Poi Concept #3: The Secret of Circles

This is a relatively simple poi spinning concept, but much like a Zen koan, its meaning is wrapped in mystery, more difficult to grasp than I thought possible. Very few students have ever comprehended this concept, and even fewer, once grasping it, have fully embraced its meaning in their spinning.

So here it is

The concept is this: if you spin a single poi in a certain direction, say forward (down) toward the west, and maintain the same rotation no matter what you do, the circle’s direction never changes.

Got it? Good, now go be inspired to new levels of spinning bliss!

What!? I’m not enlightened!

Okay okay, let’s probe a little further.

Say you’re spinning forward, toward west, with your right hand. Then you cross your hand across your body so the circle is on your left side. Still rotating west, right?

Say you spin forward toward west with your right hand, and turn your body, but not your arm, 180 degrees to your right. Your right arm is now across your belly or chest. The poi’s rotation is still . . . west.

Say you swing the poi under your right leg from the front. As it swings up toward your back, you rotate 180 degrees left, the poi comes out from between your legs, and you keep spinning . . . west.

See the trend?

Now for the Real Point

The real point lies within the second two examples above. You spin west and turn your body 180 degrees, and the circle doesn’t change, but your relation to it does. So you have to wrap your brain around the idea that while the poi keeps rotating in the exact same direction—west—the fact that you turn around means your hand must now work to maintain a reverse rotation!

In other words, you don’t simply spin the poi forward, turn around, and keep spinning the poi forward. You spin forward, turn around, and spin the poi in reverse.

Whoah. Headache! Next thing you know I’ll have it all tied together with the Theory of Relativity!

Relativity

So really then, you must maintain awareness of two ideas at the same time:

The rotation of the poi will continue in the same direction until you shift the plane, bounce the poi, stall it and reverse directions, etc.

As long as the rotation of the poi continues uninterrupted, you must change the direction of force applied by your hand any time you turn away from you original position.

Thus: the poi’s rotation never changes, and the poi’s rotation constantly changes in relation to whatever direction you face.

And that’s the secret

Whether koan or quantam mechanics or otherwise, I think it’s a pretty awesome and powerful idea. So embrace it. Contemplate it. And go spin like a dervish!

So, what’s up? It’s June already, and we’ve neglected this small space yet again! That always happens, though. I apologize for our lateness!

What’s up is a soggy, gray June, which makes for rather cozy private lessons in our home studio. For once I don’t feel like leaving lessons in the middle of the hour and running to bask in the sun! 7, 8, 9 pm, and it’s still light, which I love, and yet it actually feels more like fall. These days we’re receiving more and more requests for fun, zany, unique wedding dances, although disco seems to be a recurring theme.

What’s also up is yet another fire show with Firebelly this Friday night, on the roof of one of the buildings at the Aquarium. Our stage, as always, will be intensely interesting - some sort of platformish affair a few feet back from the edge of the roof, and probably smaller than we prepared for at rehearsal. Stages are always interesting, though (challenging, in other words), and I suppose we should simply accept this as the price of performing. Diane is practicing torches to tango right now, and I have to practice a bit of sword and poi in the next two days.

In less than two weeks we’re scheduled to dance at the downtown library to the sounds of the Impressions Big Band. We’re the physical representation of the songs they’ve chosen, and they’ve asked us to demonstrate a bit of waltz, foxtrot, and a few other ballroom dances in addition to swing. The date is June 21st. The time is 1 pm.

The next day we teach twenty 11 year olds how to dance at a belated birthday party. We need to remember to get our sugar buzz going right before we go!

In July we will once again take to the stage, whether it be an actual stage or an area of grass in front of the stage like last time, to provide physical and comedic relief at the Literary Arts Festival in Stanley Park at the Lumberman’s Arch. The date is July 26th. The time? Stay tuned!

In August we join Firebelly for two weeks of nightly fire/light shows at the PNE. What fun!

And that’s all for my update tonight!

(Diane and I have been teaching partner dancing our own way for nearly two years now. It’s a method we have developed from the filtered down essentials of all the dances we know, and as far as we know, no one else around here teaches this way. I think I’ve been at it long enough now to start writing about our ideas, and hopefully offer a bit of guidance to anyone who is wondering how to start learning the art of partner dancing with or without taking lessons.)

Let’s start with the tremendous illusion that has been cast throughout the world of dance instruction: that the dance is in the footwork. There’s a street in Seattle where there are actually metal footprints set in the sidewalk representing different dances: this pattern is the waltz, this pattern is the cha cha. The lady’s feet go here, the gentleman’s here. Dancing, thus, is clearly in the feet, right? This is also how almost every dance class begins: “Okay class, ready, and - step, step, triple-step, step, step, triple-step.” Thus the illusion is upheld.

