Dancing with poi

yup, that's exactly right.

a lot of popping is all about making interesting lines and shapes and movements with your body, which compliment the poi so well.

Waving is a bit harder to incorporate whilst spinning poi, because of the level of body isolation needed to make just the waves look good. a dead still hand can't spin poi! works great when manipulating the poi instead of spinning them, though.

It's good to see more people getting into it. good luck with it!

I like to listen to Dance Gavin Dance when I spin or other bands like Paramore, Job For A Cowboy or Emarosa.

I can usually find a rhythm while listening to those bands and it adds a lot to my poi.

Especially "Surprise! I'm From Cuba, Everyone Has One Brain" by Dance Gavin Dance and "Tragic Tragic Track Jacket" by HeavyHeavyLowLow really get me to do some interesting stuff while doing anti-spin flowers.

I guess modern is the style I tend to use while dancing.

I actually saw my first poi being swung at a dance part/rave type scene here in the pacific northwest, so thats always been a part of how I move with mine.

I'm decent at popping and locking, but I find the style difficult to mesh with poi and prefer fluid dancing over it. A little freestyle movement and expression always helps as well.

The other day a rock song remix came on the radio while I was swinging for some friends so I turned my body to the side, started swinging my left arm in large circles and the thrashing with my right arm in a small circle so it looked like I was jamming on a guitar. That along with the head banging got my buddies laughing hysterically (in a WOW kind of way).

But yea I just prefer movement in general over anything. I have a friend whos feet never moves when he does poi so it looks like hes always in control. When I spin even I don't know whats going to happen, I just let my body follow the poi...Heres a link to the vid page so you know what I'm talking about.

http://www.homeofpoi.com/ubbthreads/show...5/o/all/fpart/1

Makes it hard to develop 'routines' tho...

I have been taking (beginner) modern dance classes since 2 years.

And now I can do a pirouette with giant vertical reel

I am thinking of getting ballet classes next. My experience has been no matter what genre of dance you are interested, ballet technique is always involved.

cheers,

One thing I am working on is being able to do my backflip while spinning. I can do it but I have a hard time getting a full flip because most of a backflip is done with your arms. I have a break dancing and free running background so im starting to do a lot of wild things with poi now that I have better poi control.

I figure I'll bump this old, very general, thread to ask my question instead of making a new one.

I'm looking to start taking dance lessons to add more interesting body movements to my spinning. While a lot of dance styles seem to lend themselves well to simple poi technique, what have people who have formally learned dance found goes well with more technical spinning (spinning with odd hybrids, UTL, atomics and plane bending, etc.)?

It seems like technical spinning kind of needs its own style, but that style must have relatives. I've seen highly technical poi spinners who dance (like Nevisoul and Yuta), but I don't know dance well enough to know what else their movements are similar to. I'm worried something like bellydance (which I'm going to give a try at the urging of my friends) will break under the strain of some of the things I like to do. As far as I'm concerned, the poi come first, and if an attractive dance style requires me to simply not exploit some of the poi's possibilities, I'd just as soon lose the style. (With due props to great dancers with simple technique; it's just not how I roll.)

Anyway, I'm tired and rambly. If anyone has ideas I'd love to hear.

Celtic music works well for UTL since you're moving your legs A LOT anyways. As for the other advanced spinning I just put all of the emphasis on the poi trick looking good and then move my body around this constraint (or opportunity to emphasize the trick). For me dance and movement with advanced poi is just walking and running, quick turning and pirouettes, jumps, and changing my center of gravity.

I don't find belly dance and poi all that mixable, except for a few undulations with butterfly or corkscrew based moves: I've been belly dancing for 8.5 years and poi spinning off and on (shoulder probs) for about 7 of the last 18 months.

When I was first getting in to poi I looked for vids combining the 2 on youtube, it was hard to find any with both good belly dance and good spinning: mostly it's fairly experienced dancers doing very basic spinning, Sage does great spinning with pretty basic belly dance.

