Traditional maori dance performance

hello spinners....i went to a fantastic traditional maori dance performance today. It was all very good and well performed but of course the only bits i was reallly into were the poi bits. they did single short, double short, single long, double long and 4 long(thats was brilliant). they kept one handed butterfly going long enough an with enough ease to take another set out and get one handed butterfly going with that set too. at one point they nhad three people doing this at the same time. of the moves i recognized were buzzsaw type moves, weave, butterfly and thread the needle, the did other more simple stuff but all syncronized and in time with the music. the short handed poi was very cool and pretty forgien to me, it was very fast and they were constantly changing the direction of the poi by hitting them against their hands, arms, sholders, anyways, they were very good and were experts with a variety of instruments(staff, jade knives..) the entire group was talented and demonsrated a love of their country. they performed a very long and interesting show(hour and a half!!!!!!) anyways, just thought id share, cause we all need to get back to our roots

speaking of roots, my hair is now purple

peace, love, luck, fire, chocolate and all that good stuff>

That sounds really cool, would love to see it done the traditional way, methinks a trip to New Zealand may be in order! (any excuse...)

On a similar subject I met a couple of argentinian performers the other weekend who were doing something called 'ballineros' (not sure that's spelt right, or that the name's right, but something like that...) - it involves a wooden board under the feet and two long poi-like metal/wood balls on ropes, they use the weave movement to cross these things over but the main emphasis is on the rhythm as they hit the board with every rotation, and do some feet stomping in the middle too. It's like poi crossed with flamenco! Sounds brilliant.

wow, thats sounds very cool(and complicated)

one thing that amazed me about this performance was the mulitasking, they were doing poi, dancein, moving around the stage, singing, and all the while keeping with the beat and in sync with each other, amazing..

the special bit was that the guys were stamping so much that the stage started to colapse, the people organizing the event were trying to hold it up...like that would do anything

peace>>

sounds beautful! you be so lucky!!

indeed i am

id love to learn to short poi stuff if someone would teach me