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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Crossers

By request: Nick Woolsey actually did a great tutorial on crossers a couple years ago that I think really did an amazing job of summing up how to get the move down. Here's a breakdown of the move that incorporates his advice plus a couple bits aimed at people who may be more beginners than his video was aimed for.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #261 inverting an introversion

At the close of Spring Wildfire, Christian and Baz cooked up this little gem that utilizes some in between spaces. What's curious about it to me is the way it takes atomics and allows you to flatten them into two very different timing and direction combinations depending upon what angle you approach them from.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #260: Lanternsmith fire poi handles

Following up on a great suggestion from TZ Rogers, Charlie Cushing and I spent the last couple fire festivals working on coming up with a way to use Lanternsmith's handles for fire poi. The benefits are that the silicone handles feel great in the hand and because they glow in the dark they're difficult if not impossible to lose. To achieve the weight I prefer for my handles, we wound up cutting a handle in half but it's worked out well enough Charlie is going to start molding handles to that form factor.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: turning with antispin flowers

By request! How to turn with antispin flowers! It's not as hard as you'd think--if you've done my tutorials on basic turns with poi you'll be right at home as you work up to this type of trick. You're basically looking to execute a tic-tac and then perform a petal in between each one. Expand out the size of your hand path and voila! You get turns with antispins :)

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #259: body tracing hybrid fountain

This move is a funky idea Charlie had at a spin jam at Koi Pound after Kinetic Fire Festival: use some body tracing hybrids in such a way that they stack together to produce a fountain-like motion.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #258: snaking hybrids

This is a challenge Ky threw out to a group of us hanging out at Kinetic: if a snake can be thought of as an isolation around the shoulder, can we then make it into a hybrid? Here are two examples: iso vs extension and iso vs cateye that expand on the idea.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Top stalls

My tutorial on stalls weeks ago left out one very important option: top stalls. After several requests, I've done a tutorial just on that type of stall. Here are three different approaches to learning the technique.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #257: snaking flowers in split-time opposites

H/T to Thomas Johannson for this one, too! Thomas took the snaking fountain I'd worked up a few weeks ago and took it into a split opposites place. Cool as this was, I also realized it bore some strong similarities to a pattern I've seen Alien Jon do on occasion as well.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #256: Thomas's BTB 1.5 move

Another in the wrap-up series from IgNight. This is a BTB 1.5-like move that Thomas "Nevisoul" Johannson came up with that had a lot of appreciators. Like Keith's move, this one isn't hugely difficult but has a lovely elegance to it that I appreciate.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #255: Keith's split-opposite float move

A fun move Keith Marshall came up with at IgNight--simple and yet quite elegant. The essential elements are to take vertically displaced hands working in split-opposites and use an extension and float to suggest a moment of split-time same direction before dropping the previously top hand via float into a static spin down below. Ronan, Thomas, and I all totally swooned for this when Keith came up with it.

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