I started out glowstringing as a kid, never knowing it was a proper physical art form - I just enjoyed spinning around glow stick necklaces (and key chains). Glowstringing was my gateway drug.
I think damn near everybody swings around things like lanyards as a kid and I don't imagine swinging glowsticks is a terribly long walk from that. Interestingly, someone pointed out to me recently that fiberoptic whips have kind of now become the prop of choice for people who used to freehand because they utilize similar movements but create a much bigger effect with them. It's funny how these things grow and evolve over time!
Well worded, Drex! One of the reasons I got back into making videos for Glowstringing was because I saw that the art had kinda died down. I felt like it was so sad considering the rest of the flowarts community had been thriving. Thanks for bringing light to the topic and I hope to see many new talented Glowstringers in the next generation.
I started my poi journey by watching glowstringing tutorials, I got some shoe laces and glowsticks and just smacked my face a few times while listening to edm. I later came across your channel and used a tennisball and long sock while trying to follow along. In my opinion, I think glowstringing is a style of its own, perhaps a sub category of poi? When I do glowstringing I tend to do a lot more fast wraps and spirals compared to poi which feels to be slower with tossing the props in the air and contact style. I think the analogy of comparing it to music like edm which is a broad term, there's various types of edm, hardstyle, hardcore, trance, house, techno, etc. As such there's probably varying styles of poi spinning and props.
I didn't go deeply into this in the video (and now wish I had), but there's been a change in the way biologists talk about evolution wherein they no longer talk about the emergence of new species as happening on the Tree of Life but rather life being more like winding rivers and tributaries wherein organisms that share mutual ancestors can be isolated for long enough that they develop unique characteristics and then sometimes develop into completely new organisms or are able to reconnect with sister clades and result in new hybrids or species entirely. For example: we share our last common ancestor with chimpanzees something like 3 million years ago and clearly no longer have enough in common to be anything other that different species, but for a while Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Cro-Magnon humans all coexisted and would interbreed, resulting in regionally specific pockets of modern-day humans that show combinations of traits from all these different hominins. Likewise, I think it's safe to say that contemporary poi is a result of the sharing of ideas between people who were taking cues from Maori poi, glowstringing, club swinging, and a variety of other movement arts. While Maori poi continues more or less in isolation as its own art and club swinging is more or less seen as a curious offshoot of juggling, glowstringing continues to develop and share ideas back and forth with contemporary poi. These are two tributaries that continue to twist around each other and share material while also being very specific to the environment, philosophies, and cultural identifiers of the people who practice them.
It's crazy how mixed up culture and arts can be, in fact when I used to string (glowsticking) we used to call any non-contact flow Poi, anything else was just wraps. The majority of what stringers (glowstickers) do is wraps, mazes, tech (we used glowstcks so leds were new and considered tech at the time) and magic tricks (the use of other tools to create an illusion while stringing) it was wild ^_~☆ later in life I saw some performers who had poi balls and I ask what they where and they said "Poi" I figured I'll look it up and that's how I found you ^_~☆
They had clubs and contests dedicated to stringing ^_~☆ stringing crews would battle rival crews for prizes and sponsorship from the club, they would be showcased on the flyers of what ever clubs they would be hosted at ^_~☆ it was wild, the crews had names like techno turtles and DC; there was even underground crews who would pop up to challenge the top crews for their title ^_~☆ it was fun and competitive, it caused people to come out with new techniques and signature moves ^_~☆ then it died, years later some guy tells me I'm not professional enough to use his "poi", he was a paid performer so I respected him, but boy was I better than him ^_~☆ now I'm trying to get into street performing using poi as my main attraction ^_~☆
How about kung fu as an inspiration/ parent style? When I saw the 6 styles video I was surprised when Martial wasn't one of them, considering rope dart and chain whip. I got into poi after watching kung fu movies my whole life, learning kung fu weapons, then seeing a fire poi performance and realizing many of the moves were cross-compatible. Is poi spinning also potentially descended from chain whip? If not, is perfroming in a martial style with stances and sharp movements as if doing a martial arts form potentially an overlooked 7th style too? Appreciate your thoughts, thanks for making these videos!
