Dancing with poi

Coming from a dance background, I feel it has helped my spinning no-end. Having a strong knowledge of Ballet & modern dance has helped me develope style and grace into my spinning. But more recently I have been Tap dancing with Poi just to see what is possible. A friend of mine also does Tap & Poi and we had great fun with this. Wings & maxi fords are both possible- and a great way of adding extra beats! Since I have seen lot's of other stuff done with poi such as stilts, acro, rollerskates etc, I was wondering if anyone else has tried poi & tap or has seen this done before?

Ask and you shall receive...

Wow...that was pretty cool.

As a bellydancer venturing into Poi, I will be blending my poi and bellydance..I already have some 'routines' in mind, just have to learn and get fluent in the poi moves...

Ordinarily when I've been practicing my poi I use upbeat music and just let the music take over.

Theres a group in USA who use "voi". A combo of veil and poi as they put it. Will send you a linkie. Jeds used flags with dancers before but more as a spinner not dancer.
Remind me to have a look at my silk flags.

I have Veil Poi already Gnor :-)

Thats why all the silk I've been making the veils :-)

wonderful video. Although the poi and tap skills were pretty basic, it is very entertaining. Thanks 4 that.x

the cirque thing is/are called boleadoras.

I mix poi and popping/boogaloo.

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?