What makes poi beautiful?

Honestly Meg... thats the most wonderful response ever.

I often do it with my eyes closed... and very occaisionally I switch into a COMPLETELY different mode of spinning while doing so.

After I've had more than one year experience I hope this will come much more naturally...

Jeez, now I feel all giddy, recalling that feeling... I really should strive for that, but I guess it was under a cloud.

Meg, I can be smart, but only when I´m quiet

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Meg: There is nothing more I need to say than what you wrote was an answer I never expected but not because it was unexpected, the reason is simply that it was to good for me to even think about, you are spot on, thank you so much for that!

For the first time I can honestly tell you not to do it better cos I think it´s perfect!

RESPECT for your thoughts, they are beautiful, sometimes



P.S I love my hippie clothes when not running around naked as a real hippie and the idiot smile is only there to hide the real idiot inside

spot on, meghan!
brilliant stuff, I am sure you know that yourself so I'll stop kissing your arse now

Well, that seems to have brought other avenues of thought to a screeching halt....

I see what you mean though, and I agree.

Contradictory to what most believe, I have a bit of an alternative take on things. I think that since humans are not perfect by nature, I think there is beauty in the imperfect. We can always strife towards perfection but there is always that tiny thing in all of us that makes us "human".

I think Poi is beautiful when we show what we can do. When we show what we are capable of doing. In similar fashion, I don't believe that perfection in any way means beautiful, I strife for it myself because it's proven a good path. Tested and successful. But I'm always open to the concept of human imperfections.

Order can not exist without chaos. They can balance.

If we just took away the human who spun the poi and only left the poi and the visual effect, we would only experience that. The visual aspect. It is the human and the visual aspect that makes poi beautiful. However we spin them is up to us, and if we want others to think it's beautiful as well we adapt in ways, find the pleasing aspects of your style and your poi.

As I am reading this topic I am amazed to find people who dive deep into this subject. I spent a lot of time thinking about this too.

The way I see it is that poi and music are very well related. Similar as dance related to music. Most people agree that you spin better with good music on .

It comes to several subjects which make poi beautiful:

Control is one of the key things in performance. When your moves are controlled, your tricks wil look more obvious. Its pleasant to look at. Especially when you pull that relaxt looking face and stare at your poi in satisfaction and facination in what you're doing ^^.

Style is what makes you different from other spinners. In long term poi spinning you develop a style over time. The moves you like the most, are most of the time the moves that you can do best. Different spinners use different combinations of moves, this is what makes them different and each beautiful in their own way. For example: some spinners like to isolate much of their moves or antispin a lot.

Dance is also related to style, the way you move your body with poi can make a nice impact on the audience.

Music is also an important aspect of poi. When I spin poi with music I try to make it look like im playing an instrument wich is in complete harmony with music beeing the other half.

To make it short, I just like to sort out this whole theory about what makes poi beautiful .

I am thinking about beauty, and the style of Burning Dan. If you have not seen him spin, this likely wont make any sense at all, sorry...
At any rate, he doesn't really fit Megs definition of what makes poi beautiful( which overall I think is fabulous, and fabulously written too! I loved the specificity of the examples, made it easy to visualize)

But there might be more to it, or at least a broader range of beauty. ??

Dan often, to me, looks completely out of control. While spinning Sometimes he looks absolutely delightedly surprised ; astounded by his own movement. It can seem as though his own movement and interplay with the poi is completely unexpected. Actually, occasionally it looks like his poi are dancing him, or maybe something else altogether is generating the movement--- Dan and the poi are both manipulated objects. It does not necessarily look effortless. It looks more concentrated and wild, not so much practiced skill( though he is skilled). It can come across like he is deliberately channelling fire flow and chaos --and enjoying every spontaneous minute of it.

Just a personal impression, not a finished thought, but I wanted to offer it up... cause i think it is beautiful, makes me grin every time i watch !

Yes! to Meg, and Yes! to Andrea!

And...

I also think the beauty when someone is spinning comes when they draw you into their "here and now timeless moment". When time slows for you, as you become involved in the moment.

also - I think beauty comes through when you get a sense of someone's beautiful personality in how they spin.

its all about Soul I guess!

What makes poi beautiful?

The creative people using poi to express themselves. Without them (us), poi would just be a food. =)

Yeah, burning dan is always fun to watch because you'll never see the same thing twice, and you always see something new... He's coming at it from a completely different place to most spinners thou.

and yes, good description of dan!

Also, yes, there is a broad range of beauty and that can change what you think is beautiful about poi spinning, a performance, or a person... etc

Thanks andrea! I'd like to hear more about what you find beautiful in dance and spinning, cos you do write very well about it. Evocative.

This is a really interesting counterbalance to Bloop's concurrent thread about what's 'what's wrong with poi' eh

Yep

And I think any ordinary audience can see this beauty too, which is what makes poi a fantastic spectacle.

I think megs line says it all i could write for ages in a rambly way, but the only thing i really have to add is that it would also be nice to consider a different perspective, as so far everyone has treated 'what makes poi beautiful' as an audience based question.

what makes poi beautiful for me, is that i can completely lose myself in it/them. and i can make people happy by doing it.


a bit off topic-y (sorry)

i don't think my other thread is contradictory in any way to this one its about working out what makes poi what it is. (although you could argue that 'beuaty' and presentation' are so different as to need two topics ) just cause i *started* with something negative to create discussion doesn't mean the outcome i was looking for was also negative....

anyway.

beautiful thoughts abound in this thread

i think part of the beauty may stem from the fact that its all just circles.. call me a physics geek, but seems to be entirely circles interacting with more and more circles..

this layering of such a base shape, i feel, enables so much free movement, room to play, and natural understanding

maybe this is just me being a hippy though

Well, lines are only infinitely large circles, so you even include stalls and linear isos and such....

In regards to petey... that made me think, that compound circles are just fractals... shapes that are self similar at multiple layers of magnification... as it were.

And the self similarity property is what makes a lot of nature beautiful, ferns, trees, errrr.... other things... maybe that's what contributes to making poi beautiful too...

ramble ramble ramble...

That may be the closest we will get to a definitive answer....

Maybe.

There's plenty of different aspects that contribute to poi being beautiful. For me there's several.

I enjoy the technicality and flow of things, but a lot of times, it can be more simple.

I have a friend who can't spin at all, and when I lend her a pair of my sock poi, she swings the two on her sides, ineffectively doing a two beat weave, BUT it's beautiful becasue of how happy she is..

Which comes back to people enjoying themselves and letting that out when they spin. It seems to be a big part of it for most people.

So I finally found the time to read through the other responses to this (my last reply was only off of the original post)

and I agree with beauty in shapes. I'm not at all sure why it fascinates me, because I'm not into math or geometry at all, except when it comes to poi. I'm constantly thinking of different obscure geometric shapes now that I can try it.

Not only just thinking of it in terms of circles, it goes further into things such as a circle being made up of an infinite amount of triangles, and all we have to do, is pick the paths we want to take. The poi may be moving in a circle, but by simply moving it's center of rotation - our hands - along any path creating the unit circle, and we suddenly have more amazing shapes being created. Somehow, it's beautiful.

To each their own is probably the only answer to this question, but for me, this and my last post are why I enjoy spinning. Plus, it's damn good stress relief. Perfect for centering myself.