A double dose of tasty tech, Part 1: featuring Baz

I've been lucky enough that the past couple weeks I've gotten to catch up with some of my favorite east coast poi spinners and gotten to shoot a little bit of video of some of the cool tricks they've been working on. Here's the first of two videos: Baz Simon doing some plane-bending tech at our friend Aaron's (Fractal) wedding.

Video Tech Blog #46: Old-school tech and quarter-beat stalls

Starting off with a couple tricks I'd consider to be a little bit older school style tech than I usually work with--the first is inspired by rope dart tricks that shoot the head off in the opposite direction it's been wrapped in. Next is a trick that uses releases to transition from meltdown to behind-the-back waistwraps and back. This is sketchy! Next, in order to get down the spherical CAPs I've been working on the past few weeks, I've been doing drills to get my hands used to doing quarter-beat stalls in same-time opposites. Last, a staff transition to get into opposites behind the back. I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but this is what monkeying with it on Sunday got me to. If you know better, ways, please point me to a video!

Video Tech Blog #44: plane-bending pendulum stalls, spherical CAP theory

Based upon a pendulum stall trick Baz taught me a few months ago, here's a variant that makes use of plane-bending out of stalls. Also: I've been working a lot more with elliptical CAP patterns and have a presentable version of the split-time opposites pattern. Finally, based upon Charlie's responses to my video on CAPs and plane-bending last week, a little bit of theory and three approaches to taking elliptical CAP patterns to spherical CAP patterns. One is (very roughly) demoed. Give me another week and we'll see if I can put together the others cleanly.

Tech Video Blog #40: Charlie's cube, lots of plane changing

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. Finally, a plane-changing throw that has a lot in common with the Yuta stalls I've been playing with.

Tech Video Blog #37: Yuta stalls with floats, hybrids, cateyes, and more footwork

More fun with Yuta stalls! Specifically, it turns out that they work just as well with floats as they do with top and bottom stalls, opening the door to doing them in tandem with isolations, extensions, hybrids and cateyes. Also, some more footwork and danciness inspired by nightanddaydance's excellent response to my last blog. Had to trim a couple tricks out to keep it under 10 minutes, but they should be making an appearance in a later blog.

Fun with Yuta stalls

It's my dirty little secret that I've been working my ass off on my stalls to make those Yuta-style plane shifting stalls cleaner. While I can do them just fine if my right hand is on bottom, when my left hand is on bottom, the horizontal plane wobbles a depressingly wide amount. An interesting exercise I began playing with today was doing a pair of top-stalls, Yuta-stalling behind me, coming out as though in a bottom stall, bottom stall again, Yuta stalling once again, and coming out as though from a top stall, then reversing the whole thing.

I doubt that makes much sense written out--when I video it, that should help clarify. In the meantime this leads to another cool place: if one approaches the zero points in between the plane shifts from the perspective of being the apex of a pendulum stall/float, some fun possibilities start to emerge, such as using Yuta-style stalls to switch between hybrids--no bullshit!

If one is doing the standard extension vs. isolation hybrid poi in same direction/same time motion, you can use the point where the poi are coming up from the bottom of the circle as the point of stall/float and go straight into a Yuta stall around to the other side of your body. Once there, you just have to let your hands drop to go into another hybrid or you can switch spinning same time/same direction static spin or isolations just like you would with a normal Yuta stall. I haven't practiced a lot in front of mirrors, but so far it looks like switching from hybrid to hybrid is slightly problematic because the poi don't have enough momentum behind them to stay horizontal at the end like they would in a standard Yuta stall, so switching between the standard Yuta stalls and hybrids looks to be the more efficient way of doing this.

Needless to say, this also opens up the possibilities of doing the same thing with floats! :)

Fun with stalls and hybrids

Interesting move combo finds me while I finish up a one-pager on Twitter strategy for work: from same-time opposites do simultaneous top-stalls that stop with the hands right next to each other. Continue the movement of one while isolating the other the opposite direction it just came from, in other words switch to the "split-time" iso vs. extension hybrid with hands together. Playing around after I finish the one-pager shows it's possible, though without a mirror I reckon it's quite sloppy.

Playing with this reminds me of a combo Baz demoed at Firedrums: split-time opposites flower spun in antispin stalls out to a top and bottom stall to one side with the hands separated by a poi length. One continues it's original direction all the other reverses, thus leading to the "same-time" hybrid where the hands move split-time. I try it now without the antispin flower. The hand on bottom does a vertical float and comes back down the same direction as the other hand, thus leading to the same hybrid--cool! :)

While I'm playing with these another 3D pattern starts to form in my head. for this I do a top and bottom stall from split-time opposites, Yuta-style and stall it in corkscrew plane around me to emerge on the other side and rather than going straight back into split-time opposites, I reverse my stalls to make the top hand top stall and bottom hand bottom stall, then horizontal stall back to the other side and allow the poi to complete their paths up and down on the opposite side, thus switching into same-time opposites.

That makes absolutely no sense written out :-P

It's beginning to dawn on me that I should warm up with horizontal as well as vertical plane-bending globes at the beginnings of my practice sessions if I continue to play this much in corkscrew plane.