But if dancing were only in the feet, wouldn’t walking also be only in the feet? Try this: stand with your feet a few inches apart, directly underneath you, with your weight balanced equally on both. Stand perfectly still. Without moving anything else at all - not your head, your chest, your shoulders, your arms, nor your hips - try lifting one foot (including that leg, of course) and taking a step.

If you don’t cheat, it won’t work. You’re anchored to the spot. If it does work, you cheated and moved! You see, you can’t even begin to take a step with just one foot until your entire body shifts sideways or forward onto the other foot. Try it. Let your body shift to one side, and suddenly your other foot will be free to move.

Walking begins with tipping the body forward, putting all your weight on one foot, and using the other foot to catch your body’s forward momentum before you tip too far and topple over. The process then continues. Stop moving your weight from foot to foot, and you’ll stop walking.

Dancing involves the same process, only the feet move in different patterns on the floor. This is true enough, but if we return to our previous exercise in trying to take a step, we will begin to understand how dancing is actually the movement of one’s entire body above the feet, with the feet simply following along. Whether I am dancing swing, salsa, or the waltz, I must shift my entire body from foot to foot in order to let my feet move in the proper pattern.

This is where connection begins. The very first movement, before any sort of basic pattern begins, is a slight, subtle, gentle shift, usually sideways, over to one foot. My partner will mirror this, following my connection, and then when I begin the first move, she will feel, rather than guess, anticipate, or even intellectually know, what foot to start on.

So, go now, and pay attention to the weight of your body above your feet, and let your body do your walking, and let your body do your dancing!

I started dancing ten years ago when the person I was dating dragged me into swing. I wanted something more sensual, like salsa, but swing it was (she was persistent), and after a month of struggle, I finally got the basic step. Then I was hooked, and dance started to fill my life. I changed from a science to a performing arts track while in university, started a swing club, danced whenever and wherever there was dancing to be done. I never dove into serious formal training, but I’ve danced off and on ever since. Anytime I had periods of diminished happiness, I always realized later that I had suddenly stopped dancing as often as usual. The more I danced, the happier I was!

Then I met Diane at a swing dance. Our connection grew, on and off the dance floor, and three years later we were married. We decided to make dancing into a part time career, so now dance is also work. We teach almost daily, we choreograph and perform together, and my old breathless sense of dancing for joy has been…tempered…by the sense that I must dance, or at least teach dance…in order to make a living.

Most of the time this is perfectly fine. It’s great, actually! I get to teach other people how to dance, and hopefully to discover the same kind of joy I first found when I learned swing. Performing is also wonderful when it goes well, and I love the process of creating new work. I also really like being completely focused while in a dance class, pushing my body to do new and wonderful things as fast as I can learn them, and the time always passes way too quickly. Dance can be hard work, but it’s work I really like.

And then I stop and realize how far I’ve come from my initial pure pleasure of moving. I don’t dance swing or blues now without thinking about what I’m doing. I don’t often just let go. I’m constantly reminded of my need for more technique, more training, more vocabulary. How long has it been since I’ve gone to a house blues party and danced the night away without thinking about anything at all? Too long.

If I worked at an office job, I would need to find ways to revive my motivation for and interest in my work, whether by creating meaningful connections with my coworkers, developing new projects, pursuing new training, or even trying a different schedule once and a while. Fortunately, I can actually choose to do these things since I’m my own boss. Yet I wonder if these things would even be quite enough. I imagine I would probably need to go a little further, and try to get closer to the heart of what drew me to such work in the first place. I would need to nourish a sense of play, exploration, and discovery. I would need a way to let go a little, and allow some unordered, unpredictable variables into an otherwise mundane routine.

With dance, that means going out and just dancing, full on, all out, with complete abandon. Easy to imagine, hard to do unless I find a time, a venue, an occasion.

So I’m looking for one. Waiting. Ready to make dance joyful again.

After much agonizing, I finally decided I could handle competing. I think Diane was ready before I was (she wanted to compete at Swing Summit) and I might not even have joined this competition if it weren’t for her.

I’m of two minds when it comes to dance competitions. First, I prefer to approach dance as a means of expressing myself, connecting with a partner and with the music, and really being in the moment. It’s a form of moving art for me. Competing brings dance into the realm of sport, and I don’t necessarily dance to be better than anyone else. It certainly isn’t a sport for me.

In fact, one reason for my long delay in signing up to compete was the fact that I didn’t feel like I was polished enough, ready enough, good enough, perfect enough. I suppose the biggest competitor I’ll ever face is…myself.

