Poi Fire Dancing Spinning Performance & Twirling (Hoop Staff Fans Also)

As we continue with our artist profiles for the Temple of Poi 2009 Fire Dancing Expo & 7 Year Anniversary, we spotlight student performer Phoenix, who will be performing with her group, Dark Side of the Rainbow.

Phoenix is a garden-variety, glitter-addicted artist and barista extraordinaire. She loves fat little birds, long walks off short piers, and secret messages left in plain sight. Her heroes are John Fluevog, Eugene Hutz and Tom Selleck, and she eagerly awaits the day when they merge together to form the most amazing stripy-booted-mustache fest the world has ever seen.

As we continue with our artist profiles for the Temple of Poi 2009 Fire Dancing Expo & 7 Year Anniversary, we spotlight student performer Cathy “Beautium” Lo, who will be performing with her group, Dark Side of the Rainbow.

Beautium has been performing with fire since 2004 when she started taking classes with GlitterGirl at Temple of Poi. She is passionate for the danger and aesthetics of fire. Performing with fire has taught her a number of things about life - trust yourself, trust others, embrace the flow of life, and accept the greater possibilities.

As we continue with our artist profiles for the Temple of Poi 2009 Fire Dancing Expo & 7 Year Anniversary, we spotlight Jordan Campbell who will be performing with Vulcan Crew partner Krissy Humphreys.

Jordan Campbell is a Vassar College Graduate with a degree in Mathematics. His interest in the circus arts began at the age of 8 when he learned to juggle. Through his high school years and beyond he has grown as a juggler and expanded his repertoire to include acrobatics, partner balancing, contact juggling, fire twirling (poi, staff, juggling, etc.), magic (specializing in card magic), diabolo and more. Fire spinning became Jordan’s main focus and when he went to Vassar he spent most of his time learning, teaching, and performing with the Vassar College Barefoot Monkeys, the schools circus arts and (once Jordan arrived) fire performance group.
After college Jordan moved with 3 other Vassar students from the Barefoot Monkeys to the Bay Area to continue his work as a fire performer and teacher with A Different Spin. With a Different Spin Jordan performed in the Burning Man Conclave, at Club Med Resorts in Florida, the Orangeville Founder’s Fair in Toronto, Canada, the Telemagica Festival in San Diego, the Union Square Fire Expo in San Francisco, and several colleges around the country including Haverford College near Philadelphia and Pamona College near LA to name some.
Jordan is now working in the Bay Area as a Math Teacher, RPG game designer and fire performer. Enjoy these additional videos of Jordan’s work. 

As the Temple of Poi 2009 Fire Dancing Expo & 7 Year Anniversary show approaches, we’ll be featuring articles on the artists appearing in the show. The first artist is Alien Jon who will be performing in a duet with Nevisoul. 

Alien Jon has been spinning things since childhood, starting with himself, and expanding to socks with tennis balls in them and sticks found in the woods of Maine. Starting with his first pair of devilstix in 1995, he officially entered the world of object manipulation. In 1999, from a foundation built on devilstix and drawing inspiration from T’ai Ji and Aikido, he began spinning glowing objects on strings or in socks at “all night dance parties”.

After meeting other spinners he learned that objects had been spun in a similar manner for millennia by ancient cultures from around the world. This gave rise to the discovery of fire spinning, and his dedication to the art of contemporary poi began. 

From devilstix and poi other object manipulation quickly followed: Sphereplay, staff, diabolo, meteor, and astrojax to name a few. These talents have been melded with a love of music and dance, including liquid, illusional, and funk styles. Jon loves to play and lives for the spark of innovation and creativity, while further honing his skill through diligent practice.

Enjoy these additional videos of Alien Jon’s work:

What: Temple of Poi 2009 Fire Dancing Expo & 7 Year Anniversary of Temple of Poi
Where: Union Square (Geary and Post)
When: April 25, 2009 at 7:50 pm sharp!
Cost: Free!!

After party follows in the East Bay.

