DrexFactor Poi Blog

The pain and joys of airwraps

I have a confession to make: I never learned airwraps when I began my journey into poi. It started out as just kind of an embarrassing secret I hoped nobody would ever notice and then I started running into guys who could do things with hyperloops that made me break into a cold sweat and run and hide inside large wooden objects.

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Video Tech Blog #44: plane-bending pendulum stalls, spherical CAP theory

Based upon a pendulum stall trick Baz taught me a few months ago, here's a variant that makes use of plane-bending out of stalls. Also: I've been working a lot more with elliptical CAP patterns and have a presentable version of the split-time opposites pattern. Finally, based upon Charlie's responses to my video on CAPs and plane-bending last week, a little bit of theory and three approaches to taking elliptical CAP patterns to spherical CAP patterns. One is (very roughly) demoed. Give me another week and we'll see if I can put together the others cleanly.

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Music to spin to

While the vast majority of the time I'm spinning, I'm either doing so to improvised sessions by drummers or canned music that's been selected by my fire performance troupe, I frequently find that those rare opportunities when I get to put on my own music for a solo performance are some of my best.

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Poi spiral wrap variations

A grab-bag of variants on the poi spiral wrap that include other parts of the body and distances between the poi for the wraps.

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Video Tech Blog #43: Plane-bending with CAPs

So regrettably these didn't come out as clean as I'd hoped, but I think there's still enough here to give folks some ideas of what's possible when you combine CAPs and plane-bending. I know there's a lot of stuff that could have been demoed but wasn't--I'll hopefully fill in gaps as time goes on or if this gives some of you out there ideas, I'd love to see some responses.

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Do you know the math of CAPs?

A thread on Home of Poi asking for a definition of CAPs has turned up not just an interesting history of the concept, but the most comprehensive mathematical description I've yet seen of the move. I don't pretend to understand much (or, really most) of the mathematics in this post, but I'm considering it a moral imperative to educate myself and figure out the mathematics of poi (mainly because I suspect it has major implications for concepts like Alien Code and antispin flowers).

Here is Zaltymbunk's description:

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Video Tech Blog #42: diagonal planes and Noel's double-staff trick

A highly fortuitous meeting with Alien Jon in Barcelona led to the first trick here, combining plane-bending with a concept I was unfamiliar with called diagonal planes. Currently I can only plane bend with it or turn, but I suspect other tricks will begin to emerge using these techniques. Second, at Wildfire Noel showed me a double-staff trick wherein one alternates one hand doing antispin and the other hand sliding straight across the body along its own axis which creates an 8-step move that one can easily break out of into any number of other patterns.

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Plane-bending with CAPs

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Plane bending: the future is here!

G is the best poi spinner you've never heard of. I'd never heard of him before heading to Firedrums back in April and seriously I was blown away by him. While most of us have dabbled in plane-bending at one point or another (beginners plane-bend unintentionally all the time), few have taken it to the jaw-dropping extremes G has. Essentially, every stall is a zero point that can be used to transition to a different plane. All of the bizarre plane-bending combos I've been working on in the past few months have been inspired by his work.
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Experiments in body mechanics

I spent a good long time in my poi practice session today playing with the way my body shifts its weight as I spin. Teaching in a dance studio, I'll freely confess I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder due to the fact that poi sits so uncomfortably in the middle of dance, juggling, martial arts, and street performance that alas it seems to be none of these as well.

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