Home of Poi: "Poi Documentary"

Hey max;

well, first of all, thank you for thinking of me

, but i won't comment on my own suitability cause that would be silly.

what i will do is give you lots of my own opinions

and publicly, cause it'll make people think about who and what... there're also some 'who made you first pick up poi' threads that you'd probably find interesting....

so:

what are you trying to acheive? to make poi more well known? to make people understand where it comes from? to big up the beest/mostinfluential spinners? to archive what has been happening in poi?

for me, the last one is the biggie. every other 'alternative sport' has its documentary makers. you can easily find tv/feature length early skate documentaries, and parkour has it, and snowboarding, and.... where are ours? its not like poi is not popular enough

so, if

relaying what has been happening in the past ten years in poi, who has been involved and where is it going

is your focus, then these are some of the folks i would track down and talk to, in no particular order; (i'm just putting a tiny bit of info next to each, but i could talk about them all for hours

) (people, please don't be offended if you're not here.....)

Malcolm;
who created world wide poi

. well, not created, but certainly facilitated a HUGE crosspollination of it, through this site. without whom, i would be a muso

Nick;
yes there are lots of other bits of stuff about him, but thats no reason to not include the most famous poi spinner there is. and thats before all the teaching and inspiration...

Thai Tom;
seriously old skool, and still doing incredible things. he pushed fire spinning to unbeleivable lengths in austria, germany and thailand; where many of todays best spinners learned their trade

wibbling matt;
host of spherculism, and the first person to REALLY do something interesting with his poi, not just spin them...

a.n.other maori
for getting us all started

a.n. other glowstringer
i wish i could name names... but i don't know the scene well enough. but there's a whole bunch of them out there that are supergood and superinfluential who don't mix with us

Yuta
again, one of the most famous spinners, and a permanent inspiration to all who meet him and watch the vids..

ronan;
for a long, long time has been everybodies favourite spinner who has no internet presence. absolutely at the cutting edge of poi, and starting to gain the reputation he deserves on a wider basis.

and any of

old skool
PK(PIP, videos), Drew(guru), anya(early COL, incredible shows, Feuerkunst), Dunc (PLAY founder), Dom (seriously inspiring back in the day, still amazing, AND hop admin), Danae (the first eurogirl

) Arashi (i could have put him in any of the lists for a myriad of reasons, including the list above....), Sage (COL, Art of Poi, still going...), mikhal (for the book, and the courses in london), Vincent bruel (aMAZING multitalented performer, still the owner of the 'robs favourite ever poi act' award, but sadly dead, so an interview could be tricky), Guy/Axis, who was doing hardcore glowshows before i even thought about poi, Jo derry (for obvious reasons

), NYC (one of the first yanks to get over to the euroscene, inspirer of many, teacher to millions), and a whole load of oldskoolers who made videos - shibaki, Le skunk, etcetc edit coleman and dragon, and dev kev...

mid skool
Andy house (COL inspiration, philosopher, fabulous teacher), Olivier alphalight (for travelling and spreading poi like there was no tomorrow), FNF + Oli (videos that regularly feature on everyones top 5, and making orbitals a way of life), Olive (though i think he may be futureskool), Icon (possibly nu-skool, but i haven't seen much recently

), rev (similar - incredible spinning, not heard much, even on spherc), lozjam (contact poi, techygirly, eurotraveller)

nu/future skool
noelski, rovo, zan and alienjon (strange americans doing strange stuff... and running spinagogue, and making dvds, and travelling the world for their art...), cyrille

, G (just incredible), thomas (like the yanks, but swedish), Durbs (i'd love to praise durbs, but my built in toast heckling precludes it), Yoshiki and vicered and a whole other bunch of parisians

, Mark Douglass (the best juggler to EVER take up poi

and for some reason the only aussie on my list

)

i know i have missed out loads of people, and that my list is euro-centric..... but i'm only working from my own brain, and am therefore limited

but i'll try to update as and when...

and then there are the proper old skool places that nurtured poi - for me its edinburgh and the beltane fire festival which has been running since 1989 (and from which came tepooka) and had fire spinning even back then... i could put you in touch with some originals from that. I'm sure there are other groups/places that have the same effect for others.

does that help, or make it harder?

smiles
Rob

--------------------
Holistic Spinner (I hope)

Edited by bluecat (06/05/08 08:45 PM)

"Poi Documentary" - In Production