This tech blog featuring special guest star Ted Petrosky! We got together for a jam in Brooklyn and he showed me a nifty contact trick that starts with a shotgun-style single hand spiral wrap and it got my gears turning. Here are two fun variants that utilize some other tricks we know and love and that really look cool with this move added in for some extra spice.

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Kind of a fun brain/kinesthetic workout that came out of a trick I've seen G and Ronan do wherein they play 4-petal antispin against a static spin to create hybrid moments at either side of the body. I took that same idea to a vertical place to start, and then placed the top position behind the head to add a body tracer flavor to the overall movement. Don't know if it has any good performance applications but it definitely gives the brain something to chew on :)

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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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A follow-up to last week's poi math video. This one tells us how to determine the size of the hand path for poi when we're graphing out patterns using parametric equations. Includes properties of wavelength and amplitude among other nifty math concepts.

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People frequently reference the math behind poi on many forums and groups, but it can seem a little daunting to folks that don't have that kind of background. Here's an attempt to level the playing field. A lot of this will be review for the more mathematically inclined folks out there, but for those who aren't, hopefully this will give you the Cliff's Notes as to some of the math we use to describe flowers and the like and make it a little bit more digestible. If you like this, please leave me feedback as I've got plans in my mind to do a whole series of these kinds of videos :)

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Last video we rolled through three different approaches to defining CAPs. Here is an alternate approach to breaking down such motions: a couple years ago, Alien Jon introduced me to the idea of spinning composites. Compositing is chaining together increments of poi movement that overlap in hand and poi position to either create repeatable patterns or transition and shift seamlessly between patterns.

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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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There was a blink-and-you-might miss it moment in my video on timing and direction in toroid flowers that struck me as I was playing with them earlier today: namely, that toroids are direction agnostic. You can change the direction of the hand as you're performing one and keep the toroid in whatever mode you started in, be it antispin or isolation. This means that it inherits many of the mix-and-match capabilities from staff and clubs that we find with tools that aren't gravity dependent and opens up the field of what we can do with them a lot wider.

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A couple weeks ago, I posted a video of Arashi teaching a class at Firedrums and in it, I was struck by the fact that his "crane" atom had a strong resemblance to together-L in Maiki Nope's breakdown of atomic planes for clubs and poi. If this similarity bears out, it would mean in essence that there are 3 different atomics that can be spun from a variety of angles, depending on the perspective of the viewer. Atomic spinners: how does this gel with the world you play in?

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Over the weekend, e6 posted an awesome video exploring the toroid flower concept and really cleaning up some of the work with it to the point that the shapes are really reading and finding definition as something unique. It's inspired a lot of experiments this week, but I wanted to start with laying out all the four timing and direction combinations for these types of flowers. You can see Erik's original video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHsUwal8Ms0

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w00t for the new flowcord! Some of you guys may have noticed that about three months ago I switched up the leashes on my contact poi from the colecord I'd been using for more than a year. The reason was I dropped by the Flowspace in Berkeley, California after Burning Man and Sean and I spent an afternoon figuring out how to make this awesome new type of cord they had work with my contact poi. I'm pleased to announce those experiments were successful and now you can buy kits to create these leashes and handles straight from Flowtoys themselves! 

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