My other feeling about dance competitions - or even competitions in general - is that I’m actually too competitive to handle competing. I take it way too seriously, way too personally, and can’t seem to separate my heart from the act of winning and losing. Throughout the eleven years that I played soccer, I always told others I didn’t like competition, just the feel of the game. While this was true in some ways (I loved moving across the field, feeling the touch of the ball, making elegant plays), the underlying meaning of my statement was that I didn’t want to get too caught up in the competition aspect because I simply cared too much. This made for some nerve-wracking games back in the day, and it all returned to me last night. I had trouble social dancing at first because I was so keyed up about competing.

Our approach to dance may be a little different than others’. We really really really believe in connection, which for us is a fourfold layering of signals and responses: I respond to the music, and I respond to my partner. My partner also responds to the music as well as to me. This means that at any possible moment in the dance, there might be four possible impulses balanced against four possible responses, and somehow we must do it at the same time, flowing from the previous moment to the next. Add to this our preferred level of emotional intensity - intense, joyful or passionate, tuned in - our attempt to be active in every part of our bodies, and you have something very different from a repertoire of moves that get mixed up based on the lead’s whim, with the follow more or less following, reacting, responding all along the way.

We started dancing the way we always do, but it wasn’t long before the audience began to hoot, holler, and cheer for other couples. I panicked. What was going on? I tensed up, and I could tell that Diane was trying to be calm about my tension. Should I be doing something more crowd-pleasing, more humourous or risque or….? Diane poured her calm, grounded energy into the dance, kept reminding me with her eyes and body to keep listening to the music. Still the audience cheered the others on. From the corner of my eye I saw shoes and jackets being removed. I imagined some saucy routine taking place right there behind my back, and I felt my presense slipping. Even worse, some of the couples kept dancing right in front of us, right into our space, and at one point I panicked again because I realized the judges probably couldn’t even see us.

I don’t know how it happened, but by the fourth song we had it. A gorgeous song came on, we breathed it in, and we were transformed. Did the crowd see it? I heard someone murmur, “Right on, David,” and I actually felt a shift in everyone’s attention. The laughter had trickled away, our focus and connection had suddenly deepened in response to the music and each other, and the room’s collective breath seemed to be suddenly held.

That moment was beautiful. I felt our dancing reach yet another level beyond steps and moves and patterns - we were pure impulse guided by the music. Later on we traded phrases with the other two couples, and again we struggled with the balance between sincere connection in our dance and ways to please the audience, but in the end our connection and presence came through. In the end, it was really only the act of dancing that mattered.

The audience was given the final vote. I expected a quiet response to our quiet way of dancing with each other. Instead, the cheering was thunderously definite. We had won!

This is slightly old news now, but worth repeating.

Diane and I offered a class at the Roundhouse called “Rhythm and Blues.” For four weeks we were taking the place of another class call “Rhythm, Movement and Memory” for seniors. The original idea was to provide a safe space for seniors to learn and practice new movement skills, extend their rhythmic abilities, and thus improve their mental focus and memory. Our special take on the class was through the lens of blues and r&bmusic. We led explorations in different kinds of rhythmic movement, taught vernacular jazz steps, and taught a routine that we expanded each week. It’s possible that we’ll get a few students to return to polish the routine and present it during a seniors’ week performance.

Anyway, one of our students saw me shuffling my feet. I don’t mean a slow, unwilling dragging sort of walk, but instead the actual shuffling one does while tapping. She asked if I tap.

Not really, I admitted. I’ve taken a few classes and practiced on my own, but never performed.

“Want to join our group?”

And that was that! A chance meeting in a class about blues opened the door to a group called Kol Halev.

They started as a core group of tap students learning routines together. They decided they wanted to perform, and from there things blossomed. Suddenly they were adding theatrics, live singers and musicians, and stories about Jewish history. A small tap squad became a second life for the founder of the group, and Kol Halev the performance ensemble was born. That’s who we’re going to perform with.

The very next night Diane and I arrived at this woman’s home to start learning the tap routine. Not long into our session we discovered that we were also welcome to do a short swing number during the show. Suddenly tap was opening doors to swing, and now we had a slightly larger part in the show.

This is probably just the beginning. There’s more tap to learn, more swing to perfect, and the possibility of other historical dance forms waiting to be presented.

I love such chance encounters such as this. They open so many doors! This particular story makes me feel grateful for all the times I’ve opened myself up to other people, something I want to do a lot more of on a daily basis.

