The Hallucigenia Handstand Festival is a physical festival where various genres of body manipulation gather to interact and learn from one another, specializing in handstands.

Handstands are still not common in general, but they are a great way to learn a simple yet important way to control our body.

Although handstands are common movements in various fields such as circus, dance, yoga, and martial arts, but we rarely have opportunities to learn or interact one another beyond the fields.

We are planning this event to focus on handstands which are not well known yet and to make an opportunity that participants can learn about their bodies and develop their body works through handstands, without being bound by any framework.

The organizer of the Halluicigenia Handstand Festival

Hisashi Watanabe

Hallucigenia is a paleontological organism that is believed to have lived about 500 million years ago.

After the discovery of its fossil, the researchers couldn’t figure out the correct orientation and misinterpreted it upside down and backward, causing the the picture of reconstruction to be spun around. The fossil was thus named "Hallucigenia," which means "illusion”.

The festival was named after “Hallucigenia” with our hope that we can have an event that everyone will have much fun to go upside down just like “Hallucigenia”.