Flags!

Kaleidoscope 2009 Parade Saturday Night 6 PM

The fabulous Kaleidoscope Parade is back. The location is secret until the day of the event. Sign up on the site if you'd like to join us.

After the parade there will be a party with fire performers. I'll be one of them.

We had such a fabulous time last year. Come play with us!

Kaleidoscope Celebration of Color 2008 Photos

Wildfire Spring 2009

I can hardly put into words what an exhilarating experience my weekend retreat was. Every minute of every day was filled with art and artists, learning and sharing, awe and beauty. I'm truly blessed and humbled to have the opportunity to have such wonderful experiences.

I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked because I was so busy learning, performing and enjoying the other performances that I just didn't have the time. Here are some highlights.

Darrel, the hoopin', spinnin' cowboy and Crystal, who got me into all this nonsense. You're both awesome.

Our fearless leader, Chad. What an great guy.

A new friendship is born.

Fabulousness abounds.

Hoopers are adorable. I'm glad poi fit in a bag.

Fun with Kite Poi

My latest fabulous poi video is up from Wildfire 2009.

Portable Speakers for Outdoor Fun

A lot of people have complimented me on and asked about the portable iPod/iPhone speakers I use at poi spin meetups. I did a lot of research and think the Griffin Journi speakers offer the best combo of sound, price and size for rechargeable portable speakers. The built in folding stand/case is absolutely brilliant. And it's small enough to fit in my poi bag.

They are now discontinued but that just means you can now get them for less than $50. They don't officially support the iPhone, but they work with it just fine if you put the iPhone into Airplane mode.

HOWEVER, when the new iPhones are unveiled next month, I think there will also be a new wave of cool accessories. So unless you absolutely must get something this very minute you might want to wait.

The Incredible Poi Duo

Thanks so much to Marius Shanzer for his fabulous Dance Parade 2009 Album including this great shot of Masae and me.

Dance Parade!

The weather forecast has improved and the Dance Parade is on! Circus performers come join House of YES, GROUP #70. Meet Saturday, May 16, 12:30pm on 27th Street between 6th avenue and Broadway.

Bring poi, hoops and/or juggling balls. Have water. Wear sunscreen. No storage so don't burden yourself with much else.

Bring your most flashy toys. I'm bringing kite poi.

If you wanna dress up the House of YES theme is "Spirit Animals", but it's not necessary.

Come play with us! More fun to follow in Tompkins Square Park.

Remember, find GROUP #70 in the set up area.

More info here.

Facebook group here.

Fun In The Sun

Flagtastic!

Join Me Sunday Night for a Free Dance Performance and Poi Afterward

Sunday night, weather permitting, I'm going to see Los Vivancos perform free in Battery Park.





This fabulous free show is sponsored by The Joyce Theater. For more info and to make sure it's not rained out check this calendar.

The show is at 7:30pm.
I'll arrive around 6:30pm to stake out a spot. (map)
Contact me if you'd like to join my dinner group at 5:00pm.
Poi will be spun afterward.
There will likely be other silliness.

Kaleidoscope Celebration of Color 2008 Photos

I had such a quandary deciding whether to go to Kaleidoscope as a performer or a photographer. In the end, I decided to spin poi and let my awesome friend Connor Hays man the equipment. I had a wonderful time and he did a fabulous job.

Kaleidoscope Celebration of Color 2008 Photos



(It seems some of you can't see some embedded photos in my blog. Please be patient. This will change when I upgrade my web server next month. )

Hoops, Poi, Bride's Maids and All Manner of Twirling Things

World Hoop Day 2008 Photos Now Live!



Don't miss the whirling bride's maids.



And, of course, poi.

Dale's First Fire Poi Video

My first Fire Poi Video is up.
You know you're just dying to rate it 5 stars, right?

Come Play With Me!

I've launched a Poi, Juggling and Circus Performers Twitter. Subscribe for free updates about when and where I'll be spinning Poi.

I'm only going to use my twitter to create fun flash mobs. I promise not to spam you with crap like "Here's what I think of Obama, I'm napping, now here's what I think of Obama."

Like the Poi logo I designed?

Today is World Hoop Day. Come play with me in Central Park. More info on my twitter.

Fire Poi!

After ten fabulous weeks of studying poi,
my class graduated with a fire spinning spectacular.

Casual Athletic Nudity

Swimmers like Greg Louganis and Michael Phelps seem so comfortable showing their bodies to the world. Asked about it, athletes usually say something simple like, "that's the uniform."



