April 1st, 2011
I’m so incredibly excited to be heading out to Chicago for Kinetic Fire the week before Fire Drums. This is the first fire festival in the mid west (at least as far as I know) and just like the magic I experienced at the first Fire Drums, I anticipate this gathering will hold the same awesomeness! Not only am I going, I’m also teaching 2 sessions — one will be a poi dance combination class designed to help poi artists express themselves with new and different dance moves that go with poi and the second class will facilitate artists expressing themselves more as dancers — having nothing to do with props.
This video is a little promo I made for the event – I hope you can join us there!
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Tags: dance, fire drums, GlitterGirl, kinetic fire, poi, practice
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March 31st, 2011
Yoga is a practice I’ve had since before I even knew what poi and fire dancing were. I happened upon yoga accidentally in 1998 shortly after going to my first underground dance music party. I was at a house party and wanted to stretch and I ended up doing what I later found out was called “shoulder stands” and from there, my practice was born. After several months of practice I started working up toward headstands, something I never thought I’d be able to do before that time. I decided I wanted to work up to a 5 minute headstand. Sometime in late 1999 or early 2000 I did my longest headstands to date coming in at about 2 minutes 10 seconds — not even half way to my goal.
I pretty much stopped working on headstands in the early part of the century and only decided in the last month I was going to return to the practice. Tonight I rocked it with two headstands that were about 30 seconds each — not bad for the first time in 10 years, though there were a few moments when I hit the wall, mostly I was holding myself up without needing it. I’m stronger than ever and despite the fat hanging off my torso, my core muscles really helped me hold myself up and balanced! I’m excited to see how far I can take this with my stronger relationship and awareness of my body.
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Tags: GlitterGirl, headstand, yoga
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March 30th, 2011
Sometimes I just have to get down and groove and this was one of those moments — not surprisingly to a Ronald Jenkees track.
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Tags: dance, GlitterGirl, practice, ronald jenkees
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March 29th, 2011
Although this is so far from actually being something I can do, this practice shows the beginnings of my practice for a side plane antispin flower with a spiral reversal to the other direction side plane antispin flower. Here I’m doing same direction which I’m convinced is harder for this move than opposite direction would be. And, in truth, I probably tried something like this 5 or 6 years ago for about as long as this clip. I just wanted to capture it to remind myself to go back to it later since I really didn’t get very far. I found it hard to get my mind around it. . .
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Tags: antispin flower, flower, GlitterGirl, poi, practice, spiral
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March 28th, 2011
I’ve been wanting to do more unusually transitions that include turns and this video shows a new combination I started in practice tonight. This utilizes an underhand behind the back weave with a left turn 180º into an overhand hybrid. It feels funky still — and not funky in a dancey way but funky in a “something isn’t quite right” kind of way. Still, the idea is interesting and I look forward to seeing how it unfolds.
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Tags: behind the back, GlitterGirl, hybrid, poi, practice, turns, weave
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March 27th, 2011
I rarely do 1.5s even though I love using pendulums in my performance so during this practice set I decided to give them a little love. I found the transitions between the overhand and underhand 1.5 weave to be both challenging and fascinating and perhaps the most interesting part of the practice even though I didn’t nail it.
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Tags: 1.5, GlitterGirl, poi, practice
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March 26th, 2011
Building on the stacked circle work I was doing recently, this video shows some work I was doing with moving from stacks to buzzsaws — some simple fun! 
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March 25th, 2011
I had a client in need of this information so I threw together a 5 minute lesson to help explain the front plane clockwise CAP. Enjoy!
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Tags: CAP, GlitterGirl, lesson, poi, practice
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March 24th, 2011
I’m not even sure these are actually defined as thru wraps because I thought the poi didn’t actually change direction with a thru wrap whereas with this move the poi does change direction. Unfortunately I practiced this for significantly longer but the camera, unbeknownst to me, ran out of battery so I caught the beginning of the session digitally rather than the end, by which I had actually gotten a bit more competence.
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Tags: double crystal poi, GlitterGirl, poi, poi chucks, practice, wrap
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March 23rd, 2011
I find this movement pretty tough. I’m trying to smoothly switch the poi colors by doing a roll of the poi around the hand. You can see at the end of the clip I try both hands together — definite progress especially considering I’ve only been using the chucks for a short time… and… oh so much more is needed.
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Tags: double crystal poi, GlitterGirl, poi chucks, practice, rolls
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