Let's take some of that tech that you've
learned and turn it into dance. Drex here
from drexfactor.com coming at you with a
brand new combo for the month of May and
this one by popular demand is an
intermediate poi combo. I know that this
combo looks pretty techy but the point
here is actually to get you moving with
the tech to add a little bit of dance
because, well, that's something that I've
been doing a lot of my own style lately.
To learn this month's combo you're gonna
need the following tricks under your
belt: number one isolations, number two
linear isolations, number three body
tracing hybrid, number four pendulum
versus triquetra, number five horizontal
stacking, and number six spiral wraps. Now
you can find a playlist of videos
tutorials I've done on all of these
tricks down in the description of this
video or up in the cards if you happen
to be watching this video on YouTube. I'm
going to show you the combo at full
speed and then break it down
step-by-step before showing it to you
again in slow motion. Make sure to
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so you know exactly when I'm dropping a
new video. Before we dive in I just want
to take a moment to give a shout out to
the friends of the channel. Big thanks to
Dark Monk, Emazinglights, Flowtoys, 
Spinballs, Spinsconsin, and Ultrapoi for
helping to make the videos on this
channel possible. You can visit them all
by following the links down in the
description of this video.
So the condo is not terribly long but it
is pretty intricate so let's go through
it piece by piece. Here we're going to
start off by just doing isolations in
wall plane, yeah? The poi are in split
time same direction now my legs are
gonna do something kind of different in
that my left foot is gonna kind of sneak
its way up my right leg and I'm gonna
wind up in what yoga folks would call
tree pose, right? Now in the dance world
we would think of this as starting in
coupe a with my left foot touching my
right ankle and then sliding up to passe
with my left foot touching my right knee.
Now to break out of this we're gonna go
into our linear isolations. Bear in mind
you're doing the isolations the entire
time that your left leg is creeping up
your right leg. Now our first move here
is that the right hand poi is going to
pop up and then it's going to go out to
the side, right? Now when it pops up I'm
gonna snap that left foot out as though
it's on a hinge, right? The key here is
that whatever level you've got your
right knee at is basically the the level
it stays at, so when my left leg goes out
it's really just extending the leg--I'm
not lowering my knee at all, yeah? Once I
get the leg out and back I can step out
and across when I do the linear
isolations straight out to the side. So
that whole opening looks like this: left
leg creeps up, pops out, back out to the
side, yeah? Cool! So we're open, our arms
are out to the sides, and we have our
feet planted about shoulders width across
right? Now I'm gonna bring my right
hand over to meet my left hand and it's
gonna start what's going to feel like a
reverse weave. I'm gonna do something
kind of tricky and I'll show you some
slow-mo footage of this jump so you can
get a good idea of where it is. So this
is something called a tour jete.
Basically the idea is that I'm gonna
kick out my right foot to my left side
with enough force it's gonna pick my
entire body up and start it moving
through the air. I'm gonna continue that
jump by having my left leg kick back
almost like a donkey kick, right? I'm
gonna land first on my right foot and
then on my left foot and of course the
poi is spinning the entire time. So what
are the poi doing as I'm up in midair? So
glad you asked.
Essentially what's happening here is I'm
just doing a basic turn and waist strap
with my poi--literally I'm just turning
all the way around to the left. Now what
makes this look so cool is that I'm not
just keeping my hands at the same level
the entire way through. As soon as I get
my right hand over to meet my left hand
I'm gonna raise both of them up and
essentially do a fountain over and
around back to my right hand side--it
just so happens to be that I'm jumping
as they do that. Okay, so we did the jump,
it was beautiful, and now we're back to
our forwards weave, right? We're gonna get
out of our forwards weave and drop into
a pendulum versus triquetra. Here's how
that happens: you're going to once again
try and waist strap across your body to
get to that reverse weave but you're not
gonna get all the way there. There's that
point where you're like halfway to the
reverse weave and your hands kind of
separate for a second, right? And what
you're going to do there is you're
actually just going to let your right
hand poi simply drop into that
triquetra, yeah? Meanwhile the left
hand poi does exactly the same thing.
You're essentially just like stopping in
the middle of the weave and letting both
of the poi fall in order to get into
that pendulum versus triquetra. Cool! So
from here we're gonna do something kind
of tricky and that's that when the poi
are over here at my left hand side we're
looking for this moment where we have
both of the poi kind of pointed straight
out to either side. It happens right
there, yeah? This is your opportunity to
switch into that horizontal stack,
specifically "the Mel." So right over here
I'm gonna really quickly pull my right
hand poi out and around to do a top
stall over on the right hand side of my
body. It's a really really really fast
move but that's what gets you into the
horizontal stack. Okay, so we're gonna
wind up doing two of these stacks
basically I'm gonna go from left to
right once and then from left to right a
second time and here's where things get
kind of crazy. Okay, so now that I'm over
here I'm gonna do something kind of
crazy that feels a little bit like a
stall tracer but it's not. So normally if
we were gonna do a stall chaser we
would be carrying over our heads to the
other side of the body and leaving a
hand over on its native side of the body
right? What's gonna happen in this case
is that we're gonna have both hands kind
of chasing each other around in a circle,
yeah? And they kind of catch up with each
other at the top and drag each other
long for a second. So you want to think
of it as being that hands meet, poi meet,
hands meet, poi meet, hands meet poi
meet, and I'm keeping this like really
over on to the right hand side of my
body--which, you can do this across your
entire body if you want to. That is
totally a thing that can happen and this
is actually a version of the stall chaser
that I have seen more than a few people
do and literally all it is is that
rather than keeping--rather than stalling
out and stopping your hand to one side
or another you just let them keep on
going, okay? So if that's not confusing
enough then the next thing that's gonna
happen is we're gonna wait for the
second time around when it's our hands
together rather than our poi heads
together and boom! We're just gonna drop
into a pendulum for a second and let
both our hands and our poi head down
towards the floor, across, and then
immediately come back up, yeah? Okay, so
we're gonna take these pendulums and let
our hands and poi both drop down and
then we gonna pick our body back up as
the two poi spin out to their native
sides, and that's our cue to go back into
the body tracing hybrid--that is, we're
going to take that as kind of a prompt
to go back into split time same
direction in much the same way that we
took our weave and let the poi kind of
stop for a moment to get into our
pendulum versus triquetra hybrid. We're
also going to take this moment when the
two poi are out to the sides to re-engage in
split time same direction. Now the combo
just finishes off after that body
tracing hybrid with a simple spiral wrap,
yeah? Cool! All right, let's go through all
that again: so we start off with an
isolation, our left foot picks up from
coupe to passe and boom out, out, we go
around in that tour jete and we drop
into pendulum versus triquetra. We go
around twice, we switch into the
horizontal stack, and our second time
through we do that weird chasey thing.
Boom! We drop into pendulums come out of
it into a body tracing hybrid and finish
off with a spiral wrap. Cool! Let's see
that all again in slow motion.
Cool! You dig this combo? Show me your
version of it on Instagram by posting
video with the hashtag #drexfactorpoi
I can't wait to see your version of
this. If you'd like to learn more about
both pendulums and hybrids, you should
check out my Beyond the Basics course
available on my learning site. You can
find that at learn.drexfactor.com.
It covers everything from hybrids to
behind-the-back and so much more. Before
I turn you guys loose, I just want to say
a quick thanks to all of my awesome
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