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

For all you performers looking to improve your skill as a performer — not your technique with the tool itself — here’s a great little perspective on why learning more skills may not be the place you need to focus.

When we perform, we’re in what we like to describe as an “energy bubble” here at Temple of Poi. If you expand the bubble by reaching out the audience, then you’re creating an energetic exchange in which you have a “dialogue” between you.

If, however, you stay on stage cloistered in your own bubble, then you become sort of this objectified thing that audience members are disconnected from.

Neither is right or wrong and they both work.

However, if you want to take the audience on a journey, it can often be easier to do that when you actually create the “dialogue” described above because when you shoot energy at the audience, they have an opportunity to do something with it: absorb it, deflect it, and/or reflect it.

If you think about the tentacle of energy you shot to them like a (friendly and desirable) virus, when they absorb it, that automatically changes your crowds energy and the people around them are likely to be infected with it to some degree also. If they reflect it, then not only are they impacted and infecting others around them, they are transmuting the virus of yummy performance energy back to you such that you’re performance is also changed. Even if they deflect it, they may be deflecting it to someone else who possibly absorbs it.

The more one shoots those tentacles to the audience, the more possibility of this transmutation is possible.

Ergo, if one is shy on stage and inward - which is often coupled with technical spinning - the audience is often left in awe but with little actual opportunity to do anything other than marvel.

We contend that a tech spinner who can also actively direct the tentacles of energy to the audience — weather they dance or not — will have a much more impactful experience on the crowd who will then infect them with more power which will have the performer have more powerful tentacles of energy passed to the audience, which causes more impact on the audience and so on in an upward spiral of positive energy that creates more and more powerful  performances overall.

So if you have the skills but don’t feel like you are getting the sort of response from the crowd you’d like, it might be fun to try to “reach out, reach out and touch someone…” with your energy and see how that changes things for you and them.

I recently read a post by a woman who was celebrating her life and experience as she was, completely appreciating her journey even as she noticed her own discomfort. I was quite inspired and wrote a little comment at the end of it that I wanted to share here, for those of you who need a little pick-me-up and a reminder that life is happening right now, in this moment… and this one…. and this one… and this one…

I’m so excited to read your post. As a woman who was a 300 pound couch potato at 22 and now is an internationally renowned fire dancing instructor — hula hoop, poi, staff, fans included — at 40, I’m a walking example and advertisement for “Love your body right now, as it is!” I’m still what most men would objectify as a “fat girl” thought they would say, “a fat girl who can move” once they saw me dance.

And you know what? Who cares? For me, it’s all about the practice of being in my body and getting more comfortable with me every day. The cornerstone of our work at my school, Temple of Poi, is about helping people with their mindset, cause let’s face it — when 40 looms around the corner it is ever so easy to suddenly start thinking about getting old. Biology just starts kicking in and there are things that really begin to make you feel older. So when you stand next to someone else who just somehow doesn’t seem so old or out of shape (or actually isn’t!), it’s really easy to make a big deal out of that because when we’re younger, no one bothered to teach us these three simple rules: Leave your judgment behind; choose your language consciously from a place of empowerment; and compare your self to your self.

The fundamental question I encourage everyone to ask is this: “did you make progress and have fun?” If so, it (class, practice, life) was a success. I have consistently found over the nearly 8 years I’ve had my school - where I do teach people how to safely play with fire in all contexts - that integrating this mindset is pivotal in Celebrating Life In the Moment.

Sure, some part of our ego might want to have that 6 pack after we just gave birth without doing ab work. And, well, that simply may not be what is meant for our experience. Why should I compare myself to that other person whose journey was absolutely nothing like mine? How does that serve? So if you’re looking at helping your own psyche, I offer you this mindset (written in more detail at on the Temple of Poi website) to help you embrace the You that You are right now even as she grows, evolves, changes and becomes more than she was moments ago.