I was in martial arts too saw glow stringing at a rave in Miami. And started glow string. Then got into poi. Without martial arts I would have probably never picked it up
Great video! I stumbled across your channel the other day and have been digging a lot of it. Your ability to teach with many layers of nuance is truly remarkable, and this video illuminates your candor, fairness, and level-headedness. Really glad I found your stuff. Thanks for bringing it all to the world.
As a former freehander myself, I can say that one of the reasons I wanted to learn glow stringing was from the stringer's perspective on freehand. We typically excel at tracing, threads and tosses, but glowstringers will actually use antispins and isolations in their freehand routines. This taught me that you can take poi concepts and apply them to freehand. There are a few freehand iso tutorials out there on RUclips and you can see what I mean. I don't freehand anymore but at one time I was even playing around with a triquetra body trace that ran through my entire torso. While I agree that freehand should not be looked at the same as poi, it is its own thing, there are things that we freehanders did borrow from poi, the entire freehand iso style would never have been created if it hadn't been for poi and glowstringing.
I agree. About the juggling thing, I prefer to call poi a flow art instead of juggling. Some latin jugglers see poi as well as an easy stuff or they say that is not juggling in a despective way, like it was something bad. Sometimes other spinners give me funny looks when I tell them I'm not interested in poi juggling though I respect and like what they do. I'm more into the original old school and haven't met a lot of people who can perform in its full potential flowers or quarter time arsenal, for example. Usually in Latin circus community, the more objects the better (also I prefer to stick to poi at the traffic light instead or learning something else that "pays" more. But if I do that it would stop being art, at least for me. So, some colleagues say I'm crazy 😅) Also, you reminded me about my struggle years ago because everybody called poi "swings" here idk why and I was one of those trying to change that as a respect due with Maori culture. About the new schools video, it would be cool to mention nine sections whip, argentinian boleadoras and also I think in the Indian Banethi they have tools similar to poi. Sorry for the long comment 🙈
I started glowstringing back in the early 2000s. Then around 2008 I learned about fire spinning. After a year of fire poi I never felt like I was fully dancing when I spun. That was until I started incorporating glowsticking/stringing into my fire spinning. Still mesmerizing to watch. Glowstringing was an essential part of poi spinning in the early 2000s but today glowstringing has becoming a dying breed once the invention of pod poi hit the scene, so i wouldnt consider it with the main 6 schools. That's just my opinion though. Great video. Thank you for addressing the glowstringing/poi issue and giving us your take.
This sounds like a similar evolution to the one many of the people who taught me in the late 2000s went through: using glowsticks and then discovering that they could move on to fire from them. I suspect this was an artifact of the window of time it was happening in because by the early 2010s I knew almost no poi spinners coming into the scene who even knew that glowstringing was a thing. Fire and practice poi had become such a big deal on RUclips that this was how people were discovering the art that that point. I think it's not a coincidence that this was when the branding around "flow arts" began to take off as well!
Great video definitely summed up some of my feelings about how some poi spinners view glowsticking as a "lesser" form of the art, especially when led poi started to become more standardized about 10'ish years ago. Nowadays I meet a lot more poi spinners who've never heard of glowstringing so it's always a blast to give them a show and a little history lesson. I hope it makes a comeback! Juggling is a pretty competitive scene and glowstringing culture was a lot more about non-competition and sharing ideas, so I wonder if that's where a lot of the friction between those circles comes from?
Amazing video! I started my journey watching glowstringers and learning with glow sticks for several years. Then bought my first set of 90mm and loved the different things that were capable. I see them as two separate arts and as you mentioned the weight difference of the two props is where I felt the biggest separation of the capable moves and styles emerge. I hope my opinion on the subject helps and once again amazing video!!!!
I started glowstringing and fire spinning soon after doing both al lthe time I love both dearly cause u can do so much different things on both sides that u can't do with the other and that's where I found joy in both
Let's not getting started on how everyone feels about glovers lol. Always good to learn about a topic, I know I was sorely lacking knowledge in. Also curioid about the roping in of all these performance forms under the banner of "circus arts" (plus a few more like Aerial Silks) and your thoughts on that.
Drex, would you say that glowstrings and poi are part of the same "family tree"? It's for the same reasons that juggling is not poi that I don't consider any flowart to be part of circus acts - even if that's where some if not most people before social media, RUclips etc probably have seen poi, juggling etc. Probably it's own topic for another day
This was a piece that really hit me as well. Jugglers can be some of the most snobby people around for being adult who still throw balls inside. But seriously, at least in America a lot of the juggling has a real racism problem, and don't just mean poi. The elitist attitudes that some jugglers hold over other props extends well outside of object manipulation.
