Circus Festival in Tralee

This festival was fantastic. We spent most of Friday and all day Saturday attending workshops and exchanging lessons and tricks with people. There were some absolutely incredible circus performers - jugglers, hula hoopers, baton twirlers, poi dancers (pronounced poy), diabolo, and anything in between. I was mildly disappointed with the evening shows because of the lack of juggling, but they were entertaining nonetheless. After the evening gala show on Saturday, everybody returned to the main juggling hall for a show they call The Renegade - which is basically a fancy circus talent show. The catch is that the audience can 'boo' you off the stage, and if you're not asked to leave by the end of the your performance, the audience gets to decide whether or not you get a prize, which is a shot of whiskey. Being an Irish festival though, NOBODY was denied a shot. Some people even got bonus shots in fact. The weekend was quite the craic. I have a plan to come back in 2014 for the European Juggling Convention

Hazel and the tower of juggling balls.

This is Gianna practicing contact juggling. She is the UCC Juggling Club Prez. She just learned this over the summer at the European Juggling Convention and she's getting quite good. I got a lesson from her over the weekend and we'll see if I can get better.

The giant balloon ball! When it was finished, a few people climbed inside and carried it out on the dance floor and danced in it. It didn't even pop!

It's really hard to see because of blurriness and angle of the shot, but that's a tiny bike that I'm riding. It was REALLY hard to ride! I never quite got it.

This is Merlin. I think he might be the creator of this cool LED toy. It is meant to be performed like poi, but you can time the lights to music. They're really neat.