Glowstringing

The image shown above is a picture I took while walking to the train through Madison Square Park. Class had just ended as I was approaching the 23rd street train station, I saw this man who was by himself in the middle of the park and he seemed to be doing an interpretive dance. But as he was doing these exuberant moves, he also was moving around some sort of glow stick, giving the illusion that it was floating around him. To be honest, I had no idea what he was doing. Was he dancing? Was he trying to do magic? Did he want money? Maybe all of the above? But the more I looked, it seemed as if he was just doing it because he wanted to. He had headphones in so he was listening to the music by himself. He could care less if anyone was watching him or not. This whole scene interested me. I was really curious to what he was doing so I decided to take a picture of him while he was doing his….. “thing.”

It turns out, what this man was doing is referred to as “glowstringing.” Glowstringing is a form of “glowsticking” in which it’s a combination of dance moves with a glow stick tied to a string. This activity is generally done at raves but that is not necessarily where it came from. It is said that glowstringing comes from poi (performance art) whose origins come from New Zealand. Poi is a performance art in which a ball suspended from a cord, is held in the hand and swung in circular patterns. From that art, glowstringing came about.

I’m glad I happened to have stumbled upon this scene in the park because it showed me how there is a lot of variety in the world. When I think of dancing, I would never think of someone by themselves making gestures and twirling a glow stick in mid-air. But that is DANCE… Whether me or anyone else is aware of it. There is variety in dance just like there is variety in everything else. Sometimes you just have to open up your eyes to see it.