DrexFactor Poi

A highly fortuitous meeting with Alien Jon in Barcelona led to the first trick here, combining plane-bending with a concept I was unfamiliar with called diagonal planes. Currently I can only plane bend with it or turn, but I suspect other tricks will begin to emerge using these techniques. Second, at Wildfire Noel showed me a double-staff trick wherein one alternates one hand doing antispin and the other hand sliding straight across the body along its own axis which creates an 8-step move that one can easily break out of into any number of other patterns.

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I spent a good long time in my poi practice session today playing with the way my body shifts its weight as I spin. Teaching in a dance studio, I'll freely confess I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder due to the fact that poi sits so uncomfortably in the middle of dance, juggling, martial arts, and street performance that alas it seems to be none of these as well.

No, I regret this isn't an entry on Warren Ellis's landmark sci-fi satire comic book series (I'm still figure out a way to make it apply to poi ;), the title is a great excuse to give it a plug. The planetary I'm talking about is the system by which planets rotate around a solar mass and create systems of compound elliptical orbits.

After an exhausting but wonderfully fun and educational weekend at the PEX Summer Festival, I've got a whole bunch of new tech courtesy the patient guidance of Richmond's Lucas Boyd. First up is a plane-bending exercise I've started playing with to explore all three planes by transitioning between them with floats. I've got same-time same direction and same-time opposites so far. After that, some cool CAP effects including a way to transition between CAPS using linear extensions, which also adds one more type of CAP turn to those I demoed in my tutorial a few weeks ago.

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A demo of the cube Charlie demonstrated for me at Wildfire--this takes seven plane shifts to accomplish and works through crossed arms, wall plane, and buzzsaw positions. A real challenge, but a fun one! Next up is a plane-changing pattern that works between opposites same-time and corkscrew into a kind of pendulum stall before reversing itself into the exact same pattern it started as. I really like how the reverse of this pattern is itself, whereas reversing most poi sequences require you to reverse the directions of all your movements.

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Now here's a bizarre problem for you: how do you correct the way your body is built and moves?

At about the age of 12, I lost the arches in my feet and spent 15 years with orthodic insoles in my shoes, avoiding running long distances because they would cause my knees to swell and lock up for days. Needless to say, it kind of sucked.

So apparently a trend has begun of doing videos for poi footwork and now the godfather of poi, Nick Woolsey has posted one describing how he does his whirling dervish-style footwork. Special guest-stars include Burning Dan and Alien Jon!

Back from Wildfire and lots of videos are popping up...mostly from Christian and myself. Helpfully, both of us recorded a couple lesson sessions and noodling. Here are some of my favorites from the weekend: