This was the first real progress I made with the underhand behind the back 5 beat weave. Not much progress was made, but I got the feel for it on both sides of the body, or at least the beginning of the feeling. Whoot whoot! 
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This is short clip of some antispin practice I was doing in the context of both hybrids and CAPs and especially “split plane CAPs” by which I mean one is on the front plane and one on the back plane rather than a wall plane CAP. I particularly enjoy the giant swivel into the split plane CAP — it felt fun to do (this was the first time, actually) and also looks pretty hot visually.
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One cool aspect of using these “poi chuck” double ended poi with crystal cases is they are like mini meteor. Of course, I am fairly clueless about meteor use so it’s a new tool all over again. This clip is me attempting to work on spinning the poi like meteor around my hand on the horizontal plane which for some reason feels easier to me than the vertical plane.
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For these new poi, one of the cool tricks to using them is to be able to switch which color is on the outside and which is in the hand. This is a clip of me making some progress with flipping the crystal cases out and back into the hand using partial spirals. Although these are not executed as precisely as I’d like (the crystal cases being flat and parallel to the ground while in the hand and on the stall itself), this is the first time I was able to actually flip both of them at once which is a huge leap forward in my competence with this tool.
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Cary recently made a set of double headed crystal case poi. The only thing different about each end is the light in the case. Because I’m actually holding a crystal case s on each end of the poi, the grip, and subsequently many of the moves (especially spirals) feel different. I took several hours to get familiar with these new poi and the next series of clips show some of the things I was working on. This clip focuses on a wrist roll where the poi rolls over or under the wrist of the opposite arm. This move does not include a change of color of the poi head as you grab the same head you released when you do the roll over the wrist.
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Just practicing some variations on these behind the head stalls. I like the side plane mixed in there.
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This part of practice was about dancing more with the under the leg movements — mostly stall, though there are some transitions including that super sweet one at the end of the clip I started working on last month integrated more (though not ideally) into dance flow.
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This clip is about a series of stacked opposite direction circles and different uses of them. It starts out with the overhand opposite stack, wall plane; then shows a side plane CAP to stacked circles (I’ll call them stacks for the remainder of the post) combination; then it shows turning both left and right using wall plane stacks; then it shows swivels with the stacks — and although they are on the same plane, when I do the movement it feels more like side plane than front plane because of how I’m turning my body and orienting on the stacks themselves; and finally it shows stacks with a giant 360ยบ back to stacks. Fun stuff — I’m looking forward to teaching this in the Turn Class this month!
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Flowology Mindset #3 encourages self-to-self comparison through time. In an effort to keep present with myself, I decided to dance to a track from several years ago to see what I’d do differently now. This is just some practice stuff in preparation for a response video to this YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCjOlpUvhI ) I posted years ago.
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I asked Magick and Retch to give me a song they wanted me to dance to and Magick picked this Depeche Mode Track, Freedom. I recorded a first take which was, IMO, substantially better than this one but not quite what I think I’m ready to settle on as the final version, so I figured I’d put this one out first since it’s not at tight. Still some fun practice stuff in there though. And there are definitely moments in it when I can see how in love I really am right now.
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