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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #200: The lines of poi

200 tech blogs! This one is on how I've been working to create the hybrid families I've been frequently featuring in my videos over the course of the past year--I have two methods I use these days and this is the more visual one: finding the "lines" of the poi tricks to figure out how to switch between them. Sorry for the weird cuts--I had to get it under 15 minutes :-P

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #199: Horizontal stack to right angle transitions

An idea from a previous blog I wanted to explore a little bit more: the pendulum stall chasers from a few tech blogs ago included a brief note on using said trick as a transition between horizontal and vertical stacking. Here I explore the transition from the horizontal stack in a little bit more detail, taking my two favorite stacks and figuring out the transitions in and out of them into this pattern.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #198: Contact poi hybrids

I've been mapping out hybrids lately that utilize a relationship between the hands and realized I'd been assuming the handle was synonymous with the hands. I then started to think about cases in which the handles could be together but not necessary have the hands together. The first hybrid I played with seemed too easy, so I started doing it with an outer forearm roll and it led both to  isolation vs extension and triquetra vs pendulum hybrids.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #197: Opposite same-time triquetra vs pendulum hybrids

Over the weekend I started messing around with a slightly different approach to triquetra vs pendulum and found it opened up some transition points I rarely use but found to be really fun to incorporate into my flow. In this case I was playing with triquetra vs pendulum with the hands in opposites same-time and looking to the transition points on either side of the pattern, which can access static vs extension or same time same direction hybrids.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #196: Poi head catching patterns

Here's another trick Ronan was showing off on the playa--based in pendulum vs CAP, he was doing a catch with the poi head that would then be used to shift the center of the pattern to either side. Another option was throwing the poi head vertically to enter static vs triquetra. I don't often play with head catching tricks, but these have a really fascinating capacity for shifting an audience's point of attention.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #195: Interior stall transitions

In Tahoe, G showed me this nifty interior stall pattern he'd been playing with that I'd at first thought to be a mere curiosity. It involved searching for transitions where the hands were crossed and so were the poi, but as we continued to play with it, a nifty hybrid pattern came out and later G pointed out that Ronan's triquetra fractal could be used as an intermediary trick. Here are all the transitions we found that week.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #194 Pendulum stall chasers

Here's a move I demoed in an Odds and Ends video a couple months ago, but was also a huge hit at Burning Man. The idea is to take something that is like a stall chaser and introduce both right angles and pendulum stalls into the mix. This essentially turns the move into a series of stalls done in staggered timing and theoretically also offers a great transition between horizontal stacks and vertical stacks.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #193: Triangle vs triquetra atomic hybrid

A cool challenge popped up on the Tech Poi Group on Facebook about two weeks ago: the possibility of doing a triquetra hybrid that would incorporate the plane-bent triangle flower I've showed off now in a couple videos. David Foregger was kind enough to model it using his poi simulator and based on that I was able to sort out this pattern. The triangle here needs some cleaning up, but the gist of the move is definitely there. With the polishing I think this will be a really cool looking hybrid.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #192: Ronan's fractal flowers

Last week at the Tahoe Flow Arts Festival I got to take a nifty class from Ronan on advanced flowers. The class was really centered around creating the kinds of fractal motions that Damien has been referring to as third-order motions and that have a variety of other names. Zan's diamond is one example and it's shown here accompanied by the technique Ronan uses to get there. Even more intriguing were fractal breakdowns for triquetras and box-mode flowers. The triquetra fractal really has my brain running in particular. It's demoed here in 3 different timing and direction combinations.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #191 More hybrid family transitions

My second post-BM wrap up. Here's a couple moves I was playing with on the playa. I'm still digging on the hybrid family approach to finding transitions between moves and here are two that jumped out at me as I was playing in center camp. both are triquetra vs. pendulum combos, but one is at unit circle distance and another is with a hand-to-hand relationship. The unit circle distance one incorporates a stacking pattern from a recent tech blog--the combination of which is so delicious I haven't been able to stop playing with it since I found it.

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