Know Thy Self

As a performer, knowing what you are trying to create will help you more powerfully create the experience you seek to present. Here are some questions you can use as a starting point for yourself. When you clearly answer these questions, you can more precisely create what makes sense in the particular context of a performance.

• Who are you?
• What do you want to create?
• Who is your audience?
• What do they want to see?
• How can you create what they seek?
• How will you know when you have done it?
• What will you feel when they are experiencing what you want them to experience?
• What skill do you want to be displaying and what sort of emotions/experience/ideas/images/concepts/journey/etc. you want to convey?

Developing Your Style

The following outlines an exercise that, when used again and again, helps artists develop their skills, flow, performance presence and style more effectively.

To begin, take a move and do it for some period of time – 60-90 seconds. And do the same move as many different ways as possible. Change the size, height, speed, location, body movements, etc. This describes the artistic development practice. Repeat this practice for every move you know and learn during your practice sessions, each time alternating in equal parts with a skill development practice and a flow development practice and it will dramatically shift your overall flow and style.

During the skill development practice, work for the same amount of time (60 – 90 seconds) on a single skill you don’t have fully mastered. During the flow development practice, move between as many moves as you can in as short a period of time as possible. Alternating between the artistic, skill and flow development practices begins to blur the lines between learning a move and creating your own style for the move.

Once you can move between these three practices with ease, add a performance development practice as well, focusing on performance presence. As you continue with this exercise, all the lines between practice and performance blur beautifully to create your "style.”

The Performance Illusion

Remember: it isn’t cheating to do simple tricks that impress people because they can’t appreciate your inverted overhand 5 beat isolated weave any way. And, that will only go so far though...

• In your own experience, as you develop, practice working with these concepts:
• Create a journey: have peaks and valleys, with a range of speeds, heights, move complexity and dynamics involved.
• The degree to which you can vary your performance defines the duration of performance that will be compelling. That is, a performance is a series of details stacked one on top of the other. The more interesting and varied the details are the longer you can perform and captivate the crowd.
• As much as is possible, when working with choreography, make the piece match the music such that you have a visual experience that compliments the auditory journey.
• Have some dramatic presence -- makeup, costumes, characters, comedy, drama, simple moves, complex moves, fast and slow. It is no one thing that creates a compelling experience, rather a series of different things compared and contrasted that move along through time.
• The dance happens when we (artist and audience) lose track of who is leading: the dancer or the tool. Being in flow is about letting go of your ego and mind so fully that your spirit arises as the poi lead you, which is just as frequently as you lead them.
• Express what is "you" fully. We all bring our unique Self to the performance. It is actually the only thing we can each bring that no one else can bring.
• Others can copy your moves. They can even copy your style. It is like a photocopy though – it loses some of the brilliance and clarity. In truth, no one can fully copy your essence and even if they are copying it, it is not them “being” it.
• Be you. That is all you ever have that is yours. The more fully and freely you express your Self, the more unique your performance style is. Weather or not people like it is another matter, but experience has shown that people really respond to authentic performances that look like the performer is really feeling it.
• Smile and Look up!!! Crowds love it when performers are playing with the people/audience while they are spinning. Even if they are doing simple moves. Engage your audience!
• Follow the 3 second rule (at least -- 1.5 seconds is even better).
• Get your body involved!!! That is the expression that is uniquely you -- your body is different from everyone else’s body… how you move it, how you experience it is uniquely your own.
• The performance happens in between the moves. Consider each transition -- play with how you can make it longer -- extend it out... feel into it.... move your body with it... against it... play with it... but don't just do it for the mechanics of it or you'll lose an excellent (ongoing) opportunity to make the "in between stuff" the part of the performance that "is the actual stuff" the performance is made of.
• Challenge your edge every practice
• Get inspired! If you're not inspired as you spin, you won't be inspiring as you perform.
• Learn and grow all the time. It is the essence of life -- growing. When we stop learning and growing, we die. Isn't that what getting old is about? We stop. We don't learn. We don't grow. We become stale. We can apply the “anti-aging” technique of “growing” to our flow practice too. If we continue to expand, learn and evolve, we will continue to experience life energy in
  our body and in our practice which will infectiously translate into our performance.