DrexFactor Poi

This blog starts off with a demo of a 5-beat behind the back waistwrap that is still awkward and sloppy but I'm noticing I'm reaching for it in my BTB weaves now. Next is some explorations of the use of Yuta stalls to create horizontal flowers by stalling into an inversion rather than outswing as one usually does with this type of plane-bending. There's also some theory here as to how to use the Rastaxel stall shift pattern to create octagonal planes and finally a very special shout-out and a couple pieces of tech courtesy Mike Icon.

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By popular demand: a follow-up to my last hoop tutorial, this time on the horizontal equivalent of the cateye pattern I demoed last time. It breaks down in a very similar fashion to the vertical, but requires a bit more wrist strength at a couple intervals. I've also included a brief discussion on how you can use both vertical and horizontal cateyes in conjunction with isolations and extensions to flow between tricks. This is a variation on Alien Jon's unit circle theory. For more info on this, visit his YouTube channel. Enjoy! :)

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Starting off with an update on the pattern I showed off last week. Insignia had posted a comment about plane-bending in and out of it and here is a demo of the combination he mentioned. Also, I got a request for a demo of a cateye flower a couple weeks ago and here are four extrapolations of the idea. Ultimately one can look at this concept as either a flower with multiple points of rotation or as a variant on the unit circle grid idea. Please share thoughts on this as I haven't seen it demoed before.

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My first doubles video! Be kind...:)

Not the greatest doubles routine in history--I get tripped up in this one a lot, but I at least wanted to show off some of the fun stuff I've learned since I picked up doubles back in February. I recorded this one right after my most recent poi flow video on Sunday afternoon at the Malcolm X park drum circle.

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So I know there's been comparatively few updates recently and this has been especially frustrating given that some updates have disappeared in the past couple days as I've tried to work out why my blogger account has stopped feeding videos to my iTunes feed.

A gig over the weekend afforded me the opportunity to pull out a pair of flag poi I hadn't used in forever and realized a lot of my tech worked even with the tails. The first minute and a half of this is choreo I'd developed for a different performance up in Philly this past weekend that didn't come together. After that it's all improv and a whole lot of fun :)

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Still practicing hyperloops--I feel like I've got a lot of catching up to do with this, so repetition is key. I've also added under the legs moves to my catchup game for beginner to intermediate skills. Beyond that, I keep finding more stuff I love to do with CAPs. First up is taking the flower stall switch from last week and instead switching to a CAP. In wallplane, it creates a really cool pattern that I want to play with more.

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On world hoop day, I found myself teaching a large crowd of hoopers how to do a move that's called a cateye in poi. Here's a to-do for it being as how I haven't seen another video tutorial out there for it. To see this move in action, check out videos by Rainbow Michael or Sean Stogner.

hooptutorialcateyes.mp4

An impromptu fire jam at Hookah Dome a few hours after the temple burn brought out some of the best and the brightest on the playa. Here are Jordan from the Vulcan Crew, Bliss, and Prisna spinning some fire right before I left the jam. It does get a bit blurry near the end, I'm afraid. Enjoy!

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My video blog is now a year old--huzzah! Starting off with a switch between hybrid stall switches and CAPs as shown by Mel in his latest performance video, I play around more with these types of stall switches and how you can plane shift with them or get in and out of them from any split-time same direction stall. Also, a stall pattern out of flowers demoed in a recent Nick Woolsey video, my hyperloops are looking better, and a short exploration of the type of horizontal antispin flower plane shifts that G has become famous for.

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