History of fire fans - War and peace
The history of fire fan spinning is not as simple as it may seem, as the appearance of seemingly random videos featuring different techniques, tricks, and basic principles of fan manipulation, grew into the opposition between two leading ideas of the fan spinning and even reduced to the “War of the rings” :)
2006 - 2008
The first page was open by an American artist Grimm Zimmer, who released his first video at December 26, 2006
December 26, 2006 | Grimm and his babies… fire fan freestyle.
For the several years Grimm was considered the best and unique tech fans spinner. This status was supported by many other videos released later. One of those was the “Chuu Chuu for Fans…” released at November 20, 2008. It contained lots of elements, which later became the basic of the American style spinning.:
November 20, 2008 | Grimm - Chuu Chuu for Fans…
2009
Meanwhile in Russia, spinners also made fans tech experiments using alternative construction with a bigger ring. Marina “Matchbox” Vinokurova became an author of the first Russian tech fans video with her “Fire fans practice” released at 19 of January, 2009.
January 19, 2009 | MarinaMatchbox: Fire fans practice
In the beginning of August 2009 new videos from the USA were published. It was Grimm’s “Fan to Hoop Extravaganza!!!” and Memory Elena’s “Fan Tech Blog #1”
August 02, 2009 | MemoryLena - Fan Tech Blog #1
August 06, 2009 | Grimm - Fan to Hoop Extravaganza!!!
A video by Rem “Fans Technique 2009” started a new wave of the Russian fan spinning. Published October 3rd, 2009, this video featured the alternative way of the fan spinning, which was started by Marina and based on the poi spinning technique
October 03, 2009 | Rem - Fans Technique 2009 (Part 1)
Here we should note a new American fan spinner Corey White, who published her famous video “Albany practice sessions” at November, 2009
November 17, 2009 | Corey - Albany practice sessions
At around the same time Anika got recognition for her performance called “Chopin”.
November 25, 2009 | Anika - Chopin
Later Anika will release many tutorials and videos, which are all interesting. In the beginning of 2010, the second part of “Fans Technique 2009” was released.
January 09, 2010 | Rem - Fans Technique 2009 (part 2)
2010
This year was marked by visit of MCP to Moscow. During those workshops a new Russian fans video “Moscow Tech Fans Convention 2010” was created. Remarkably, the next fan spinning convention will take place only in seven years!
March 24, 2010 | Moscow Tech Fans Convention 2010
As you can see, the American spinning style was mainly based on the double staff and hoop technique, whereas the St. Petersburg style was more based on the poi technique. As years passed, the differences between the American and Russian technique was growing and finally on 25th of May, 2010 the USA declared the “war” in the video “Evolution of Fans - Tech Blog” 2010.
May 25, 2010 | Evolution of Fans - Tech Blog 2010
At the same time new video of Alina Alinka-Murka Pavlova showed the fans isolation variations:
June 16, 2010 | Alinka-Murka - Fans Tech
Corey White also developed a new style with mixed planes (3D). During a short period she published several videos with the most remarkable being her performance at Flow Show 2.
April 17, 2010 | Corey White - Flow Show 2
The answer to the USA’s “war declaration” was published on June 25, 2010. Russian grip spinners have been making the videos and exchanging it for a month, creating a video response called U.S.S.R. - Tech Fans (Union’s of Soviet Spinners Response). Later U.S.S.R team will be publishing similar collaborations almost every year.
June 25, 2010 | U.S.S.R. - Tech Fans
In response to that, Grimm declared total mobilization of the US fan army. However, any other major US collaborations were never published.
Written by Rem
Translated by Yana