Jesus Christ... Drex has an impressive body of work but these statements about "cultural colonialism" and the comments in another video about "everything being a spectrum rather than a binary"... 🤮 Categories are valid. Not everything is a spectrum. Most art is almost entirely recombination of others work and if you're lucky, a spark of originality or discovery.
Started stringing and then got my first set of contact poi a few years later. I personally view them as the same since I spin both regularly but obviously poi can involve tosses and rolls that stringing does not but everything I can do while glow stringing I can do with poi but not visa versa. Is glow stringing a subset of poi?
I've had the same problem. Boy doesn't allow me to perform some of the glow stringing tricks. And I brought glow stringing tricks into the POI community such as angel wings. I've never seen anybody doing poi do it
Do you have much contact with Tangata whenua? I think it’s really important that if you going to be discussing what is and isn’t poi to be discussing it with them as well. I don’t have any experience with slow stringing but did a small amount of traditional poi in my school in Aotearoa. Glow stringing seems to actually be closer to traditional poi then contemporary/western poi.
I remember when I first started I used the helix poi and that is either glow strings or glow sticks not sure which one it is. Didn't even know it was it's own class until I watched your video on the classes of poi. I even hit a bump when I was doing poi with helix poi bc it was so light but when I got comtact poi plus pod poi my flow has definitely improved. I still can't figure out why your discount code for flow toys is not working for me.
@@DrexFactor thank you I even tried on different devices ur code and different wifi but the same thing happened. I want to make sure you get the credit bc you told me about flow toys to begin with.
At least in my local community we seem to have a similar problem to the jugglers looking down on poi spinners. Basically all prop manipulation communities here seem to look down on glovers.
I started with glowsticks and inovas on shoe laces around 2006, and a year later or so started learning actual POI concepts. I would definitely consider glow "stringing" part of POI, although not so much when they're wrapped around the hand and performing tracers etc. However, that last part is no longer "stringing" New age spinning, people are performing all sorts of wraps and bounces off their body, although in a very different manner. When something is being spun on a rope, it is POI. When someone is actually throwing and catching POI, they are then juggling. Removing the juggling, it's just POI. Remove the rope, it's not POI. I did however enjoy this video, just sharing my 2 cents.
Years over and over . The poi community has literally ripped off alot of our basic tech and rename it , hence negative space- a glowstringing pin . Just the last few years maybe like 2017ish till now it's finally developed to what it is now. Now all the high level poi spinners are just mimicking Alot of glowstringing rather than spinning poi.... You guys can't speak both languages. The glowstringers speak both.
As a performer I feel like I have to start learning glow stringing even though I’m not a rave person. but the way that nightlife is set up in what poi can exist in in spaces I feel like I’m being forced to become a glow stringer. which is cool and all but as their fire performer I don’t see how i can safely transfer that skill over. I don’t know I think I’m just butt hurt that I’m having a really hard time finding gigs and as a trans person it’s starting to get to me.
I'm sorry to hear both that you're having a hard time getting gigs that fit your skillset as well as the fact that it sounds like some of the variables involved are triggering. That disappointment and frustration is absolutely valid. I don't know much about your local scene, but if there aren't opportunities there that make use of your skillset it might be time to look outside your local area for other gigs. Are there artists you respect that are getting gigs within a 4-hour driving radius? Maybe see if they'd be willing to take you on.
I started out glowstringing as a kid, never knowing it was a proper physical art form - I just enjoyed spinning around glow stick necklaces (and key chains). Glowstringing was my gateway drug.
I think damn near everybody swings around things like lanyards as a kid and I don't imagine swinging glowsticks is a terribly long walk from that. Interestingly, someone pointed out to me recently that fiberoptic whips have kind of now become the prop of choice for people who used to freehand because they utilize similar movements but create a much bigger effect with them. It's funny how these things grow and evolve over time!
Wow tons of discussion on this topic! thanks for bringing this up dood! And I'm flattered that you put a clip of me spinning in this vid =)
Do you have suggestion of what to buy? I don’t want to buy shoes laces. What do people use?
