Dennis & Ingrid have agreed to the interview which I'm looking forward to as there going to do it as a couple & each give there own view on things which are like chalk & cheese, so we may end up with a domestic
Ingid makes some amazing dresses & her fantasy flowers are great.
Dennis is the straight man to Guido Verhoef & they both made the DVD's with hearts, B-Bodies, Geo's etc.
The portfolio page is all I have at the moment but as soon as I get a website etc I'll add the details;

http://dennis_haha.balloonhq.com/

Just found the website;

http://www.hahaentertainment.nl/

Also found some you tube clips of Indgrid's fashion show dresses that she made at The Millennium Jam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWJdzhSc6kM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB4rXPYA ... re=related

Ingrid's dress is also on this link with some other amazing balloon related work;

http://www.betallic.com/main.php?view=p ... otoCatID=2

This link is a must see........... http://www.theartofballoons.com/Page10.html

More of Deniss & Ingrid's balloon work;
http://www.ballonvouwen.nl/

The date for Ingrid & Dennis to answer the questions has been set for the end of the month, 24/30th Nov.
Met them both over the weekend at the NABAS show in Stoneleigh Park & went out for a lovely Indian with them, Dennis tells a good story or two.
Looking forward to this interview as both are going to answer the questions seperately with both there viewpoints, so it should be fun

Graham Lee

Hello to you all,

For the people on this balloonforum who don't know me I will make a short introduction.

Together with Dennis I run Ha Ha entertainment. Mainly we sell balloons, juggling, circusatributes and magic. Besides the selling we give advice to our customers about the products we sell. All the materials from balloons to juggling and magic everything we sell we can (sometimes only one of us) do ourselves. And besides the selling a part of our job is teaching. We do different workshops in all kind of skills in balloons. Dennis does mainly modelling and the crossover between decorating and modelling. I teach diffferent workshops with the fantasyflower technique.

The biggest achievement:
In my skill was the dress I made last year for the Millenniumjam Fashion Award Show. For everybody who is a member of balloonmagic it was on the cover off number 53.And the dress I made for NABAS laste year. Theme Moulin Rouge. The difficulty for this dress was that it has to be worn all night long and you should be able to dance and party in it.

Together with Dennis and Jochem we made the muppets. Stadler and Waldorf in their balkony. This was for the muliti balloon competition at the Millenniumjam 2005.

We organise in our own building workshops and one-day jams. But for us this years challenge was the Millenniumjam. Leo from IBS asked us if we wanted to help him organising the Millenniumjam. And han more all the technical and creative things for the Fashion Show. So we did run the Gala evenings, Fashion show technically as Dennis and I both worked in the theater we knew what was needed for technical equipment and could do this years show as we wanted it to be. Leo gave us carte blanche in our vieuw of the Fashion Show. the only thing which was given was the theme Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons. As I participated the Fashion Award show the last two years I knew what the designers had to coop with. Because this is a very hard and demanding competition. Not only because the technical skills of balloon weaving but the long hours you make (20 hrs or more is not unusual) and the theme, circumstances you've to deal with. For us this was the final off 14 months of hard labor. As you can read on this forum in the chitchat it was really great. And for everyone who wasn't their you've missed out on something great as you can see on the photo's it was one big rush of balloons, meeting friends, comptitions and parties.

Hope you know know me a little better through my chat and the photo's I've attached.

Come on pop the questions to us.

Ingrid

Hi Denis & Ingrid, thanks for the write up about yourself. Very interesting & informative, sorry for the delay in putting the questions up but I've been loading up the car & driving up to Birmingham today for the Sempertex party we're having tomorrow

Here are the first lot of questions;

1, What road led you into balloon modelling?

2, when did you get started with balloons?

3, What’s your best twisting experience?

4, What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you during a ballooning/entertaining session?

5, What do you most enjoy about twisting & why?

Hi Denis & Ingrid, thanks for the write up about yourself. Very interesting & informative, sorry for the delay in putting the questions up but I've been loading up the car & driving up to Birmingham today for the Sempertex party we're having tomorrow

Here are the first lot of questions;

1, What road led you into balloon modelling?

2, when did you get started with balloons?

