Forums > Beginner Poi Moves > Variations

Posted: 21st Jan 2009
Now hold on a sec, I'd think of TTN as stacking on side atop the other over and over, with some pushing and pulling along the axis of spin for good measure. There are no plan-facing flips (crossovers) unless you then start throwing in inswings...

Soooo, I'd hesitate to call a horizontal TTN a bfly corkscrew. You can do horizontal versions of bfly "weaves" and "windmills" (both seem a lil lame to tack those names on to bfly moves, cuz there are some fundamental differences). Since a corkscrew is usually split-same 2-beat plan-facing switches with the crossover points landing in the same place, but offset in time... I'd say that a bfly corckscrew would be similar... which I bet a lot of us have played with at some point or another.

That said, all those lovely horizontal blfy varients are great fun. Also horizontal versions of inswung moves, inversions, introversions (which change somehow... gotta look more at that), etc.

As a fun game do a move in some plane, ie horizontal or wheel, or wall, and bend your torso over sideways. You get to observe the changes in symmetry in the move due to plane and body orientation, adding or subtracting beats, or changing a move with X beats that is symmetrical to X beats asymmetrical. Doing this type of thing will go a long way towards teaching you to adapt moves to different zones and angles around your body... variations here we come!!

+Alien Jon

+Alien Jon

Posted: 22nd Jan 2009
Well, I would have said that a butterfly weave was a thread the needle variant anyway, but I guess I'm less rigid with my terminology, I tend just to lump everything in the same category because its fun. Pendulums, stalls, plane changes and point isolations all suddenly get lumped in the same category.

Posted: 22nd Jan 2009
I've been racking my brain trying to come up with anything I could call a variation, and so far I'm coming up empty..

I do an "interesting" thing with the 4beat corkscrew that might qualify.

Instead of just standing there, doing it I prefer to lower the poi to the ground by bending one leg, keeping the other straight until the poi are just skimming the ground on the lower half of the move.

When it's time for the ceiling plane portion, I stand up in a wide stance and lower the poi again, but this time by bending the other leg creating, in effect a pyramid shape pattern were the move to be photographed.

Finish the whole thing off by wrapping one poi around my waist ( throw in a pirouette here, just for grins, and end up in a ceiling plane TTN.

Posted: 22nd Jan 2009
Hmmm.... I have been shown a butterfly tangle in horizontal.

From what I remember, you do a TTN in horizontal and let the collide like an airwrap. Have not tried it since someone showed me early last year though, so can not answer more.

Does not seem to revolutionary though....

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Posted: 22nd Jan 2009
Hahaha, I wasn't after anything revolutionary, per se. Just a place to discuss variations to give one another some ideas on the basic ways we've been playing around, even to provide ideas to newbies.

I also didn't mean for everyone to stick in the horizontal plane!

Variations on anything.

Posted: 26th Jan 2009
You can do a sort of weave by keeping one arm extended and just doing figure-8s with that and passing the other in the normal over, under across pattern.

If done very cleanly over time you end up with a few circles next to each other if you also swap sides.

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Posted: 28th Jan 2009
Overall, everything is everything in a different direction.

Some of my favorite variations are extended, higher beats, behind the back, in a different plane, isolated.
The idea is you take a foundational movement like the weave or TTN, and then do it in a new placement or size. For example, do a horizontal TTN while leaning back and extend the close beats.

Posted: 28th Jan 2009
Originally Posted By: DyamiTKOverall, everything is everything in a different direction.

Some of my favorite variations are extended, higher beats, behind the back, in a different plane, isolated.
The idea is you take a foundational movement like the weave or TTN, and then do it in a new placement or size. For example, do a horizontal TTN while leaning back and extend the close beats.

Precisely, I was trying to think of a variation I like, but there's far too much to chose from. The simplest little difference to a movement could make it classified as a "variation". I mean, you can combine most movements, planes, positions etc to create a wealth of different looking outcomes. On top of that, as you were saying, you can extend your arms, isolate, beat manipulate etc also. That's one of the beautiful things about poi, there is so much room for personal style, there are so many ways of just doing a 3 beat weave, which is what makes everybody's 3 beat weave slightly unique to them.

Everything in poi is a variation on just spinning them. And some of these fundamental variations have been given names for the sake of terminology and communication. It's all just building blocks.

Posted: 28th Jan 2009
Well.... there's the asymmetric 3-beat weave - you do a 5-beat hand motion on one side, and 2-beat on the other. You still get a total of 3 beats, but they're flip flopped. There are other asymmetric variations in the same vein that you can play with.

You can also play around with pendulums - not a separate "pendulum" weave, but for instance, in the 5-beat weave, you can make the last beat on each side a pendulum (or stall); the poi only completes half of its revolution before being yanked to the other side in a semi-corkscrew fashion. I'm not sure that made sense, but using techniques like that also adds a layering effect and makes your spinning more 3-dimentional, without relying on atomics or overt plane changes.

Bouncing Baby Pipe!