DrexFactor Poi

This past weekend I got to host Alien Jon and Charlie here in DC as we geeked out for several days. We thought it would be an excellent opportunity to record a teacher information video for the upcoming Kinetic Fire Festival and here are the results. My apologies for the audio--I desperately need a better mic.

Kinetic will be May 12-15 in Earlville, IL. For tickets and more information, visit http://www.kineticfire.org

kineticajcharliedrex.mp4

More STSD hybridy goodness! This time I'm taking the concept of an 8-step CAP with it a little more literally and utilizing the space created by CAP vs BTH static to take the CAP hand around in an 8-step pattern while maintaining the STSD synchronization with the BTH hand.

techblog163.mp4

Taking a concept I've done and done to death, I wanted to add some out of phase flavoring to it. Taking the idea of the same time same direction hybrid Yuta taught me at Firedrums last year, I'm switching it up so that each hand has a different axis to perform its petals on and working through them in quarters. It's got a nifty quarter-time feel to it even as the poi stay in same time same direction all the way around.

techblog162.mp4

Here is a nifty tunneling round Noel and Jonah from Ohio did on the last night of FLAME Festival. Jonah is rocking out some mini doubles and doing some wicked cool stuff with them. I so wanted to see more of this :)

noeljonahflamefestival2011.mp4

On the last night of FLAME Festival, Dave Statik, Ky the organizer, and myself got together for this fun tunneling session. I love both Ky's and Statik's styles and wish to hell I'd gotten one of either of their solo spins.

drexstatikkyflamefestival2011.mp4

Here's a nice spin Strange Yelle (real name Danielle I believe?) had on Saturday night at the FLAME Festival. I love the parts where she gets really into the music and rocks out :)

strangeyelleflamefestival2011.mp4

This is Noel's first burn on Saturday night at the FLAME Festival in Georgia and it's one of the cleanest sets I've ever seen him do. I'm really glad I was able to capture this one on video :)

noelfirepoiFLAMEFestival2011.mp4

Guest-starring Noel Yee from the Vulcan Crew! We spent the weekend in rural Georgia at the inaugural FLAME Festival, tinkering around with stacking and tunneling between workshops. Here, the two of us demonstrate one of the patterns we came up with that involves each person turning with either an inspin or an antispin flower, alternating with pendulums to create a really kickin' interference pattern. Sorry in advance for the audio--we really were trying to project but it was damned windy out!

techblog161.mp4

This one has been rolling around in my head for a long time...trying to make a contact roll one of the beats of a reverse 3-beat weave and it's a doozy. The idea here is to substitute an elbow pit catch and roll where you would normally have the beat under to the other side and instead have your native hand lead the turn back to its own side. Ironically, after woodshedding the hell out of this trick and seeing it on video I think it may not actually be as visually compelling as the amount of work it takes to make it happen. Oh, well :-P

techblog160.mp4

This is something Charlie showed me nearly a year ago and that I hadn't really been working on that hard until recently. Geometrically, it's possible to go through each vertex of an octahedron without repeating any segments and Charlie had created an exercise wherein one does plane-shifts between each of these vertices to define an octahedron via constant 90 degree shifts. Here I demo two of the easier variants in same time same direction, split time same direction, and Charlie's preferred method of quarter-time. Be forewarned: this shit is hard!

techblog159.mp4