I have a performance coming up with Contradiction Dance for which I had to come up with a solo poi piece. Here's a couple sections of the piece that I've been working on in the past couple weeks. I'm sharing them because I'm hoping that the choices I made in putting these elements together will help some of you out there working on your own pieces.

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A grab-bag of hand-switching throws I've either been working on or have encountered in the past couple months. The first is a triquetra vs pendulum hand switch Noel came up with during the same spin jam where I started working on the triquetra vs pendulum throw from the last tech blog. The second is a hand-switch that comes out of a snake that I've had a hell of a time getting clean these past few months. The third is a hand-switch I spotted Matt Cullen using a lot during a spin session he did at PEX Summer Festival.

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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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Another fishtail-based move from Kate's video a few months ago. This one incorporates a fishtail with a tic-tac on the other hand to create a weave with one hand performing the afore-mentioned contact move. Watch out--this one is even harder than learning the original fishtail was!

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I've demonstrated the unicursal hexagram on this blog before, but it's only been recently that I've been able to perform a more regular hexagram--the type that looks like a Star of David with a pair of overlapping triangles. Here are two approaches to making it. One has one point up and one down and the other has the points out to the side.

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This was an interesting discovery based upon messing up a trick I was trying to do: there's a great way to take horizontal body tracers and use them as an entry point for negative space combos and contact rolls.

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I got a nifty challenge at Kinetic Fire Festival to perform a Zan's diamond toroid in same time opposites but to have the poi phased in same time opposites as well. It resulted in a pattern where the verticals remain in opposites but the horizontals switch to split time same direction. Strangely enough, if you try doing the same pattern in split time same direction both with poi and hands, the timing and direction remains consistent throughout the pattern. I'm taking this to mean that a lot of our rules for timing and direction no longer apply in the toroid world.

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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 ;)

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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.

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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

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