March 15, 2007

Poi spinners, from left, Lara Bauer, Jeff Reich, Jessica Wyant and Zach Castle will perform with Soul Fire Tribe at the Valerie Blackwell-Truitt Community Dance Concert Friday and Saturday, in the Antioch College South Gym.

By Lauren Heaton

The streak of orange fire that spins around on the end of poi dancer Lara Bauer’s ropes mesmerizes the viewer. While it moves, the fire is predictable and controlled, burning a circular image into the air that connects her to the elements and the cyclic nature of the earth, she said. But when the ropes stop moving, the fire grows and moves, uncontained and erratic. This is the flame she has learned to control by coming to live in the moment, she said, and like a child, to be present in the here and now.

Bauer is one of the eight members of the local poi troupe Soul Fire Tribe, which will perform with the Valerie Blackwell-Truitt Community Dance Concert this Friday and Saturday, March 16 and 17, at 8 p.m., in the Antioch College South Gym. The poi spinners will dance with glow sticks during the concert and then light up with live fire outside during intermission. They will join other children and adult performers presenting eight solo and group works including ballet, hip-hop, jazz and improvisational dance.

Poi, meaning “ball,” is an ancient Maori martial art using a pair of ropes to swing two heavy balls around the body for balance and strength training. According to Bauer, the art first caught on with hippies in the 1960s and is now used in pagan and wiccan ceremonies and with intentional communities who gather temporarily in support of peace, love and harmony.

Bauer and her partner, Ari Harker, first saw poi at Rainbow gatherings and music festivals about seven years ago. Bauer said when she ordered her first set she was so excited to use it that she went directly to the back yard to spin and ended up hitting herself in the head. But she and Harker began taking poi class with Antioch College graduate Astrea Taylor, and when Taylor left the area, they started teaching the class themselves every Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. in the Antioch gym. Out of this class emerged Soul Fire Tribe.

To dance with the balls lit on fire, the trick, according to Soul Fire Tribe member Jeff Reich, is to get rid of all your thoughts and focus all of your energy on the present. Fire adds an element of risk to the exercise and challenges the spinner to acknowledge the fear and gain control over it, he said.

“There’s a definite terror involved, and it’s transforming that fear into focus,” Reich said. “Fire is now a strong part of my spiritual identity, which is all about transformation and passion.”

The fire is made from tightly-wound balls of Kevlar dipped into Coleman fuel and ignited. But first dancers must get comfortable with fire by transferring the flame from the poi to their hand. By wiping the transfer surface with fuel first and then lighting it, the fuel burns instead of the surface, Reich explained as he lit the end of a wand, wiped his hand with fuel and then touched the flame to his hand and held fire for several seconds before closing his hand to put it out.

“Sure, I’ve been singed a couple times, and we’ve all lost the same arm hair, but we follow strict safety guidelines, especially around an audience,” he said.

Soul Fire Tribe choreographs its own dances based on a core set of 30 to 40 standard ways to swing poi on the sky plane, above the head, the earth plane, toward the ground, and other directions as the body moves. The fire also brings the dance to a ceremonial or performance level. Soul Fire Tribe has performed, along with local members Romy Farrar, Jessica Wyant and her son Zach Castle, and area members from Fairborn, Xenia and Springfield, at the AACW Blues Fest and at Dayton’s Masquerage AIDS research fundraiser last fall.

Poi has been a way for some of the dancers to address their personal challenges. It gave Wyant a way to overcome the anxiety of being a non-native speaker when she was traveling in Argentina and met up with a group of poi spinners. Her son, Zach Castle, has also found connection to family and friends through the spinning he has learned to do with Soul Fire Tribe. And Bauer has used poi as a symbolic springboard to move from the vulnerable and sometimes powerless feeling as a cancer survivor to a strong and vibrant mother and artist.

“It was a turning point for me, a re-entry that helped me get over the fear and not let that define me anymore,” Bauer said. “Fire gave me a lift-off to burning up anything holding me back.”

Soul Fire Tribe will also perform at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration at Brother Bear’s farm on March 17. More information on the group can be found at home.earthlink.net/~soulfiretribe/index.html.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com