Bring a chair and a blanket and join us April 25, 2009 at 7:50 pm for our free fire dancing show in San Francisco’s legendary Union Square (Geary and Post) for the fourth annual Temple of Poi Fire Dancing Expo.

This year’s show is a veritable who’s who of internationally renowned fire dancing performers hailing from 3 continents including:

In addition, the show will feature 5 student performances by:

• Nick Griffin
• FireFlyGirlz (Susan & Brenda)
• Divine Light (Nicolle, Marla & Brenda)
• Supreme Beings of Fire (Susan, Michael, Melinda, Karishma, Brenda & Audrey, Entropy)
• Dark Side of the Rainbow (Vlad, Susan, Shelly, Phoenix, Michael, Mallika, Jen, Beautium & Entropy)

The 2009 Expo also marks the 7 Year Anniversary of Temple of Poi — to the day! The City of San Francisco and Union Square have added this event to their Jewels in the Square Program. Jeweles in the Square is an ongoing series of culturally significant presentations made in San Francisco’s Union Square in an effort to make diverse entertainment available to the public for free.

The creation of this event – selected in 2009 for the 3rd consecutive years as one of Bay Area Dance week’s Cornerstone events – is a tremendous leap in the efforts to legitimize fire dancing as an art form by taking it out of parking lots and putting it on landmark stages like Union Square. The Expo celebrates safe, legally permitted, public fire dancing performance in honor of National Dance Week, an annual 10-day week of free public dance events in the Bay Area designed to showcase the dynamic diversity and critically acclaimed quality of Bay Area dance.

Temple of Poi supports this vision by creating an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate fire dancing at no cost to the artists or audience. This event is a not for profit event created with the intention of:

• offering more performance opportunities for fire dancers
• giving novice artists who might otherwise not have an opportunity
  to perform in a public setting an opportunity where they can
  invite friends and family to see them express their art
• increased exposure to the flow fire art forms by creating
  a legally permitted public event at a San Francisco landmark
  location
• raise the awareness of fire dancing as a prestigious dance
  form by holding this event on the opening night of National
  Dance Week

This $5000 event is being financed by Isa “GlitterGirl” Isaacs, Temple of Poi and Union Square Park and San Francisco and generous donations from the community by:

• Daniel Van Olst
• Melinda “FireCracker” Sanders
• Allen “Entropy” Santos
• Jim Rudoff
• Mallika Prakash
• PixieBird.com
• Gokul Krishna
• Shelly Ross
• Alan Gentry
• Benjy Feen
• Scott Barney
• Jen Weinberg
• Carlos Walker
• Martin & Julie Matthews
• Nancy Tovin
• Christopher Dayson
• Rebekah Cook
• Nicolle Morehouse
• Silvia Beck
• Marla Weinberg
• Kris Grabowski
• Sumana Kesh
• Matthew Freedman
• Kelly Peterson
• Rikki Kiefer
• Susan “Tiger Lily” Drews Watkins
• Sacred Flame
• Lisa Burger
• Kate Houlihan
• Paget Norton
• Adam Crocker
• Rich Goldstein
• David Yu
• David Williams
• Mike Crane
• Gregg Brown
• Tamara Johnston
• Brenda “Manzanita” Fagan
• Carter Yu
• FlowToys
• Michael Parker
• Karishma Haji
• Lynn JT Kelley
• Andy Kurtzig

Since so many people were happy I posted last week’s poi practice, I thought I’d put my post-40-poi-la-hoop set up here as well. There’s one section in it I just adore, with the behind the head stalls at about 2 minutes into the video. It’s also a sort of fun piece of music to be spinning to.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (18.2MB)

One of my dear friends and clients suggested recently that I post video of practice sessions as that might also be inspiring to watch. This particular session I was focusing on integrating a bunch of new things into the dance, so it was not a skill practice but more a flow/dance practice. This was part II of my practice. In this section I worked on integrating a bunch of patterns better into my flow and dance. They were, among other things:

