Branching out a little bit! Learning antispin flowers with a hoop is similar to how one can learn them with poi. Here's a way to learn both 3 and 4-petal antispin flowers while doing off the body hoop.

antispinhooptutorial.mp4

Ted Petrosky rocking out hoop Saturday night Fall Wildfire 2011

tedhoopfallwf2011.mp4

At Summer Wildfire this past weekend, Ted showed me a really nifty way to stall a hoop while shoulder hooping I'd never seen before. Normally when I stall, I do so by reaching up under and behind the hoop as it's about to pass by my shoulder and push it back the way it just came. This stall involves taking the hand out of the hoop and trapping it between the body and inside of the upper arm, squeezing it to send it back the other direction.

techblog188.mp4

Little L spins hoop Sunday night Wildfire Summer 2011

littlelsummerwf2011.mp4

For a while now I've been wanting to use my video blog to document elements of fire culture as I travel and meet people. This is my first attempt to do so: last weekend I went up to Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT for their Prometheus Club's Winter Fire Arts Festival for some epic geekage and workshops. Here are some of the highlights of the weekend as well as a brief interview with the two ladies who made me coming there possible.

wesleyan2011.mp4

The day after a massive party that brought dozens of firespinners to DC following the Stewart and Colbert rallies, a few die-hards stuck around for a spin jam at Malcolm X Park in DC. Here is Baz, Ted, Maddy, Erik (e6), and me (Drex) hanging out and spinning in the park till sundown.

halloweendc.mp4

Here is a video retrospective of Firedrums this year featuring some of my favorite artists: Marvin, Yuta, Annetta, Valery, Adam, Kate, Noel, Memory, Bliss, Tash, Brecken, Thomas, Fyn, and many many more. Hopefully the utter thrill and joy of this event comes across here. Sorry for its tardiness--I had tried to edit it as a tech blog but found it worked infinitely better this way.

Firedrums2010.m4v

 First up, the first hoop trick to make it into my tech blog! My friend Katie/Surprise showed my a funky isolation trick that I dug that seemed to have this odd stopping point. Remembering some bits learned from a recent Hoop Path workshop, I realized a body can keep the hoop constantly in motion by jumping one's grip. The demo here is terrible--it's with my old hoop, which weighs a ton. Nonetheless, I swear this one is doable (incidentally, if any hoopers out there know what it's called, please drop a line in my comment box).

techblog64.mp4

By popular demand: a follow-up to my last hoop tutorial, this time on the horizontal equivalent of the cateye pattern I demoed last time. It breaks down in a very similar fashion to the vertical, but requires a bit more wrist strength at a couple intervals. I've also included a brief discussion on how you can use both vertical and horizontal cateyes in conjunction with isolations and extensions to flow between tricks. This is a variation on Alien Jon's unit circle theory. For more info on this, visit his YouTube channel. Enjoy! :)

hooptutorialhorizontalcateyes.mp4

On world hoop day, I found myself teaching a large crowd of hoopers how to do a move that's called a cateye in poi. Here's a to-do for it being as how I haven't seen another video tutorial out there for it. To see this move in action, check out videos by Rainbow Michael or Sean Stogner.

hooptutorialcateyes.mp4