Apparently I’m repeating myself. I found an older fragment of an article I wrote a while back about fusing blues with other forms of dance. Later, I updated the article with a response to the trend toward “vintage” or “historical” blues. Here are those thoughts, spoken in the royal “we” of couple/companyhood, in their original form:

******

There has been some recent discussion throughout the swing and blues communities about the authenticity of the modern approach to blue dance. Some dancers have even researched “vintage” blues forms in order to practice and teach a more “correct” form of the dance, and others simply dance to blues music and call it blues. Where do we stand?

We agree that there are factors one may use to determine whether a dance can be considered “authentic” or not, and this is perfectly valid in a historical context. We recognize that some of the movement in our own dances may match a historical definition of blues dance, and some may not. We’re a bit more interested in the current expression of the form, however, so rather than adhere to a label and definition of the dance and build our understanding from there, we prefer to explore the specific mechanics of partner dance itself: connection, weight shifting, footwork, movement, musicality, and more. These partner dance concepts aren’t limited to any one form, but are used across all forms of partner dance no matter its historical origins.

How does it all fit together for us? We use historical definitions of blues dance as a sort of starting point: this is what the dance used to be, and sometimes still is. Then we build on that point by placing our attention on what actually happens when two people dance together, no matter what the form is called. This means that the form will inevitably grow beyond its definition. This is, we believe, the true reason we dance in the first place: to discover, to express, to create a shared moment of deeply human experience. In the end we may simply dance to blues music and call it blues, but what we’re actually doing is far beyond the scope of any single, limited defintion of a dance.

Since 2001 I’ve come to love this thing called blues dance.

It’s possible, though, that this thing isn’t really even called blues dance. Can you give something a name and yet not know exactly what that thing is?

Here’s what I thought it was back in 2001: adapting what I knew from lindy hop to be slow enough and fitting enough to dance to blues music, to fit the music, to have a more moment by moment connection, and, oh yeah - feeling the thrill of really close contact with someone while dancing in a semi-darkened room, and being so tired that I actually felt wonderful and could finally let go. That was blues. It was awesome.

Seven years later, I’ve danced to countless blues songs. I’ve attended blues house parties and blues dances that lasted until dawn. I’ve taught blues classes and blues workshops. I’ve watched blues, read about blues, learned to play a bit of blues. And at some point in all this time I developed the blues dance blues. It’s quite possibly a more urgently mournful blues than any actual blues song itself. If my blues could express itself in a conversation, it would go like this:

“I’m digging this slow, sensual dancin’, man, and this song just eats my soul!”

“Yeah, but you ain’t doin’ actual blues, man!”

“I’m feeling the shuffle beat and the bass and the low growlin’ horns, and I’m moving! What else is there?”

“The shake ‘n bake! That’s what else!”

“That what?!?”

“It’s a vintage step, man, straight outta the ole juke joints, man. You dig?”

“No.”

“To dance blues, you gotta dance the dance they danced back in the day! You gotta do the mooch! You gotta do the fishtail. You gotta do the slow drag. They’re all historic!”

“I’ve never even heard of those names! And I thought I was dancing in the only day that really matters anyway - right now!”

“Maybe so, but then you ain’t dancing blues.”

And on it goes. Is blues the pure and simple act of dancing to blues music? Is it using the different layers of the music to inspire different kinds of movement? Or is it the mooch? You have your historians on one side, your presentorians on the other. You have your purists teaming up with the historians, the inventors enjoying the present moment. You have your…. blues dance blues. One big unnecessary argument.

When asked if he could teach some certain move, I think it was the “leap frog,” one of the biggest names in swing dancing history, Frankie Manning, said they didn’t have names back when they danced in the 30’s. They just danced! I find the non-name thing a little hard to believe simply because it’s our nature to name things. And yet the point here is that the idea of not naming is one that allows for discovery, expression, and invention. Naming brings in the added argument of correct-ness or not-correct-ness, and that’s where my blues is coming from. If I’m worrying about the historical validity of my footwork while trying to dance blues, then that’s all I’m ever going to feel: blues. If someone watching me is only looking for vintage steps, they’ll miss the excitement of what’s happening - what’s being created - in the moment.

So let’s try this. Let the historians compile their lists. While I dance what I feel is blues, they can check off any of the old moves that I do properly. I’ll be happy if I get even one step correct. The slow drag? Check! Then I’ll pocket the list. A keepsake.

Then I’ll forget about that list, turn the lights down low, and spend the rest of the night dancing my heart out in the best possible way I know how - by feeling it, by connecting with my partner, by being open to possibility. I’ll get the blues, then, I’m sure of it, but it will be the kind of blues we all want to feel: deep, raucous, sensual, passionate, wild, playful, uninhibited, wonderful.