• behind the back weaves while turning (0:14, 2:38)
• waist wraps (0:19, 1:24, 4:07)
• behind the head stalls (0:05)
• front plane antispin flowers with extensions and turns (1:07, 4:34)
• split jedi stalls (0:46)
• single and double up stalls (2:30, 3:39, 5:00)
• through wrap and taps on right ankle/foot (0:38, 1:47, 2:54, 4:48)
• behind the back lockout turns (1:52)
• the fun new combo based on stuff I taught at Fire Drums last year (5:31)
• melt downs (0:21, 3:15)
• various under the leg movements (0:12, 2:01, 2:22, 4:13, 4:55, 5:27)
• crossers (2:05, 3:09)
• hugs (3:06)
• antispin split direction side plane flowers, with turns (2:11)
• pendulums, while turning around  (2:35, 4:18, 4:25)
• split buzzsaw at 9/3 with extensions (0:43, 5:12)
• various buzzsaw fountain (0:54)
• 2 petal 9/3 barrel roll turns (1:17)

Enjoy the video — hope it helps you learn something.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (39.1MB)

Temple of Poi is accepting pre-orders for the Kindle Magazine coming out in April, 2009. Order now to gurantee your copy of this limited run publication (500 copies only), available for delivery by May 1, 2009.

Kindle will be a 24 page color 8.5×11 magazine with photos and articles. For this first issue, GlitterGirl has written a 1350 word article on The Ego of Performance. The magazine will also include:

• Information on the Global fire community 
• Faces of Fire Spinning: Features of fire spinners from around the world
• Great Fire photos
• Reviews of gear
• Fire spinning Tricks and Theory

You can pick up the magazine from the Temple or have it shipped to you via US Mail. Kindle is anticipated to arrive at the end of April, 2009. Order your copy of Kindle today.

Without a doubt, my favorite heads to use on poi are the poiryamid heads I’ve been using for the past 6 years. Many have tried to copy the original ones my designer in Marin makes, but no one has been able to come up with anything that flows quite the way hers do, nor lasts as long. They are beautiful for stalls and soft when they hit the body. Plus they just look good.

They are 4 sided pyramids made of brocade silk. On the bottom of the pyramid is a loop for attaching a flag, streamer, ribbon or some other additional material, for those interested in having a streamer effect. Cords are made with small diameter climbing rope. Handles are made with nylon. I have preferred using the poi heads and string with different handles, though I have also used different leashes as well.

I’m putting in a special order for them. If you’d like a set for yourself, here’s a link to order. Be sure to place the order before March 6 at 7 pm.

Our experience in life is like climbing a mountain range. At some points, we’re at basecamp, at some points we’re on the road, and at some points we’re on the peak. Most of the time, we’re in the middle — sitting on the side of the mountain somewhere.

It is so easy to look below us and see where we’ve been — celebrate it, laugh at it, mock it, notice it, learn from it, wish for it — whatever it is… It is so easy to just focus on that place where we were. Similarly, it is so easy to focus on climbing the mountain and getting to the peak — “I will only be <blah> when I have gotten to <blah>.”

But life isn’t really like that. You get to the peak, you look around and you realize how beautiful it is. And then you realize there’s another mountain. Do you stay on the peak? No way. You move on and climb another in the range, or maybe move on to the different mountain range altogether.

Yet when you’re on the mountain looking up at the peak, it is sooooo easy to just focus on, “I need to get there.”

In my experience, when we focus on either the bottom of the mountain — where we’ve been, the past — and the top of the mountain — where we’re going, the future — we miss out on the fullness of our experience.

I believe life’s journey is about being with the fullness of the experience by concurrently holding all of where we have been and all of where we want to go while fully enjoying this moment of travelling from one to the other. It is about flowing through all the sensations that arise when we think of the past and future and being in the sensations those thoughts generate now. It is about owning what we have been and what we want to be and recognizing the actuality of the now. It is about containing within us all of the mystery and majesty of the unknown while also recognizing what is known.