I never understood this unselfconscious until I started spinning poi. If I leave my shirt on, it will just get sweaty and gross. So I take it off. It's not so much I'm dying to show my fuzzy navel to the world. It's just the uniform.

While poi has made me more confident about my body, an underwear model I ain't. But I'm feeling much less of an all-knees-and-elbows, gangly, awkward nerd these day. Thanks, poi.



At the Olympics, ancient Greeks would perform completely nude. But there was one taboo. It was considered indecent to show the glans of the penis. So to prevent it from accidentally slipping out, athletes would tie a kynodesme, a small string, around their foreskins, ensuring it would stay inside.

One More Trick and I Can Be a Clown

While buying poi at Dubé Juggling Equipment I decided to get some balls to brush up my long forgotten juggling skills.



All I have to do now is learn to spin plates and I can join the circus.

The Wages of Poi

Spinning poi in Italy has profited me two things ...



... a blister on my left middle finger and 10 Euro cents as a tip from a young man who called me a "Superstar".

The Color of Night

Long ago I bored of what I call, "proof photos," that is, photos that prove you were there. Me in front of the Eiffel Tower. Me in front of the Brandenburger Tor. Me in front of the British Houses of Parliament.

Zzzzzzz....

I know what these places look like. And I know what I look like. I don't need to know what I look like in front of these places.

Problem is, my mother complains if there are no photos of me amongst my holiday snaps. So I've combined my interest in night photography and poi. Here ya go, Mom. Happy?

Home of Poi Discount Code

If you're interested in getting into Poi, check out homeofpoi.com for info and supplies. Here's a discount code for 5% off at their store. I luv my new kite poi.

HOME OF POI DISCOUNT CODE
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Of course, you can always just make your own starter poi by filling a pair of socks with a half a cup of rice each. I like to put the rice into cheap, plain, white, girl's knee stockings so they make nice compact soft little balls. This keeps the rice from cutting through the socks as you spin them.

SOCK POI WITH STOCKING BALL


Sock poi can be made for just a few bucks and look great.
Here's an adorable couple I met both spinning my sock poi.

SOCK POI IN ACTION


HOW TO MAKE SOCK POI

Poi, The International Language

I've been meeting people with mad poi skills ... like raver boy here.



Look who's back.



Everyone wants to try out my new kite poi.



Turns out you don't even need a common language to learn poi. I taught this deaf girl to spin. She picked it up right away.



If you're happy and you know it spin your poi.



Mari J is a fire spinner from Japan. Her poi dance is fabulous.

Poi Cannot Be Stopped!

We had fun this weekend unicycling, juggling and spinning poi in the park. Then we got rained on. Did that stop us? Hell no!



My bathrobes got more use than they have in ages.

Agua Poi

I was trying out my new LED Poi when Sergey Matsko happened along. He shoots what he calls Agua Photos, images that emphasis motion over detail. How perfect for my little light show!

REVERSE WHEEL


FORWARD WHEEL


FORWARD WEAVE


MEXICAN WEAVE

Buwah ha ha ha! More converts!

Like a dope fiend who isn't happy until everyone they know is a pothead, I'm recruiting my friends to the cult of poi. Go, Kelli, Go!

Poi Friends

Poi isn't just fun and healthy, it's surprisingly social. People want to join in or just try so often I now carry a bag full of sock poi I made. I'm making tons of new "poi friends".

This little heart-breaker is Nick from Kahzakistan.



This was his first time spinning. He was a natural.



I like to see how many people I can get spinning at once.
This girl has started meeting me in the park often to Poi.



Bette took the poi and immediately busted out some serious moves.



By far my favorite experience so far was when I taught a whole family to poi in Fort Tryon Park.



Aren't they just adorable?

Poi Art in Union Square

Frank Love took this mind-bogglingly gorgeous photo and was kind enough to let me post it. Click it for hi-res.



I feel so lucky to have been in the right place at the right time to be a part of an image such as this. It might just be my favorite picture of me ever. Thanks, buddy!

Check out f.LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY. His work is stunning.

Blinded by the Rainbow

I went shopping in all the Dominican 99 cent stores in my neighborhood for supplies to make sock poi. Think you're secure in your masculinity? Try going up to black or Latin, totally-buff security guys, one after another, and asking "where are the stockings and girl's socks?"

As a result of this little excursion, I now know the difference between nylons, tights, knee-high socks and thigh-high stockings.