In the past few months I’ve switched to HDPE tubing on my hoop and dropped from a 41.5″ 160 PSI irrigation tube hoop to a 38″ inch in the HDPE. This has been a sizable endeavor for me and in some ways, it feels like I’m starting all over again. My on body hooping is just starting to feel decent, though my off body hooping has been oh so much easier and doable and a lot less painful for my RSI.

One of the biggest boons for my on body hoop practice that came from the switch is the undeniable ease of reversals with the lighter hoop. Lose what feels like 5 pounds of weight and suddenly, a reversal is possible in all sorts of ways that I could never have done before. So, in a sense, the gear switch has really facilitated a big shift in my hoop practice.

As it turns out, my RSI has been very problematic in my right elbow and wrist which has made it tough for me to do extended poi practices, especially of any movements that require an extension of my arm (like flowers). Sadly, I can only practice 5-7 minutes of this sort of movement before my elbow starts hurting pretty badly, even with anti-inflammatory meds and biofreeze. Even still, over the past few months, when I can practice, I have been incredibly drawn to anti spin flowers and CAP combinations. So it has become, due to the pain, imperative that I make each spin count.

It’s been fun to see how each of these practices have been informing each other. I used to think of stalls with poi as a reversal, which, in a sense, is accurate. After considering it for longer, it isn’t really a reversal in the same sense that a CAP is. With a CAP, there is not such an explicit moment of stopping the momentum but rather a change of direction of the momentum. When I started focusing on reversing the CAP in different places (12, 3, 6 and 8), that really helped me open into a different way of thinking about reversals in poi.

Last night was a super fun practice where I was just working on some hybrid reversals in a particular sequence I hadn’t tried before. It looked something like this:

and I was also working on the underhand equivalent:

I’m surprised I never tried it before because I’ve been trying to integrate this sequence for a while:

which is essentially just a 4 petal flower alternating with a hybrid combination where I switch the hand doing the long arm in the hybrids. Even though I’ve been practicing this sequence for a while, the hybrid reversal combination from last night was actually easier for me to do in less time with more integration I think in part because I was internalizing the hand switch as a reversal. I didn’t get to apply the theory to the other combination before my elbow told me I was done practicing, but that’s up soon.

I first started dancing at Sunset Parties the day before my 29th birthday (if you’re not up for the math, that’s 1998). One of the things I really loved about it was that I was in the midst of a bunch of dancers vibing off their energy and that was feeding my dancing. Of course, I didn’t really start relating to it that way until much later when I reflected back on it and started to realize how much I really like to dance.

As I started to play with poi, my poor skill and the subsequent space requirements at dance parties relegated me to the back corner of the room. Ug. What a bummer. I was not able to play in the crowd and rather than being one of the dancers on the floor hanging out with my friends and vibing off the flow of the crowd, I was one of the side attractions on the way out the door.

For my 40th birthday, I went to LA and visited with Randy and Spencer and we went to Billy’s Society party. I had a great performance, and, later on in the night was even more fun. I can recall the two of them sitting on a couch in a narrow hallway on the way to the rest rooms and I wanted to be spinning and not sitting down. So I just started whipping out my ogg poi in the narrow hallway. On one side was a glass fronted display case and the couch on the other. Between the couch and the display case was perhaps 2.5-3 feet of space.

At that point, I was playing with being able to do moves and interact with people as they were walking to the bathroom. It was a fun little game and it was so interesting to see how different people responded — some fearful, but most playing with me and moving with me as I was doing my tricks because they recognized I was very aware of them and they could see I was skilled with the poi.

I’ve been out dancing a few times since then and done this a little bit, but last night something amazing happened. I was with my Illuminaughty crew — my first Burning Man family — at the Dia De Los Muertos fundraiser. The space was small and the sound system was intimate, so I really wanted to be on the main dance floor. And, I wanted to be dancing with my poi. And there really was no space for me to go for it with long poi. And, I wanted to dance with my friends. Later, at the afterparty , with an even smaller dance floor and disco ball overhead, I was in the same situation.

