Remember that funky thing I played with last week that combined elements of CAPs, floats, stalls, and extensions? Well I put it into wallplane and found that just like it's wheelplane cousin, it opens up the doors to lots of transitions to wallplane CAPs, antispins, plane-shifts, and more. This pattern is reminding me more and more of Charlie's concept of totipotent patterns that can switch between timing and direction combinations.

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An idea I was playing with on the long road home from Africa--contact juggling frequently makes use of transfers between points of the body. I tried finding similar transfers with contact poi utilizing the extra variable of the momentum of the tether and this was the simplest example I could find. It's essentially a transfer between forearms and hand cradles accomplished by treating the handle of the poi as if it is a pendulum going back and forth.

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While I was in Africa, I started playing with a funky pattern wherein one makes like they're going to do a CAP after 3/4 of an extension circle only to use the antispin petal as a stall and pull back out of it into a float. Putting it together with both hands results in a pattern that has some CAP-like qualities but ends in each hand and poi head being pointed straight out from center, opening up some interesting possibilities for transitions.

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In his "Red Pants" video, Mel demonstrated a trick wherein he alternated hands performing pendulum and top stalls to create a cool pattern that switches between the relationship of hands to each other and poi to each other. Erik reminded me of this trick before I left for the playa and we spent a whole afternoon messing with it at Vulcantown during Burning Man. We added floats, isolated pendulums, plane shifts, and more to it. Here are all the variants I can remember.

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After the temple burn at Burning Man 2010, a bunch of the firespinners on the playa congregated at Hookahdome for one last firejam. Here I am doing what I think was actually my last spin of the week and personally I think the exhaustion is showing a bit. I'm glad I got a spin on video, though--enjoy!

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After the temple burn at Burning Man 2010, a bunch of the firespinners on the playa congregated at Hookahdome for one last firejam. Here is my favorite Aussie spinner, Adam Herscheid, breaking out some poi to wow the crowd.

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After the temple burn at Burning Man 2010, a bunch of the firespinners on the playa congregated at Hookahdome for one last firejam. Here is Burning Dan wowing the crowd.

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After the temple burn at Burning Man 2010, a couple impromptu spin jams broke out. Here is G spinning near a beautiful sculpture just north of the temple.

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This week begins a new session of poi classes at Contradiction Dance in Silver Spring. I have to admit that as a teacher I was spoiled rotten by the kids I taught in Kenya, whose focus and discipline was incredibly inspiring. Fortunately, the first class we had last night was just as inspiring! This session in addition to focusing on plane control and adding to our catalog of tricks like normal, I've added partner poi to the syllabus. Partner poi has seen some huge advances in the past year and presents some unique and interesting challenges for us.

After the temple burn at Burning Man 2010, a bunch of the firespinners on the playa congregated at Hookahdome for one last firejam. Here's Conway Jennings spinning to the tunes.

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