Well worded, Drex! One of the reasons I got back into making videos for Glowstringing was because I saw that the art had kinda died down. I felt like it was so sad considering the rest of the flowarts community had been thriving. Thanks for bringing light to the topic and I hope to see many new talented Glowstringers in the next generation.
I started my poi journey by watching glowstringing tutorials, I got some shoe laces and glowsticks and just smacked my face a few times while listening to edm. I later came across your channel and used a tennisball and long sock while trying to follow along.
In my opinion, I think glowstringing is a style of its own, perhaps a sub category of poi? When I do glowstringing I tend to do a lot more fast wraps and spirals compared to poi which feels to be slower with tossing the props in the air and contact style.
I think the analogy of comparing it to music like edm which is a broad term, there's various types of edm, hardstyle, hardcore, trance, house, techno, etc. As such there's probably varying styles of poi spinning and props.
I didn't go deeply into this in the video (and now wish I had), but there's been a change in the way biologists talk about evolution wherein they no longer talk about the emergence of new species as happening on the Tree of Life but rather life being more like winding rivers and tributaries wherein organisms that share mutual ancestors can be isolated for long enough that they develop unique characteristics and then sometimes develop into completely new organisms or are able to reconnect with sister clades and result in new hybrids or species entirely. For example: we share our last common ancestor with chimpanzees something like 3 million years ago and clearly no longer have enough in common to be anything other that different species, but for a while Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Cro-Magnon humans all coexisted and would interbreed, resulting in regionally specific pockets of modern-day humans that show combinations of traits from all these different hominins. Likewise, I think it's safe to say that contemporary poi is a result of the sharing of ideas between people who were taking cues from Maori poi, glowstringing, club swinging, and a variety of other movement arts. While Maori poi continues more or less in isolation as its own art and club swinging is more or less seen as a curious offshoot of juggling, glowstringing continues to develop and share ideas back and forth with contemporary poi. These are two tributaries that continue to twist around each other and share material while also being very specific to the environment, philosophies, and cultural identifiers of the people who practice them.
It's crazy how mixed up culture and arts can be, in fact when I used to string (glowsticking) we used to call any non-contact flow Poi, anything else was just wraps. The majority of what stringers (glowstickers) do is wraps, mazes, tech (we used glowstcks so leds were new and considered tech at the time) and magic tricks (the use of other tools to create an illusion while stringing) it was wild ^_~☆ later in life I saw some performers who had poi balls and I ask what they where and they said "Poi" I figured I'll look it up and that's how I found you ^_~☆
They had clubs and contests dedicated to stringing ^_~☆ stringing crews would battle rival crews for prizes and sponsorship from the club, they would be showcased on the flyers of what ever clubs they would be hosted at ^_~☆ it was wild, the crews had names like techno turtles and DC; there was even underground crews who would pop up to challenge the top crews for their title ^_~☆ it was fun and competitive, it caused people to come out with new techniques and signature moves ^_~☆ then it died, years later some guy tells me I'm not professional enough to use his "poi", he was a paid performer so I respected him, but boy was I better than him ^_~☆ now I'm trying to get into street performing using poi as my main attraction ^_~☆
Oh cool! Well I'm glad you did find me!
How about kung fu as an inspiration/ parent style? When I saw the 6 styles video I was surprised when Martial wasn't one of them, considering rope dart and chain whip. I got into poi after watching kung fu movies my whole life, learning kung fu weapons, then seeing a fire poi performance and realizing many of the moves were cross-compatible. Is poi spinning also potentially descended from chain whip? If not, is perfroming in a martial style with stances and sharp movements as if doing a martial arts form potentially an overlooked 7th style too? Appreciate your thoughts, thanks for making these videos!
I was in martial arts too saw glow stringing at a rave in Miami. And started glow string. Then got into poi. Without martial arts I would have probably never picked it up
Great video! I stumbled across your channel the other day and have been digging a lot of it. Your ability to teach with many layers of nuance is truly remarkable, and this video illuminates your candor, fairness, and level-headedness. Really glad I found your stuff. Thanks for bringing it all to the world.
