DrexFactor Poi Blog

Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Top stalls

My tutorial on stalls weeks ago left out one very important option: top stalls. After several requests, I've done a tutorial just on that type of stall. Here are three different approaches to learning the technique.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #257: snaking flowers in split-time opposites

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.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #256: Thomas's BTB 1.5 move

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.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #255: Keith's split-opposite float move

A fun move Keith Marshall came up with at IgNight--simple and yet quite elegant. The essential elements are to take vertically displaced hands working in split-opposites and use an extension and float to suggest a moment of split-time same direction before dropping the previously top hand via float into a static spin down below. Ronan, Thomas, and I all totally swooned for this when Keith came up with it.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Tangles part 3 orbitals

Capping off our series on tangles with the baddest tangle of them all: the orbital! If you haven't already, check out last week's tutorial on hyperloops because it'll be REALLY important this week (http://youtu.be/XB_Jjh70FDs).

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #254: 3 approaches to polyrhythm hybrids

This comes from a FLAME challenge: Gina McGrath wanted to see a pentagram vs 2-petal inspin hybrid and Mike Parisi was the first to come up with a solution. I at first thought it was cheating because the hands oscillated between split and same time opposites but then realized what was actually happening was that both the patterns were completing simultaneously. Because the pentagram is a 1.5 downbeat move, it forces the pattern into this type of polyrhythm hand use. That set up a whole lot of exploration for different approaches to polyrhythms.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #253: quarter-time from triquetra vs pendulum

This is one of those really obvious a ha moments I can't believe I didn't catch onto earlier: most of the transitions out of triquetra vs pendulum I've played with thus far have been at either the top, bottom, or side positions of the move. But if you attempt a transition at 45 degrees off of the top position, the poi heads are in the perfect position for a quarter-time transition! Here are three patterns that make use of this phenomenon.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Tangles part 2 hyperloops

Last week we talked about air wraps and this week we're going to take that same idea and apply it to moving across the body. This is a concept known as a hyperloop and while it takes quite a bit of work to get to, it's a great stepping stone to getting to orbitals.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #252: Zan's diamond in monorhythm hybrids and CAPs

The follow-up to my vid on Zan's diamond in all the different timing and direction combinations and polyrhythm hybrids. Here I demo all the monorhythm/even beat hybrids for Zan's diamond and discuss third-order CAPs, including the S-CAP and how it can work inside the Zan's diamond algorithm.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #251: Body tracers and even beat hybrids

Do all even beat hybrids have an accompanying body tracer? That's the question I posed after playing around with some of the body tracers Ted Petrosky taught in his workshop on the same topic at FLAME Festival. After tweaking one of the tracers he'd taught just slightly, I realized it was very similar to a body tracer I'd learned from Thomas "Nevisoul" Johansson. The original tracer he'd taught me turned out to also function as a 4-petal antispin vs 2-petal inspin hybrid.

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