Home of Poi: A History of the Fire Arts

Sarcasm regarding Mr Heart? It took you this long to catch on to it?

His claims have been... called into question repeatedly here. In fact a good number of people have a low opinion of him, especially after having met him. Not ME of course, because I have never had the pleasure, but it shouldn't be too hard to find some... opinions about him if you simply search for his name here...

I must agree with Bender with objecting to the idea that it has somehow been absorbed into "white" culture, for a few reasons.

First of all, we are not talking about a simgle origin point. Fire meteors from China, fire usage by Shieks (I know I just butchered it, but Im too lazy to scroll up), fire club swinging from India, Samoan fire knife dancing, and (not sure on this one... might actually be Samoan fire knives) fire batons from Hawaii. Object manipulation and juggling can be found in the histories of so many cultures its (arguably) impossible to trace it to any one place.

Second, it seems your looking for an entrance point into STRICTLY white culture (Im assuming that's what you mean, and simply not white-skinned...). What are you defining this as exactly? Mainstream Western Culture? America? Australia? Are you just looking for a crossover point between, lets say, traditional Maori Poi dancing and Poi dancing that has nothing to do with Maori fundamentals other than object manipulation? What about Samoan Fire Knife dancing, are we simply looking for the point where fundamental Samoan heritage and beliefs about the fire dancing exited because an outside took only the manpulation part of it? Or are you trying to find the first outsider to take part in these arts WITH the communities where they originated?

There's a lot of possibilities here. I would argue that modern poi dancing has virtually nothing to do with Maori poi dancing except for some fundamental physical movements. That art includes music, specific dance that tell stories, etc. etc. Ours just looks cool. For Samoan Fire Knife dancing... well go talk to some of them and see what their opinions are about what we do compared to their cultural heritage. My point is, GENERALLY where these things originate, what we do is seen as a completely alien thing, having lost the elements that make them a cultural heritage to those specific cultures.

In addition, what if you run into simply a Maori or a Samoan who embodied a more "white" culture attitude... is that then your "missing link"? Or is he not because he isn't white? And what about people who simply saw it on vacation, or something, and decided to go home and do it for fun.

I would say the best your going to do is to ask some of the oldest spinners around until you find a few that say this is how they became interested in it. There are some real old time spinners out there, and a few people here can point you toward them probably. However, I remain very skeptical about anything you may find. If your lucky, you may find cultural crossover points... say the first people to witness Samoan knife dancing, and Maori poi dances, etc. But I think that what you are trying to claim is not a valid claim for the reasons I have already pointed out: fire was an addition upon other preexisting arts, namely object manipulation. For ISOLATED cultures like Samoa and Maori... perhaps you can find a couple of the earliest spinners, but I doubt they will be white... maybe "white cultured" at best, if there is such a thing.

For instance when I started, I was just playing with a stick. One end happened to be charred from being in the fire, and WHOOM I had this great idea and went off to research it and see if anyone else did it. I found HoP and lost a great deal of my free time overnight

I believe that this will be similar to many of the origin stories you may come across, and I don't think there is a single crossover point to find.

But good luck.