As a former freehander myself, I can say that one of the reasons I wanted to learn glow stringing was from the stringer's perspective on freehand. We typically excel at tracing, threads and tosses, but glowstringers will actually use antispins and isolations in their freehand routines. This taught me that you can take poi concepts and apply them to freehand. There are a few freehand iso tutorials out there on RUclips and you can see what I mean. I don't freehand anymore but at one time I was even playing around with a triquetra body trace that ran through my entire torso. While I agree that freehand should not be looked at the same as poi, it is its own thing, there are things that we freehanders did borrow from poi, the entire freehand iso style would never have been created if it hadn't been for poi and glowstringing.
I love you Drex. You're so thoughtful and considerate
Underrated topic! Thanks for the upload.
Sure thing! Thanks for the view!
I agree. About the juggling thing, I prefer to call poi a flow art instead of juggling. Some latin jugglers see poi as well as an easy stuff or they say that is not juggling in a despective way, like it was something bad. Sometimes other spinners give me funny looks when I tell them I'm not interested in poi juggling though I respect and like what they do. I'm more into the original old school and haven't met a lot of people who can perform in its full potential flowers or quarter time arsenal, for example. Usually in Latin circus community, the more objects the better (also I prefer to stick to poi at the traffic light instead or learning something else that "pays" more. But if I do that it would stop being art, at least for me. So, some colleagues say I'm crazy 😅) Also, you reminded me about my struggle years ago because everybody called poi "swings" here idk why and I was one of those trying to change that as a respect due with Maori culture. About the new schools video, it would be cool to mention nine sections whip, argentinian boleadoras and also I think in the Indian Banethi they have tools similar to poi. Sorry for the long comment 🙈
I started glowstringing back in the early 2000s. Then around 2008 I learned about fire spinning. After a year of fire poi I never felt like I was fully dancing when I spun. That was until I started incorporating glowsticking/stringing into my fire spinning. Still mesmerizing to watch. Glowstringing was an essential part of poi spinning in the early 2000s but today glowstringing has becoming a dying breed once the invention of pod poi hit the scene, so i wouldnt consider it with the main 6 schools. That's just my opinion though.
Great video. Thank you for addressing the glowstringing/poi issue and giving us your take.
This sounds like a similar evolution to the one many of the people who taught me in the late 2000s went through: using glowsticks and then discovering that they could move on to fire from them. I suspect this was an artifact of the window of time it was happening in because by the early 2010s I knew almost no poi spinners coming into the scene who even knew that glowstringing was a thing. Fire and practice poi had become such a big deal on RUclips that this was how people were discovering the art that that point. I think it's not a coincidence that this was when the branding around "flow arts" began to take off as well!
Im at kinda loss of words..
This was fucking awesome Drex... Thank you.
Great video definitely summed up some of my feelings about how some poi spinners view glowsticking as a "lesser" form of the art, especially when led poi started to become more standardized about 10'ish years ago. Nowadays I meet a lot more poi spinners who've never heard of glowstringing so it's always a blast to give them a show and a little history lesson. I hope it makes a comeback!
Juggling is a pretty competitive scene and glowstringing culture was a lot more about non-competition and sharing ideas, so I wonder if that's where a lot of the friction between those circles comes from?
Glowstringer here, thank you 🙏
Do you have a suggestion on what strings I should buy? Instead of shoe laces?
Amazing video! I started my journey watching glowstringers and learning with glow sticks for several years. Then bought my first set of 90mm and loved the different things that were capable. I see them as two separate arts and as you mentioned the weight difference of the two props is where I felt the biggest separation of the capable moves and styles emerge. I hope my opinion on the subject helps and once again amazing video!!!!
This video makes me so happy, I feel represented. Yes, glow stringing is definitely a derivative of poi.
I started glowstringing and fire spinning soon after doing both al lthe time I love both dearly cause u can do so much different things on both sides that u can't do with the other and that's where I found joy in both
Let's not getting started on how everyone feels about glovers lol. Always good to learn about a topic, I know I was sorely lacking knowledge in. Also curioid about the roping in of all these performance forms under the banner of "circus arts" (plus a few more like Aerial Silks) and your thoughts on that.
Drex, would you say that glowstrings and poi are part of the same "family tree"? It's for the same reasons that juggling is not poi that I don't consider any flowart to be part of circus acts - even if that's where some if not most people before social media, RUclips etc probably have seen poi, juggling etc.
Probably it's own topic for another day
Does Drex have any videos on Maori style poi?
