The first bit of Burning Man wrap up! This is a nifty no-beat throw Ted Petrosky was playing with one day in Vulcantown that sets up a hand switch.

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This week's tutorial covers throws that minimize the rotation of the poi, from float throws to plane-shifted throws, and finally no-beat throws. There's also a bit of inspiration here for how to play around with this type of movement and some of the fun things you can do with it.

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Here's a fun move that came out of a spin jam with Noel over the weekend at PEX Summer Festival: taking a no-beat throw and apply it to an antispin placement such that the top petal of triquetra vs pendulum winds up being a toss. This can be done either in front of the body or behind. I'm playing with my format a little bit a presenting the move both by narrating through it and showing it normal time and slowed down--let me know what you think of this format.

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Part 1 of a 2 part series on how to do some of the most basic throws/releases with poi. This particular one is on throws where the poi continues to rotate after the release, including isolated throws and what I'd call "flower" throws. Next week we'll cover basic float throws and the like.

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A couple weeks ago, I'd done a tech blog on no-beat (sneaky) throws and a weave that one can perform using them. One of my commenters pointed out that there was a variant I hadn't covered and when I was in New York a couple weeks ago, Ted showed me the component I was missing: each hand has a no-beat throw on the up-beat, so you can actually perform that weave in such a way that every beat but the cross beat becomes a throw. It's hell hard but I think it also looks hell cool :)

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Last weekend as Ted and I played around in the Dube showroom in Manhattan, he showed me this nifty use for a toss forward over the shoulder. I'd seen Ronan doing this toss on the playa but hadn't yet thought of a good use for it, but Ted pointed out that one could then catch the poi head in cradle and the direction of the handle would continue in the direction to initiate a contact roll down the back of the forearm. The catch for this is exceptionally difficult, but I really like the result. Enjoy! :)

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More throws for your consumption--this time a type of toss I've heard both Erik and Ted refer to as a "sneaky toss". It's something like a float throw but performed in such a way that it seems to continue a static or small extension motion, rather than requiring a loop like isolated or overhead tosses. It's an integral component in a type of toss weave I've seen Poiboi do in his videos and a fun sneaky toss switch that G showed me while he was in town. I think his version finished differently, but I like the properties the version I'm doing here has.

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Many moons ago I did a video on isolated throws and catches that began moving into the world of behind the back catches, but it wasn't until recently that I was really motivated to practice enough to add this trick solidly to my repertoire. Here are a couple of the tricks I've been using to make this trick more solid.

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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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A couple weeks ago, Poiboi uploaded a new tech video and as I was watching it, I noticed an element of his style that had escaped me before but presented a good opportunity to woodshed a poi element I rarely use: throws. Specifically, I noticed that Poiboi frequently uses isolated throws to accomplish his timing and direction changes rather than 1.5s or stalls. I've been playing in the past week with doing isolated throws in all the same-time configurations I can think of, both in the same direction and not, plane-shifted, etc. Here are some of the results.

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