Secrets of Plane Control

The manipulation of the planes is by far the most important concept in Poi I have found so far. What I mean by this is with every other concept you can hit yourself with the poi.....but, if you master the planes you can literally take what once was going to ruin your performance and twist it back onto it's correct plane without disrupting the art you are making. Your hands are the center of the sphere in which the poi can twist, spin, tangle, or whatever other method you want to use to spin them. I have been practicing since March and finally put enough practice in to make a video. The quality of light is pretty bad. I didn't have enough torch fuel for the Tiki's and It was late at night. I will be working on much more routines though, lots of tricks to show off. You can find the video on www.YouTube.com In the search field put in Tamed Fire Poi or just type this in the url field http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ia_GNtnl9Bg
Be sure to leave me some comments or something so I know how to better the next vids. Thanks
Mark "Tamed Fire"

Hi Mark

Firstly, welcome to HoP, please take note of the following:

1) Your question about planes is be suited to the Poi Moves forum, you're far more likely to get a response there too
2) The video should be linked fom the video forum, you're far more likely to get a response there, too.

Please help to keep HoP nice and tidy so others can get the most out of it


I'm not sure what you mean by "with every other concept you can hit yourself with the poi" as surely any successful concept would involve not hitting yourself with the exception of deliberate bounces, wraps and contact moves etc.
And surely if you truly "master" plane control you'll not get into the situation where you may ruin your performance
That aside I hear you, but your 99% of your video is on one plane which after 30 seconds of no angle changes gets a little boring. This isn't the case for everyone, but style makes up for a lot and as you say the lighting is poor and you can't really see any style.

If by practicing since march you mean you first picked them up in March I'm really impressed. Not just because of the mix of moves, but the short space of time spent performing each one (instead of just repeating over and over and lots of newbies inherently do) before moving on and how clean most of them are. Obviously lots of time spent since March, well done

So in summary of typical IMO's

Good points:
i) Good repoitoire of moves
ii) Lots of potential

Bad Ponts
i) Camera angles (lack of)
ii) Not using someone else to video it for you
iii) Lighting
iv) Boring after 30 seconds
v) Not really in time with the music

It's funny, when I watched yours on youtube Yuta's video was listed as the next video, if you need inspiration for what makes nice "watchable" spinning watch that (no doubt you already have). Without good lighting or proper camera work it's till amazing and encapsulating!

I hope I didn't sound harsh, it's all meant as positive critisism, this time next year I expect we'll see some great video's from you

Wow!! thank you for such a elaborate feedback. Thanks for the heads up on where I'm supposed to post stuff. Still a newb on this HOP site:-) To clarify the confusion on what I meant by not hitting yourself with plane control.....What I meant is by working up to mastery of the planes the muscle memory you create by this is more beneficial than any other concept I have practiced. I guess that would depend on what you see as your favorite concept though. Wraps, Isolations, so on and so forth. Everybody has their preferences and I hate to bear any down on people saying one is better than the other.
Now, trying to figure out what you mean on how it is boring. By being boring your saying that it doesn't change planes. I don't understand what planes you would be spinning on to entertain an audience when almost all the art viewed with fire poi is with the audience viewing the circles. If I were to change the planes direction to facing the audience you would not be able to make out a flower pattern. Do you mean, change the planes horizontally? If so, I've been working on those. little tricker than with gravity only pulling on one side:-) It pulls the whole time...lol. I was supposed to do a pre run the day before to set up the lighting. Unfortunately it didn't happen so this was thrown together in a day not knowing what the outcome would be.
Yes, I just picked them up in March. Lol my first straps were Sponge Bob Shoe laces.....home made poi of coarse. I constantly spin weighted heads though in the persuit to use the 3.5 inch monkey fists. Longer flame=longer performance.....more tricks. Lots of time====YES I try to put in about an hour every time I practice. With the weight training lately I have not been able to put in a hour everyday rather because the muscle tissue I break down needs time to heal with the extra weight. So I have to take a day off after a hard session of weighted poi. When I first started I just used tennis balls where I could go for 3 hours. The weighted make shift poi I have, Tennis balls, wrapped in duct tape, with a slit at the bottom where I stuffed it full of newspaper to hold the weights I stuffed in from rolling around and to keep the weight isolated at the bottom of the heads. It sucks though now that I modified them because when I practice new tricks, it really hurts getting smacked in the face with a weighted duct taped wrapped tennis ball. I popped myself in the lip and the eye yesterday lol. I can't wait to meet up with other poi artists. I could talk for hours but don't like to ramble. I have seen the Yuta video and he is crazy good. I believe in that video he is using 3.5 inch monkeys also. He sure is clean. I will continue spinning and yes.......you can count on seeing more of me:-) Thanks again!!!
Mark