This past week at Spin Summit, I noticed Kyle Ford from Chicago doing a really cool toroid-inspired move that struck me as a great use of the technique that was simple and eloquent and would jump out to an audience quite easily. Here's an adaptation of the technique, slightly techie-fied, of course ;)

techblog265.mp4

Sorry about the crap audio--my mic decided to go on the fritz today, I'm afraid :-P Here's a couple interesting ideas that came out of a brain decompression with Alien Jon at Spin Summit this past week in Colorado. I've been trying to sort out the difference between inversions, introversions, and their various brethren, but Jon suggested I instead focus on the cross points generated by different combinations of moving the poi between the arms. It resulted in some pretty nifty shapes, so give this one a whirl.

techblog264.mp4

Yeah, so I totally missed a step with last week's video on inverting the introversion. There's a bit that feels quite a bit like a barrel roll that comes after performing the introverted weave that adds a whole other layer of complexity to the movement. Here is the full move demoed. Good luck to those of you who opt to take this one on--it's a bear :-P

techblog263.mp4

Taking elements of a plane-bending move frequently performed by Arashi and Alien Jon, I noticed that this diagonal-planed move had some elements of a weave to it and thought to take this type of movement into a more buzzsaw or notcoleman weave place. Essentially this involves taking the vertical part of the movement and switching it from being on the native side to the non-native side.

techblog262.mp4

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.

techblog261.mp4

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.

techblog260.mp4

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.

techblog259.mp4

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.

techblog258.mp4

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.

techblog257.mp4

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.

techblog256.mp4