The summer session has begun at Contradiction Dance! If you'd like to hone your skills, get back up to speed, or pick up a set of poi for the first time, come join us at 925 Wayne Ave in Silver Spring, MD on Thursdays from 8-9:30 PM.

Lately I've been pushing exercises to solidify plane control in class as I'm noticing this is a frequent stumbling block for folks trying to get into more advanced technique. We're also playing with the wide, woolly world of 1.5s which for my money are the best way to switch between different combinations of timing and direction.

For a large portion of the past year, I've had a massive poi mad-on for technique like Ronan McLoughlin's. He's from Cork, Ireland and has one of the most original poi spinning styles I've ever seen. Unlike most poi spinners (myself included), Ronan centers his style around stopping the momentum of the poi rather than keeping it moving, resulting in a dizzying array of stalls, pendulums, and contact work that always leaves me scratching my head.

This weekend comes the fruit of weeks worth of labor: my glowspinning troupe, Revolutionary Motion is performing at Contradiction Dance's spring concert. Featuring some of my favorite local spinners: Surprise, E6, Mia, and Maddy, we've worked up a piece incorporating elements of modern dance and hip hop with our tools and we're stoked to be performing this piece in such a fantastic setting.

If you live in the Baltimore/Washington area, please consider attending. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled poi program to bring you a special bulletin:

Back in the day, glowsticking.com used to frequently feature videos that edited together footage of many glowstickers into one fabulous vid that showed off the talents of many people all at the same time. Recently, the challenge went up on the Home of Poi forums to put together a similar collaboration vid between many of the spinners on the forums. Ten fantastic poi spinners answered the call and Poiboi edited them all together.

Things have been busy down under! If you're not familiar with Aussie poi auteur Pineapple Pete, you should give a look to this fascinating video from a couple years ago showing off some of his experiments at the "Church of Poi".

The studio I teach at has moved from Takoma Park to Silver Spring and we're celebrating the move by offering a week of free classes, including poi!

This is a great opportunity for rote beginners to get free instruction to start them on the road to the playful and challenging world of object manipulation. If you've been wanting to learn or have learned only a couple tricks and would like to learn more, this is the perfect chance!

Hey, all!

Those of you who've been crusing through here the last couple days have probably noticed the addition of a few items. After Sphericulism went down and then returned, I grabbed a copy of Rev's Manifesto so I could continue to read and be confused by it and a few recent queries from friends for copies of Cyrille's Geometry document from last year, I stuck up copies of both and added a couple other writing on poi theory that I thought kicked ass or that had influenced me a lot. Hopefully in the future I'll be adding additional documents into this section (Charlie's 9-square Theory perhaps?). If you've got a suggestion, hit the contact box and tell me what you'd like to see mirrored here.

Also, I added a rating feature to my videos and blog entries. There's really no great reason for that aside from the fact that I'm curious what people are digging on. Thanks to all the folks who've used this site since it launched a couple months ago. It's nice to have a home and to have people visit you there :)

Peace,
Drex

Over the weekend, Zan posted an excellent tutorial video on diagonal planes, those bizarre bits of techery that came out of EJC this past summer. Zan breaks it down in such a way that it'll help you figure out how to keep your planes straight, some very basic diagonal transitions, and how to execute some pretty mean-looking turns with them. If this stuff intrigues you like it does, me give this vid a gander:

Times are getting exciting for those of us who love poi blogs: there are two new video blogs in town that I'm all about. First up is an Israeli poi spinner who seems to be taking inspiration in equal parts from both the European school of float/pendulum/contact poi spinning as well as the American unit circle schools of thought to create some of the cleanest technique I've yet seen (read: yes, I'm totally jealous of this guy's form ;). PoiBoi's latest blog can be found below. I highly recommend visiting him on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/poiboi07 and seeing his other vids.