DrexFactor Poi

This is a trick inspired by Tim Goddard's recent video posting to the Facebook Tech Poi Group. In it, he switches his pendulum and CAP hands using an isolation out of what would otherwise be a spot where you could insert a cateye vs isolated pendulum. In an online chat, we discussed the possibilities of working off the extension rather than antispin to go into isolated split-opposites. The spacing also sets us up to be able to do horizontal cateye vs isolation or just go into any number of isolation-based tricks.

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When I was experimenting with timing and direction changes using the quarter-time stall pattern Poiboi used in his holiday performance video, I ran across a way to elevate CAP vs pendulum but got stuck when I realized I didn't have a good way to move it back down to its normal height. After playing with it for a couple weeks, I have a couple different approaches for doing this now--one involves going into a static vs extension hybrid off of the arc of the CAP and the other involves a very tricky iso vs cateye combo off the antispin section of the CAP.

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Here's a sequence of moves that Noel and I came up with in Philly that he took some video of. It breaks down to the stall chase to throw sequence Poiboi was doing in his latest performance video, then creating a negative space frame to throw the other poi through and finally utilizing a split-time negative space trick that Noel had been working off with an airwrap to wrap the whole thing up. The two of us performed this trick simultaneously and had a bear of a time getting synchronized.

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Sorry about the audio quality! Last week Poiboi uploaded a video of a performance he did in Israel that was pretty kickass and also seemed to be a kind of an update on a performance he did earlier in the year at EJC. One of the changes he did was changing a switch from CAP vs pendulum to quarter-time stalls to CAP vs pendulum going the other way to using quarter-time floats as the transition.

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The tradition lives on! Here's my entry for Noel's Christmas poi video thread on the Facebook Tech Poi Group. This is my first time using iMovie '11 for video editing and I have to say I much prefer the old version :-P Oh, well...merry christmas, everyone!

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Yet another contact trick from Ted (if you get a chance, definitely take a class from this kid at Wildfire), this one involves a fun reversal on a contact trick I've been playing with for months wherein after trapping the head, one rolls it down the forearm of the arm that catches it rather than across the opposite forearm. This sets you up to be able to do fun reversals where you can flick the poi back using the cradle-to-forearm roll or theoretically roll it across the forearm of the opposite arm to generate a longer contact surface.

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For the past month I've been working on updating my previous Python poi simulator to be able to point out the position at which the poi is either fully extended or withdrawn from the hand path (in other words, the positions at which soft, hard, and mixed transitions are available).

In New York I had a funky breakthrough wherein I realized I could stick a horizontal cateye vs iso hybrid on either end of the horizontal stall stacking move Charlie came up with based upon Mel's pattern at Wildfire. Knowing this, I tied together a bunch of threads from the past couple months using moves that all incorporate this hybrid and thus treat it as a transition tool to get between them. Some cool things came out of playing with this.

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Spent the weekend hanging out with some of my favorite poi peoples in the New York City area and on Saturday we hung out in Brooklyn right off Myrtle Ave in a small dance space. At one point we took turns grooving to a mix my friend DJ Sequoia put together months ago and Charlie threw out this session. I've known Charlie for a couple years now and without a doubt, this is the most kick-ass flow I've ever seen the kid do.

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Continuing with the theme of some fun moves that can be done from the back-to-back triquetra move in wallplane that looks something like a split time same direction antispin flower, here is one that incorporates some elements from tricks that Mel and Poiboi have been playing around with lately: namely when the hands are at opposite ends of the flower top and bottom, you pendulum the top hand and top stall the bottom to align the poi, then reverse this same motion and treat the resulting position as a stall before reversing the direction of the wall plane triquetras.

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