*poof*

Now I feel even gayer.

Hot for Flaming Poi Bois

I'm over ballet dancers. I've moved on to Poi Bois.

Yummy, yummy, yummy.

Obsession ... The Good Kind ... I Hope

I am now obsessed with Poi. When I said this to a friend who knows me well he wryly said, "Dale, obsessed with a new hobby that completely takes over his life? Unprecedented!"



It's true. I don't so much pursue new interests as much as I hunt them down, run them over and then swallow them whole.

After a period of digestion a web site, list server, several essays, a stand up set and sometimes an organization comes out the other end. And I'm pretty much guaranteed to drive at least half my friends crazy in the process.

This new interest is different from my others, nearly all of which occur in the arena of the mind. Board games, standup, bridge, science fiction, video games, writing are all intellectual and linguistic pursuits. Photography and design, while visual, are still things that take place in the mind.

But this is different.

Every morning I wake up and my first thought of the day is, "I want to exercise." This an utterly alien and yet delightful new sensation. Because my whole life I've been pretty bad at it, I usually have to be tricked into exercise. My gym memberships all fizzled. I've never been able to stick the physical therapy program I have that's supposed to help my shoulders. I do it half heartedly now and then, in fits and starts. But exercise has always felt like drudgery to me.

Basically I've had the same relationship with my body that Homer Simpson has with his brain. "Brain, I know we don't talk very much, so if you just get me out of this I'll go back to leaving you alone."

My version has been, "Body, I know you don't like me and I don't like you. So if you can just get this air conditioner onto the window sill I won't ask you to do anything else until it's time to take it back out in the fall."

Poi has changed all that. Every day I can't wait to learn what my body can do now. I have a sense of physical achievement I can't recall before. It hit me these are the feelings I was supposed to have in gym class as a kid and not awkwardness, shame and humiliation. Fuck, I hated gym class.



I had a brief Dance Dance Revolution craze. That was fun, but it fizzled because I got sick of setting up and taking down the pad. And I don't really need more lower body exercise. What I desperately need is upper body exercise.

When I tried Poi a few weeks ago, my usually tense and stressed shoulders, arms, neck and back felt fantastic afterward. Plus poi provides plausible cover for an odd little habit I picked up a few years ago ... occasionally dancing in public with my iPod.

Dancing by yourself in public = Weird and maybe crazy

Spinning poi while also dancing in public = Fabulous

One of the most delightful things about this process is the physical and mental sensation of creating a new muscle memory. It takes anywhere from 20 to 100 repetitions for me to establish and begin to stabilize a new motion. Usually you do your dominant side first (righty vs. lefty) and then work of the other side, which is usually harder. The process of projecting a mirror of a muscle memory onto the other side of my body is also quite intriguing.

With complicated moves and tricks there can be a fair bit of frustration. The competitive guy in me get's all aggressive and declares, "Must win at Poi!" But that's part of the fun, because the thrill of putting the pieces of a new move together and finally having it work the first time is unlike any other feeling I've ever had.



What's even more fun and unexpected is how much better I feel about my own body. If you'd told me two weeks ago, I'd be exercising with my shirt off in public and be completely nonchalant about strangers taking photos of me I'd have assumed you had moderate to severe brain damage and maybe some kind of personality disorder as well. Now it's just another afternoon in the park.

I think my stomach is a little flatter already. But that's not why I feel better. Muscles long atrophied from injuries of years past are getting stronger. I'm sleeping better. I have more energy and more confidence. I'm eating three meals a day instead of two.

One minor problem, I did have to come up with a better hydration strategy when I spent $15 on bottled water on the day of my first poi class and park exercise session. Now I put an empty liter bottle in my bag and fill it up at water fountains at Whole Foods. Since they have stores right by both Central Park and Union Square Park it works out great. And I'm finally spending the time in Fort Tryon Park like I always said I should.

If I don't get out during the day, I turn into a grumpy cave troll. Being outside in the sun is good for my mental health. Plus I'm getting an awesome tan.

I know I'm gushing, but that's the point. Poi has been nothing short of transforming these last weeks. I'm sure my obsession will wane down to some appropriate level after summer has past. A little voice in my head is worried about what happens when winter comes, but I'll figure that out later. Regardless, I think I've finally found a form of exercise I can see myself sticking to for the rest of my life.

Excuse me now please, I have this strange urge to go do crunches.

Who am I and what have I done with Dale Sorenson?