DrexFactor Poi

In my last blog posting, I noted an interesting shape based upon the triquetra I'd found in a wikipedia article and was pretty sure could be accomplished with poi--I've spent most of the past evening and day thinking through how and coming up with different approaches to it.

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For most of the past year, I've called this trick a trifoil or antispin flower hybrid, yet somehow overnight the terminology switched to triquetra and I didn't know why until Nick Woolsey posted his latest online tutorial.

Last weekend at PDF, Ian (Imperial) and myself collaborated on some poi shots for Abject when he was set up near PEX the final night of the event. He'd mentioned that the shots would be up in a few days and I just went to check. While our shots are not up yet, I did stumble into something that hit me with a major flash of nostalgia:

So it's finally happened...I bit the bullet and started up a new blog. My old one was a relic of post high-school days and I've written from time to time on subjects that interest me from the business plan of the Kindle to my ongoing and deep-seated hatred of the major record label companies (when they finally collapse, big party at my house--serious), but up until now I haven't had anything to write about that I deemed a regular blog to be worthwhile to keep up.

I got a request for a tutorial on how to turn with CAPs and found it to be a fun challenge. Here they are approached from the perspective of being fountains in opposite poi motion, wall plane turns that integrate triquetra hybrids, and finally as wheel plane reels--my personal favorite. Enjoy!

tutorialcapsturns.mp4

Starting off with a variant on an antispin shape I played around with a few weeks back--this time I'm realizing one can switch back and forth between which hand is doing antispin and which is doing extension on the wrapping and unwrapping--an effect I think is really cool. Next, some more atomic flowers based upon stall patterns and a switch that I didn't realize I'd ripped off from Insignia. Finally, some hybrid turns with the triquetra--vs. pendulum and vs. static spin.

techblog35.mp4

Lots of stalls this week! Starting with a simple transition between buzzsaw and wallplane, I'm also playing around with Yuta-style stalls that go between horizontal and wall plane, which it turns out are the product of stalling both out of wall plane circles AND the horizontal motion they lead to. Some explorations of 3D flowers based upon this concept, curves that move in S-curves, and an axis-shifting butterfly move I've seen Alien Jon do.

techblog34.mp4

Out in Malcolm X Park, I wanted to practice integrating a couple things I'd been playing with into normal flow to see what would happen. These items include the stall patterns I've been working with lately like 3D stalls (with some Yuta-style patterns), and improving my stance and footwork so my lower body is less wooden when I perform. For reasons I can't explain I seem to be blowing on something very hard every few seconds and for the life of me I can't recall why. Hopefully this vid gets flamed less than the last time I posted a video of myself playing with flow.

flowpractice5-17-09.mp4