I started playing this game of, “How Close Can I Get?” And I had some huge breakthroughs! Because of the tiny space, I would go between dancing without the poi and dancing with the poi wrapped up in my hands. What I noticed is that I really started using my body in new and different ways with the poi because I was both watching out for hitting my friends while also trying to really go for it and maintain my high NRG dance style. I was amazed by how small a space I really needed to be able to flow with the crowd and I had an awesome time just being one of the dancers on the dance floor AND also using my poi at the same time. I was right in the midst of dancers — not up against a wall, at an exit, or even off the main floor like I was in the past. The dancing was really much more body oriented than normal and the movements, while fun, were much more in connection with the flow of the dance floor itself than in connection with the tricks of the poi, even though I definitely did some tricky things.

If you’re a dancer and you get all juiced by being on a dance floor, there is nothing like being in the midst of “your people” and playing with your poi. Of course, you have to get competent enough with the poi to do this. . . which is the game.

And, I really have to admit, I wouldn’t do this with the same level of NRG I had last night on just any old dance floor. These people know me and trust me with my poi and are also somewhat forgiving (well, very forgiving — thanks Chris!) if I brush their legs  with the poi. Still, it’s a game worth trying for all your poi dancers out there!

Have fun and I hope you end up as happily sore as I am today!

I’ve been threatening to write this piece for months and I’m finally taking a moment to sit down and do it. After FireDrums and talking to a lot of my students I got really clear that this article might be useful for some folks who assume that because someone is a skilled technician with their tools, they can also teach.

For years we have made jokes with students about teaching saying that if someone shows you a move and says, “All you do is this…” they are not really teaching you anything. They are showing you something. Now I grant you, for highly visual learners, as well as intuitive learners or systems engineers or just really geeky flow peeps, this technique will garner some success. As a matter of fact, I would guess that most of the self taught individuals out there who have a vast repertoire are really people who are coming from the place of being able to look at something and break it down in their head, even if they don’t consciously know they are doing this. This skill, called modeling, is something we all learn from a young age and we have been doing it all our lives. Some people just really are good at modeling. These people, however, are the ones who are most able to learn on their own.

In contrast, there are a lot of students/artists/practitioners out there who are not adept with this ability. And for those people, someone showing them a move and saying, “All you do is this…” isn’t really going to give them the steps necessary to learn a move. A classic example: the behind the back weave. I mean, all you do is do the same thing you did in front of your body behind your body still working with the same basic cross over and the same basic side planes. Yet, if it were that easy, why doesn’t everyone do it right after you explain it? Or at least understand it?

The answer? Because all of our minds work differently.

As someone who has spent the better part of my time learning how to work with all styles of learners since I started the Temple in 2002, I have made a study of different techniques that work with different types of students. Someone having the ability to stand there and have the skill and technique necessary to do a move does not mean they also have the ability to teach the move to other people because teaching and technique are different things completely.

For one thing, some students prefer to see the move and other students prefer to feel the move while still others prefer to hear the rhythm of the move. And even as we each may have a preference, it is also true that we all use each of our senses to some degree to learn.

Essentially, a technician is someone who can perform the move. A good coach can speak to all your senses and actually break down the move in a way you can comprehend. A great coach can speak to each student in the way they can understand it best and does not require the student to meet the teacher where they are at because a great coach meets the student where the student is at.

An amazing coach can do all of this and even teach things they have not mastered themselves — even Tiger Woods has a coach and he’s ranked number one in the world. His 2003 coach Butch Harmon, isn’t a well known golfer. So if he’s not a good golfer, who is he? “In 2003 Harmon was ranked the top golf teacher in the United States in a poll of his peers organized by Golf Digest magazine, and has repeated as winner of this honour each year since.“

This is a fun and easy to do makeup job that is perfect for smaller gatherings and small stages. This look utilizes silver and purple and is highlighted with some eye liner swirls on the sides of the eyes and cheeks. Completing this look should take 10-15 minutes.

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For those who are unfamiliar with the content of the Intermediate IIC: WallPlanes & Lockouts 4 week class series, we’ve created this little preview video for you so you can get an idea of what we’ll cover in the class. The class has a strong emphasis on front and side plane flowers. We try to do something different each series, so even if you’ve taken the class before, you’ll learn something new each time. For those who have taken the class before, if the class series does not sell out, you can retake it for half price ($60) instead of full tuition ($120).

The next offering of this class series will be 8-9:20 pm on Tuesday nights starting September 29, 2009, for 4 consecutive weeks.

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For those looking for some fun makeup tips, here’s another in GlitterGirl’s video makeup series. This one is a cute little paint on mask which can often be a good alternative to masks you tie on because it stays in place without ruining your peripheral vision (and therefore, mess with your spinning in any way). While these instructions are for a blue and white piece, any white with contrasting color will work with this technique.

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An old friend of mine from my early “raver” days contacted me about glow sticking and poi moves with glowsticks. He’s just starting out and wanted a few pointers. Here’s what I had to say to him and I thought would be useful for anyone starting out themselves. Especially if you’re a glow sticker, I want to first recommend you get something softer than glow sticks — they bruise. We use practice poi here at Temple of Poi made much like a bean bag, only we don’t use beans. Also, if you’re a “glow sticker” starting out, I have to recommend LED lights instead of glow sticks. These lights from our partner company FlowToys are awesome because they use rechargeable batteries best (they are optimized for that), they come in lots of colors, and they have many different types of blinking modes which offer lots of fun. They are also great for camping and other times you might needs lights. If you’re a glowsticker, you’ll likely enjoy the speed of the Crystal Poi though the Ogg Poi, pictured here, are also a great choice.

Anyway, here are some basic concepts of poi:

• velocity. there’s pretty much either stillness or movement. when moving it, you’ll need enough velocity to keep the poi swinging in a circle and momentum is key. You can also do pendulums and other partial circles — again, use of velocity helps make that happen.
• planes. to start out with, think of 6 planes, like you’re standing inside a die. there’s the floor, ceiling, front, back, left side and right side. Once you’ve mastered those six with confidence, it’s time to focus on the infinite other possible planes.
• timing. that is how the poi turn relative to each other — both hit the bottom at the same time, one then the other (called split time), one hits 1 time during the same interval the other hits 2 times (one type of poly-rhythmic, though there are many other types of poly-rhythmic as well) and so on.
• direction. there are, for each of the 6 planes, 4 different directions. each hand can go forward/overhand or reverse/underhand/backward on the side plane and clockwise or counterclockwise on the floor, ceiling, front and back planes. Put them together and you have 4 different combinations. In general, every move can be done in 4 directions (though not everyone does every move in every direction and in fact most people favor a direction).

Here’s a few thoughts when starting:

• The most basic movement is a circle.
• Try circles in each direction with each hand in each plane.
• The next most basic movement is a figure 8 — cross from a plane to it’s partner plane — that is, front to back, left to right, or floor to ceiling.
• In general, practice everything one handed first.
• Start your practice with your weaker hand.
• If you want to turn, you need to know the move in two directions that are opposite each other — as in, both hands clockwise and the opposite, both hands counterclockwise. of course, that turn theory is way beyond basic stuff.

If you’re looking for some guided drills beyond that, check out the Temple of Poi Computer Based Training, available at a dramatic discount when purchased with the Archer Weave DVD at this special link.

Temple of Poi is pleased to announce the new Advanced & Advanced Intermediate Poi Turn Class, Intermediate IIIT: Turns (for Poi) with this class preview video at the bottom of this post. This 4 week course will be presented in August for its first offering.

During the series, we will use swivels, half turns (90 degrees), turns (180 degrees) and turn arounds (360 degrees) as well as practicing movement with different turn patterns. The material for the class will be customized depending on the skill level of the students attending. This means each class series will be unique and students will benefit from attending the series more than once because as their skill expands, the complexity of the turn combinations will also expand. Depending on the skill level of the students, we will cover combinations using some of these moves:

Details and registration can be found on the course page. The first class offering will begin August 4, 2009 at 8 pm. If you can not attend all 4 weeks, contact us to arrange for drop in. Due to limited class size, advanced registration is required, even for students only attending one night.

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