Ladee's Travels

The Taipei Youth Folk Sports Performance group performed at the Kroc Center in Phoenix as part of the Sister Cities celebration.  The group of 27 performers and 13 delegates from Taipei, Taiwan came to Phoenix to celebrate 37 years of friendship between Phoenix and Taipei. "Rope Skipping" became more and more complicated. The group performed folk dances. This is called "Taiwanese Diabolo Spinning".  The purple disk spun on a rope and the performers would swing them up and down and toss them high in the air.   This boy had three of them going at the same time. He is waiting for the one that he tossed in the air to come down. Folk Dances.  They showed some fancy footwork with a "Shuttlecock", the thing that you hit over the net in badminton.  Add a hoop to make it more difficult.  Swirl long pieces of material while kicking the shuttlecock.  And stack on your friend!  Folk ...

A Japanese festival would not be complete without those amazing Bonsai trees.  These never fail to catch my eye.  I saw a lot of trimmed trees when I was in Japan (not all Bonsai) and my poor desert trees have been suffering every since!  I had to stop and see "The Candy Man" perform because I found out about these artists when I was researching for the Asia trip but did not get a chance to see one perform.  These are traditional  ame zaiku (candy sculptures) made with mizuame (boiled starch sugar) mixed with  shokubeni (food coloring).  He takes a ball of the hot candy in to his hands.  The ball is put on to a stick so that he can work with it and it can be held later.  He snips little pieces and pulls and tugs to make the ears, nose and other parts of the animal.  At the end of his performance, a candy animal. I did research on these artists, called shokunin (artisans).  They study for years to pe...