ETH - Cortona Week

Nick Woolsey began exploring movement art as a teenager. His influences include contemporary and tribal dance, Tai Chi, yoga, Capoeira, dervish whirling, rave music ecstatic dance, mysticism, and an inter-dimentional fractal entity who makes random appearances at unexpected times.

Nick discovered poi in 2001, and by 2003 was recognized internationally within the poi and fire-spinning communities via the videos he posts on his website. He has since taught poi workshops to thousands of people in a dozen different countries. His unique approach to poi is a fusion of all his influeces. www.playpoi.com

Adrian Wirth

Adrian studied environmental science at the ETH Zürich. His curiosity about life and the human mind has led him into many different realities: He was a science teacher in a Tibetan monastery in southern India, a member of a Zurich based art collective, a poi apprentice with Nick Woolsey in Vancouver. Adrian loves to feel the flow of Poi-Dance. It is a non intellectual experience, a holistic dance with the human nature.

German version:
Seit dem Diplom als Umweltnaturwissenschafter der ETH Zürich hat ihn sein „Gwunder“ über den menschlichen Geist und über Erfahrungen jenseits des naturwissenschaftlichen Verständnisses der Welt in diverse Realitäten geführt. Ob als Naturwissenschaftslehrer in einem tibetischen Kloster in Südindien oder als Mitglied eines Künstlerkollektivs am Theaterspektakel in Zürich, ob als Poi-Lehrling bei Nick Woolsey in Vancouver oder auf dem magischen Balmeggberg im Emmental, immer faszinierte ihn, wie eigen und wie schön die verschiedenen Welten sein können. Yoga, Tanz und Poi sieht Adrian als Möglichkeiten, die Welt einmal nicht mit dem Intellekt zu begreifen, sondern ganzheitlich zu erfahren.

Poi is a form of dance where balls on the ends of ropes are swung through rhythmical patterns. It originates with the Maori people of New Zealand, who originally used poi to develop grace, flexibility, and combat skills. Poi eventually developed into a traditional ritual entwined with song, symbolic gesture, and storytelling.

Poi was popularized throughout the world initially by fire-spinning, a recent and non-Maori take on the ancient art. As poi spread, enthusiasts borrowed from other disciplines such as martial-arts, tai-chi, dance, Indian club swinging, and rhythmic gymnastics to develop a dynamic movement modality.

In this series of workshops, we will use the basic poi moves as a vehicle for exploring coordination, spacial perception, body alignment, centering and core strength, rhythm, creative expression, and the "Music of Movement." We will examine the way poi, through it's "open-system" nature, offers a body/mind/spirit matrix into which these and other concepts can be introduced and explored.

The workshops will be collaborative in nature. Together we will delve into a small series of questions, starting with: If yoga means to Yoke (to tie?), how can poi or any practice tie us to the (insert your favorite version of an Ultimate Reality here)? Our goal: to leave with skills and knowledge that can be applied to our lives.

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