Fire Spinning. Let that phrase sink into you for a bit. It’s spinning fire around your body at high speeds. If you are an action fan you should be drooling all over yourself right now, but even if you aren’t into the danger porn as much as your next explosion-loving comrade you have to at least appreciate fire spinning for the technical prowess needed to perform it. But what is fires pinning? Do you just wake up one day and say, “I want to light stuff on fire,” or is it a long training process that few are able to complete? Well, you are in luck! I just so happen to be a fire spinner, and I can tell you all about the wonderful world of:

Holy Crap, My Hair Is on Fire!!!

Phew … OK, now that I put that out. Fire spinning started as a native tradition and circus act, but very quickly started to grow. In the 1990’s people with far too much time on their hands saw old-school fire performances and started to think of ways to make it more pleasing to an audience, and more safe to a performer. Lots of study went into wick construction, fuel usage, and proper form when putting on a fire show. Then after all that study is said and done, college students with even more time on their hands picked it up and forgot about all the study that went into it in less than a minute. This, of course, causes some of the more impressive fire fuckups we have seen in the past.

Once you want to start fire spinning, the first thing you need is a pair of practice poi. Poi, by the way, are weights at the end of chains that you spin around your body. Yes, there are a lot of different fire toys out there, but poi is where just about all of us begin. People who are poor as hell like me quickly realize that tennis balls filled with pennies and stuffed into socks are perfect simulations of real fire wicks, allowing you to practice a variety of tricks with very little compensation in movement needed. Of course, people with some more change in their purse can buy professional glow poi for their raving escapades, or even professionally weighted poi heads, but really that is all just a money sink.

After you have a pair of practice poi, your job is to start learning tricks. There’s tons of technical jargon in the world of fire spinning: weaves, isolations, waves, stalls, wraps, etc. However, really they are all just new methods of moving a spinning object in different planes and spaces. Generally people start with a weave or two, or the “butterfly” which is one of the most well known tricks, and build their repertoire from there. Once you know about five tricks, you are set to start spinning with real fire and kerosene, which burns at a low enough heat to barely singe you if you hit yourself.

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• Doug Liman Blog: How To Light Your Producers’ Office on Fire
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• Man Sets Fire to Gamestop
• The Trombone of Fire