EPT
.For the past two years, I have been increasingly involved in dancing. It began on New Years 2011, when me and my roommates threw a party, and a few friends from Chicago showed up (a 3 hour drive away). They were pretty cute girls, and one brought these nifty glowing sock toy thingies. She said she was pretty bad with them, but showed me a move where you swing them side to side across your body. I must have played with those toys nonstop for the next 8 hours...
The socks, I now know, are called Poi, and have an amazing and talented community of dancers constantly working at creating new moves and coordination with these props. Now that I have a bit more experience with the tool under my belt, I usually perform with lit fire poi (the rush is amazing), and have expanded to other tools as well, such as the contact staff. Once you become a master of object manipulation, there is rarely an item you can't flow with.
But this blog isn't about me, nor my discovery of poi. It isn't about the props, nor the moves you can do with them. It's about how, through dancing, you can generate incredible classical forms.
With poi, this is very visually evident. If you draw a triangle with one hand, and a big circle with the other, with the hand drawing the triangle going the opposite direction relative to the poi, you get a shape that looks like this:
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![[image loading]](http://operationgroundswell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/triquetra.jpeg)
Technical name - Together Opposite Hybrid Extension Versus Tiquetra in Wall Plane
There is, of course, a ton of practice and concentration that goes into mastering any move, but using basic geometric shapes, you can effectively draw any 3 dimensional shape you wish:
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![[image loading]](http://www.zakairan.com/CosmicCookies/octahedron-1.gif)
Platonic solids are awesome, by the way
![[image loading]](http://farm1.staticflickr.com/76/192883493_f09f945092_m.jpg)
The more you practice, the better your form, and the more you can do with each of these shapes. When talking about these shapes among poi spinners, we usually refer to these as "patterns", because each take up a chain of motions of which you place your body in a series of poses or forms, and end where they begin, creating a repeating pattern of more basic moves (algorithmically drawing 3d shapes by abstracting them away, sounds like the kind of hobby a programmer would get into >_<).
With the contact staff, the geometric world comes crashing down a bit. You gain the ability to directly control the points you would like you (the fire is at the end of a rigid weighted shaft, where poi is at the end of chains or cord). You also lose your ability to actually move your body in the way you like. It's tough to explain...
In order to maintain contact with the staff throughout moves, you have to dance with it like a partner. There are some (pretty kickass) geometric forms available using some crossover knowledge from poi, but the majority of skill comes through the unending pursuit of perfecting the use of your own body. The staff tends to go where it likes, and you have to know where to put yourself in order to allow that. An example would extending through your legs all the way through your arm in a direct line in order to roll the staff along your arm to your neck. You can also remove elements of the move in order to isolate parts of the body, such as extending your arm along an invisible line, while the leg it would normally rely on is busy making you do something completely different with your lower body. Sometimes, it just comes down to feel. But what are you feeling? Where is this form described? Is there some mathematical, or other theoretical study of human position?
Yep, and its been realized centuries ago as a form of dance, called Ballet. I'm just now in my second month of adult beginner Ballet classes, and am in love. The total physical control of your body is inebriating. As a poi master once said "That is some next level s&#t, yo!".
I will do a much more detailed blog on Poi and fire dancing on my next 'flowversary' after New Years, along with some video. Turns out, the 'flow state' is in Starcraft too