You summed it up perfectly! "Juggling is like cultural colonialism" 😂 Juggling feels like a separate path of entertainment completely.
This was a piece that really hit me as well. Jugglers can be some of the most snobby people around for being adult who still throw balls inside. But seriously, at least in America a lot of the juggling has a real racism problem, and don't just mean poi. The elitist attitudes that some jugglers hold over other props extends well outside of object manipulation.
Jesus Christ... Drex has an impressive body of work but these statements about "cultural colonialism" and the comments in another video about "everything being a spectrum rather than a binary"... 🤮
Categories are valid. Not everything is a spectrum. Most art is almost entirely recombination of others work and if you're lucky, a spark of originality or discovery.
Started stringing and then got my first set of contact poi a few years later. I personally view them as the same since I spin both regularly but obviously poi can involve tosses and rolls that stringing does not but everything I can do while glow stringing I can do with poi but not visa versa.
Is glow stringing a subset of poi?
I've had the same problem. Boy doesn't allow me to perform some of the glow stringing tricks. And I brought glow stringing tricks into the POI community such as angel wings. I've never seen anybody doing poi do it
Do you have much contact with Tangata whenua? I think it’s really important that if you going to be discussing what is and isn’t poi to be discussing it with them as well.
I don’t have any experience with slow stringing but did a small amount of traditional poi in my school in Aotearoa.
Glow stringing seems to actually be closer to traditional poi then contemporary/western poi.
I remember when I first started I used the helix poi and that is either glow strings or glow sticks not sure which one it is. Didn't even know it was it's own class until I watched your video on the classes of poi. I even hit a bump when I was doing poi with helix poi bc it was so light but when I got comtact poi plus pod poi my flow has definitely improved.
I still can't figure out why your discount code for flow toys is not working for me.
I'm not sure why it's not working, either! @Flowtoys is there any chance y'all could check up on this and help out?
@@DrexFactor thank you I even tried on different devices ur code and different wifi but the same thing happened. I want to make sure you get the credit bc you told me about flow toys to begin with.
At least in my local community we seem to have a similar problem to the jugglers looking down on poi spinners. Basically all prop manipulation communities here seem to look down on glovers.
Wow, flashback to 1998 for me. There's a name for it now!
I started with glowsticks and inovas on shoe laces around 2006, and a year later or so started learning actual POI concepts. I would definitely consider glow "stringing" part of POI, although not so much when they're wrapped around the hand and performing tracers etc. However, that last part is no longer "stringing"
New age spinning, people are performing all sorts of wraps and bounces off their body, although in a very different manner.
When something is being spun on a rope, it is POI. When someone is actually throwing and catching POI, they are then juggling. Removing the juggling, it's just POI. Remove the rope, it's not POI.
I did however enjoy this video, just sharing my 2 cents.
Years over and over . The poi community has literally ripped off alot of our basic tech and rename it , hence negative space- a glowstringing pin . Just the last few years maybe like 2017ish till now it's finally developed to what it is now. Now all the high level poi spinners are just mimicking Alot of glowstringing rather than spinning poi....
You guys can't speak both languages. The glowstringers speak both.
The answer is yes and no
Poi hop, my style, its stringin to hip hop music.
As a performer I feel like I have to start learning glow stringing even though I’m not a rave person. but the way that nightlife is set up in what poi can exist in in spaces I feel like I’m being forced to become a glow stringer. which is cool and all but as their fire performer I don’t see how i can safely transfer that skill over. I don’t know I think I’m just butt hurt that I’m having a really hard time finding gigs and as a trans person it’s starting to get to me.
forced to becoming a glow stringer. Life is truly a bitch.
I think if this is your takeaway you haven't done a very close reading of the original comment.
I'm sorry to hear both that you're having a hard time getting gigs that fit your skillset as well as the fact that it sounds like some of the variables involved are triggering. That disappointment and frustration is absolutely valid. I don't know much about your local scene, but if there aren't opportunities there that make use of your skillset it might be time to look outside your local area for other gigs. Are there artists you respect that are getting gigs within a 4-hour driving radius? Maybe see if they'd be willing to take you on.
You’re getting too deep into the narrative.
Well said brother potato potato potato tomato tomato whatever dude. It's both an art form and I respect both. I'm glad that you respect both.