3, What’s your best twisting experience?

4, What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you during a ballooning/entertaining session?

5, What do you most enjoy about twisting & why?

1, What road led you into balloon modelling?
Well I started performing before we even knew about balloons, I was 3 years old when I had my first public performance.
Both my parent worked in a (childrens)circus so offcourse I started early.
The balloons came in my life when Ingrid bought me a present, she got me a small balloonkit, consisting of 25 modelling balloons, a handpump and some stickers.
We were having diner at our best friends and she thought it would be fun to play around with the balloons.
Immediately when I started twisting them I knew this was special, the day after we rushed to a partystore and bought our first "real'bag of balloons, the addiction was there to never leave.

2, when did you get started with balloons?
The addicting started 12 years ago, (time flies when your on latex)

3, What’s your best twisting experience?
I really enjoyed making the Muppets sculpture at TMJ 2005. Just the fact that we were 33 hours non-stop twisting and succeeding in what we had in mind was just great to experience.
I must admit after the 33 hours I would have told you differently, but after a while you only remember the good things.

Another thing that comes to mind is a complete different thing. When we just started incorporating the balloons in our entertaining performances (and our menu off figures was not that long) we had a woman coming up to us in a restaurant where we worked.
She asked us if we could make something special for her mum, because this was avery special day.
When we arrived at their table and asked about there special day, the daughter said to us that her mum only had a couple off days to live and this was their very last day out together.
So there we stood, completely overwhelmed with the answer we got.
Immediately after the answer sunk in I thought to myself "what the ??????? can I make for this lady"
Luckely I bought a videotape the week before where a flower vase was explained and I saw the instruction (only once) for it.
So I made her a bouquet of flowers in a vase and after handing it over to the mum, the daughter said to us "this was the best thing that could have happened to us today" we said goodbye and were totally shocked for the rest of the day.
Even now when I write this I get goosebumps

4, What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you during a ballooning/entertaining session?
A that is a clear one, I am not very good in mouth inflating, so I always use a pump. One day we had a 3 hour job for a corporate party and all 5 of our pumps desided that it was time for their retirement.
It was so strange, one after the other broke, got jammed, etc. and this was in the first half hour, so we had 2,5 hours to go.
Ingrid had a small squeeze pump (like a rubber ball with a nozzle on it) that kept on working, so she was squeezing like crazy to inflate her balloons. I on the other hand was forced into 2,5 hours of mouth inflation, boy the headache that I got from that.
I only did smaller figures at the end of the show, no big stuff that needed much inflation.

5, What do you most enjoy about twisting & why?
At the moment I must admit that I enjoy teaching the best. Just to see how much we can share amongst each other and giving people new ideas is what I like best.
When I teach I try to make it fun, not only for the delegates, but also for myself, I consider teaching as a form of entertainment. People learn the most when the have fun.

Some more questions from the list;

6, What's your favourite age to entertain?

7, Do you have the same act but vary the presentation for all ages or do you have set acts for different ages?

8, What’s your favourite thing to make at the moment?

9, What is the most asked for model?

10, What do you tend to do more of if stuck in the 'balloon production line' model?

11, Who is your market aimed at?

Hi Graham and other balloon chat members,

I'm to bussy with Ha Ha entertainment and al the things involved running a businnes that I don't preform anymore. I stopped already a few years ago so I don't think I can answer any of these questions.

Sorry Ingrid, I thought you both still did go out entertaining, you learn something new every day as they say
Hope these questions are better for you;

12, Do you decorate/entertain at corporate gigs?

13, How long have you been running the business?

14, As your business grew did you cut back gradually on the entertaining?

15, What advice would you give to someone starting out, or wanting to increase their business?

16, What road in latex do you see yourself taking in the future?

17, If you could start all over again, would you change anything?

18, How would you like the future of balloon modelling to develop?

19, Who's the most famous person you have made a balloon creation for?

20, How do you keep the enthusiasm going & what still excites you about our great world of latex?

21, What inspires or is your thought process in coming up with a new design?

22, Who would you like to work with dead or alive?

23, What makes you laugh?

Who would you most like to make a model for and why, what would
you make them ?