide, Fire Drums, and 2 years in the Burning Man Fire Conclave. Krissy currently performs with The Vulcan crew , focusing on solo, couple, and group choreography. Her skills include poi, staff, double staff, triple staff, flow wand and contact ball.
Greg Maldonado has been playing with toys professionally for over nine years. His career as a performer has taken him from ballet to burlesque and back again in ten countries and placed him on stage with musicians, models and some of the worlds finest jugglers. He is widely acknowledged as the world's premier instructor of contact juggling both in person, and through his DVD series "Contact Juggling" which are some of the most successful pieces of instructional juggling media in the world. The last four years have seen him bring his talents to bear in the world of fire with fantastic success. Through participation in the Bay Area group Spinagogue, of which he is a founding member, Greg has helped to redefine the standard for spinning instruction while bringing the art to a new audience. He currently resides in Oakland, California where he performs with the Vulcan Crew.
Ian comes from the middle of the heart land… Iowa. He has been fire dancing for seven years, ever since it entered his life during his freshman year at Wesleyan University. During his senior year he was named president of the fire performance club Prometheus. College is also where he began taking modern dance seriously. “I have learned a lot about how I can move my body by following spinning movements, and I’ve found new paths of spinning by watching how my body moves.” ~Ian. After graduating he spent the summer studying dance at the American Dance Festival where he was deeply inspired by some of the top dancers in America. Afterward he quickly made up his mind to move to the San Francisco Bay Area, the city that supports some of the best communities of fire dancers and modern dancers anywhere in the world. In the bay area he was trained for the Presidency of the Temple of Poi, and was part of the Temple of Poi’s fire troupe MN8FX. He briefly worked as Marketing Director at Fire Pixie Entertainment before deciding to set out on his own. He has studied modern dance with Joe Goode, Ben Levy, the Dance Monks, Kira Kirsch (the Axis Syllabus), and has performed with Kim Epifano and Epiphany productions. He has taught fire dance workshops at Fire Drums, Wild Fire (CT), Wesleyan University, Vassar College, New York City, Boston, Richmond, VA, and in Athens, Greece at the European Juggling Convention. He resides at the Vulcan and is deeply involved in the Spinagogue events. He currently performs with many fire performance groups: he is a founding member of Vulcan Crew and LumenAscent; he performs with Fire Pixie Entertainment, and Copper Lantern Fire Theater. He also he choreographs and performs for the band Think13, the performance group Lucid Dream Lounge and the modern dance company In Step Dance Theater. His prop repertoire includes poi, staff, double staffs, double whips, fire eating/fire contact, rope, nunchakus, flow wand, contact juggling, and ball and club juggling and the slinky.