2004-12-31-Ori Livney |
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By Donald H. Harrison SAN
DIEGO, Calif. —Ori Livney of Kiryat Chaim, Israel, is the kind of fellow who
bursts his own balloons—and takes an artistic pride in the accomplishment. Imagine
a balloon creation of two doves kissing affixed to a dart board.
Now, imagine a single dart—representing cruel fate, or perhaps the intifada—winging
with pinpoint accuracy at the spot where the faces of the two peace doves come
together. Kerboom!
One shot and the two heads disappear in an explosion. What
makes this wordless political commentary so unusual is that Livney is both the
balloon artist and the dart-thrower, having mastered the intricacies of both
disciplines. As
a balloon “twister,” the globe-hopping Livney, 28, has performed in
various venues, but the Kiryon mall in Kiryat
Bialik could be considered his home base.
There he likes to set up a small, low-to-the-ground stage, perfect for
preschoolers, and while he makes them hats, or other balloon creations, engage
in an amplified interview with the children. As
parents take photographs and smiling onlookers gather, Livney takes the tots
through a routine.
“What is your name?”
“How old are you?”
“Are you married?”
“What is your favorite color?” Sometimes,
of course, parents don’t bring their cameras to shopping malls—in which case
Livney often is prepared to help.
An assistant can take a digital photo of the child receiving a balloon
prize and put the picture up on Livney’s website, www.balonim.com,
for the parent to copy. Although
Livney has an engineering degree, making balloon creations has fascinated him
sincethe fifth grade when he watched a magician do it at a birthday party. Later
Livney joined a group of entertainers at Caesar's Hotel in Tiberias,
where he taught himself balloon twisting. He used the balloons to welcome
groups upon their arrival at the hotel. Recently,
Livney came to San Diego to study with Sandi Masori, who helped popularize
balloon-twisting in Israel during an appearance in 1999 on the Dudu Topaz
television talk show.
Sandi, who is my daughter, not only entertains with balloons but
also sculpts large balloon creations, and, through her videos, has become widely
known in the balloon industry.
But
what about the darts?
During the final part of his hitch in Israel’s Defense Forces, Livney
had what he described as a boring desk job, with little to do.
To make the long hours go by faster, he began tossing darts at a target.
Having
been an excellent marksman with a rifle, he found that hitting a target with a
dart was somewhat similar.
The more he practiced, the better he became.
He trained his muscles through the repetitive motion of rolling the dart
to its desired position in his left hand, then grasping it with his right hand
and tossing it at a target about nine feet away. In
the year 2000, Livney won Israel’s "American-style darts"
championship, earning him a berth in that event in the German Open competition,
held that year in Dortmund,
Germany. He
repeated as Israel's champion in 2001, competing later that year in the European
open on Spain's Costa Brava. In
both international competitions,
he was defeated by competitors who had been throwing darts all their lives,
mostly in pubs and bars, the natural habitat of this particular sport. I
asked Livney if it ever happened that just as he was preparing to make a toss,
someone startled him—perhaps by sneezing.
“No,” he smiled.
“That’s not something someone would want to do in a room full of dart
throwers.” |