I think it's because most bellydance moves come from your core, and don't show that well whilst you're spinning. YMMV

Would you recommend some other style as more consistent with poi motions, or do you think it has to be more of a homebrew style?

Belly dance is the only dance form (other than the free form style known hereabouts as flailing mania) I've done since I left school, so I can't recommend another form in particular: I only know that IMO poi doesn't combine particularly well with belly dance.

Mostly when I'm attempting poi dancing myself it's home brew, but then I do it mainly for my own pleasure.

Any form of dance / movement training would be better than none but I'd lean towards something more dynamic and with more arm movement

(On the other hand, maybe I don't need much in the way of dance lessons; last night was the third spin jam in a row I got told I was fun to watch. What up with that?)

i do a lot of stuff in nightclubs with my flowtoys so I've taken up the 'tutting' dance style cos it's quite effective for freehand work, as for general dance i dunno, never been much good with my feet

Hey liquid trance guy or girl!

Hey i put a post up, im doing a melbourne gig NYE and lookin for flowtoy specialists, 2 x preferably.

can u contact me please if interested or direct me through to anyone/people would be interested.

Pur:)
0419870767
neo_cortex@iprimus.com.au

I live in scotland UK I'm afraid
otherwise I would love to!!
plenty of people on HOP live in that area though so check out the 'meet others' section, you should find someone

the lady who gave me my poi told me that its not about the way you move your poi as such but the way you move with the poi, i liked that, the poi should (in my opinion) should be an extension of yourself when dancing, you need to feel the tension of the poi's and use it to your advantage when moving with them.

Very true indeed, since your arms are pulling on the poi all the time the poi are also pulling on you. You need to treat your whole body as another prop to manipulate and in unison with the poi create interesting patterns.

To master poi it must become as a master is to a sword. It must become an extension of your body. Something as similar To you as you hand.

Hm. I just realized one can move one's shoulders and hips in different timings and directions (except together-opposite doesn't really work), and the same with other joint pairs. I wonder if there's an appealing way to work this into body motions to play against one's hybrids or simpler spinning motions.

Have you looked into Bollywood style? I could see that combining with tech quite well. I'm still pretty simplistic in my movement, but am finding that modern, lyrical, and older hip-hop moves are very compatible with poi (locks and new jack swing, mainly as far as hip-hop goes).

I've looked hardly into anything because I don't dance and don't know names or have examples at hand I'll try and look for some of these on YouTube.

I think parts of this could be made poi friendly, some of these dancers look like they have imaginary poi at parts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXFLBr-iia4

Hm, yeah, a few of those stances look like they could be made to accomodate unit circles pretty easily...

been mucking around with getting the melbourne shuffle incorporated into my poi routines. not sure if anyone has done this before would be interested to see if any of you melbournites have had success in being able to do this

So I dont know if this has been mentioned in here yet or not, but my friend gave me an idea. Figure skating with fire dancing. Seems interesting to me.

Sounds great if you're an excellent skater, but I think I'll pass on that one! I've been toying with some Latin ballroom footwork lately and it seem promising...

My girlfriend keeps telling me to combine my spinning with these dance moves:



She's lucky I like her...

^^^

Oh lawdy! I saw this same video but dubbed differently with dubstep and captions only and was like...

"Wow.........." *blank stare, jaw dropped*

I LOVE THAT VIDEO!!!!!!
Do the Turbonoba Child.
Gather the Mushrooms, Pick the Apples
ahahahahahahaha me and my friends actually did some of those at raves. Especially lost in the woods with a bewildered stare

Also Epitome, The idea is definitely something that would require amazing ice skating skill, but when I imagined someone really good at both ice skating and poi, it opened up a few ideas that would only be possible on ice. Just a fun thought that I figured would be appropriate here.

If this manages to come together I want to see a video! I love watching the funky figure skating routines and would love to see it with such an element added Staff and skating would be pretty awesome too!