Poi Notation

Some of it.

The Kinetic Alphabet was built to take advantage of what static dual-wielded props can do: hold any orientation for as long as you want, move to any location in any orientation, reverse on a dime, all without owing anything to momentum. A poi head is the opposite case. It hangs from a tether, its motion is continuous, and it answers to swing and gravity as much as to your hand. So the alphabet can generate lots and lots of patterns, and poi can perform some of them, and only when the pattern's rotational value stays relatively consistent, because momentum needs continuity. Holds, hard reversals, and abrupt speed changes are outside what a tethered head can do. That makes The Kinetic Alphabet a generator poi spinners can draw from rather than an ideal system for describing poi patterns, and this site won't pretend otherwise.

The frame of reference splits the same way, and it's worth a moment because it explains why the two worlds notate differently at all. TKA is a radial system: every orientation is measured from the prop to the performer's center point, not relative to the ground. Poi tradition grew up in gravity's frame. VTG, the Vulcan Tech Gospel, anchors its classifications to the downbeat at the bottom of the circle, a ground reference through and through, which is exactly right for a prop that swings. Neither frame is wrong. They're built for different physics.

And the two systems are family, not rivals. TKA is built on VTG, created by Noel Yee and spinners at the Vulcan Lofts in Oakland, and VTG's four timing and direction categories are fully encoded in TKA's Type 1 letters. If you already think in split-same and tog-opposite, you already read part of this alphabet. If you spin poi and want notation that was born for your prop, VTG is that system, and TKA honors it rather than replacing it. The full lineage, with sources, lives on the notation page.

A Poi Lab module is planned for Flow Arts Composer to identify the poi-legal subset of the alphabet, meaning which sequences a momentum-based prop can actually perform. Planned, not built, and it will be presented as working only when it is. In the meantime the guide, the glossary, and the notation overview all read fine through a poi spinner's eyes, and the momentum-friendly slice of what you build in the composer will be spinnable.