2009 Staff Goals

Continue learning the basics.

Dentrassi showed me some stuff and it has been a lot of fun playing with it, so hopefully this will be a fun second (third?) prop.

july update:


1) Subtitles for DVD
-- okay I made someone else do this... er, thx noel.
FAIL -- 2) Do more fire.
WIN -- 3) Col / Contact video...
fail -- 4) FINISH the 'blind date' routine.
hmmm -- 5) Think more on writing down ideas and choreographies for multiple people.
win -- 6) More club contact. + Club Routine.
hard -- 7) Be more like Wes Peden and Julian Wong...
hmmm -- 8) Get some stuff solid that is currently ridiculous.
hmmm -- 9) Dance. or Change my movement.
fail -- 10) Make a staff that's good for crazy stuff.
FAIL -- 11) More Doubles Contact.
hard -- 12) Practise the tiger roll with a ball.

Half way through the year ish... I wish I could become more than I am. That a goal and a half. But expressivity. That's the main goal. Expressivity is the new musicality.

Update -

1 - substituted my paint pole for a real practice staff. Home-made from aluminum tubing, can maybe convert for fire at some point.

2 - Fail - still break out into random practice at work

3 - success, can scratch this one off.

(new) 4 - work more staff into dedicated weekly poi practice day. This is easier then it seems, because some of my practice mates are interested in staff too, and one of them even has a real staff.

5 - CONTACT! what brought me into wanting to do staff was contact. I don't ever want to touch the staff with my hands.

(thanks MCP for those wonderful contact tutorials!!!)

Pre-Burn Update:

1) Work on variations of the base contact moves in the other direction.
- I've been practicing lots of steves and angel rolls in both directions... steves are coming along nicely.

2) Learn how to do more doubles contact with my 3' doubles.
- Meh is how I feel about this...

3) Clean up body rolls to foot fishtails... mostly by learning how to do foot fishtails proper.
- My foot fishtails work now, and I've been working on this here and there. I think the demon roll to foot fishtails is quite nice.

4) Learn how to do a meast matrix from a prayer steve while keeping my hands in prayer.
- A worthy goal but I often get distracted by other fun things. Fail.

5) Elbow pops on my knees like in that feicha video.
- My staff is too bouncy, maybe my next fire staff will work better. However, I've gotten better at elbow pops.

6) Watch more baton videos and clean up my fujimi rolls.
- I've been inspired by a lot of baton work lately, but a lot of that stuff is really hard with a staff. Ray outs are pretty cool.

7) Learn how to be an effective teacher, and teach a class at firedrums.
- Never got around to it, I need to work A LOT more on this.

My goals have changed a bit, I think my primary goal at this point is to learn all the cool stuff I've figured out how to do with my practice staff for the past 8 months with my new fire staff. That would be nice.

New goals:

1) Continuous holy trinities. After I learn how to do that, I want to do the hard stall after each holy trinity.

2) Steve to antiturn headspin 360. Like the steve to headspin but once you get it on your head you turn in the opposite direction of the staff and then complete the move down your arm.

3) Substitution matrix cartwheel. I need to learn how to complete this once I come up from the cartwheel.

4) Vertical minimal steve. I really like this one.

5) More body rolls, including body rolls to foot fishtails.

Those are the main things I should be working on.

What have I been doing so far?
1) Organised a fire circle in Galway, with it's own FB page.
2) Went to the EJC
3) Bought 3 staffs for 3 staff contact
4) Learnt more Double contact, general double stuff, and some 3 staff moves.
5) Got my street show down to 5 mins of awesomeness; time and fuel went down, hats and talking to the crowd went up.
6) Working on a business FB page.
7) Pick up my opaque plastic business cards tomorow.
8) Got back into theatre.

Goals: more of everything.

December update:


WIN nearly. -- 1) Subtitles for DVD
WIN -- 2) Do more fire.
WIN -- 3) Col / Contact video...
fail -- 4) FINISH the 'blind date' routine.
win doing that right now -- 5) Think more on writing down ideas and choreographies for multiple people.
WIN -- 6) More club contact. + Club Routine.
10% win -- 7) Be more like Wes Peden and Julian Wong...
win-ish -- 8) Get some stuff solid that is currently ridiculous.
WIN -- 9) Dance. or Change my movement.
fail -- 10) Make a staff that's good for crazy stuff.
win a little thanks to dag -- 11) More Doubles Contact.
WIN with fingernails, now to learn without... -- 12) Practise the tiger roll with a ball.

Year is almost done... I'm going to need some new goals... But that's a whole new thread... wow, I even completed some of my original goals... sweeeeeeeet. Might have to do the hundreds... hmmm...

1) Get a new staff (thank you KLM) -Win
2) Get Buugeng -Win, should use them more.
3) Get back in shape with doubles -Semi-Win
4) Learn contact moves the other way - managed neck pivots, angels, steve, prayer steve.
5) Continuous Jesuses - Can do 2 in a row, but it's not consistent.
6) Matrix -Epic Fail
7) Fishtails in all directions, antispin fishtails, some other fishtail variations - i managed fishtails in both directions with both hands, no variations or antispins yet.
8) Be able to do neck combos continuously. -Still needs more work
9) work on body movement -Needs some work.
10) go to england again -Fail
11) perform more. loads more. -Win
12) new routines in everything. -Other than poi, Fail.
13) learn 3 staffs. -I dropped this goal due to my practice staffs breaking.

fail - 1)learn enough moves in prayer to do a routine entirely in prayer
ish - 2)keep doing yoga as its keeping me safe from muscle strains
win - 3)dual fishtails
fail - 4)sort out the annoying tendency of planes to move from vertical to horizontal when doing multiple turns in contact
win - 5)learn more ground moves
sort of - 6) get the neckspin cartwheel thing working
fail - 7)be able to do handstands (to smooth out the cartwheels)
win - 8)explore footwork a little more, with less staggering around in circles
fail - 9)find some new double throws patterns to keep my busy beyond the two staff shower
win - 10)find some better arm/hand positions when contacting