Forums > Beginner Poi Moves > Reverse 5 beat weave

Posted: 11th Jul 2001
This might not be too much help to you, but I first learned the reverse 5 beat weave with clubs. I was unable to do it with poi because it was too fast and I wasn't getting the hand positions quite right (I didn't have this problem so much with the forward 5 beat weave). Clubs can be done in slow motion so that you can get your wrists in the right positions. After I got it down with clubs, it was much easier to learn with poi.

Posted: 14th Jul 2001
You know, I just got the fwd 5-beat weave a couple days ago. I was looking at the "poi-lessons" section on this site for tips on the rvs 5-beat weave, and the animation is very confusing. While it seems pretty clear that the guy's wrists are doing a rvs-weave motion, the light-trails *seem* to be rotating against each other, like a butterfly rather than a weave.Malcolm--how do you suppose this happened?Anyhow, I don't have any words of wisdom to impart on actually doing this move, since I'm still at the face-clobbering stage of learning it. This just seemed like the right place to mention this oddity.

Laugh while you can, monkey-boy

Posted: 14th Jul 2001
Yeah, that video is terrible! I think the fact that the gif is reduced down to only 77kb makes it really difficult to see what's going on. Plus Ben is doing his rev 5-beat weave a little weird. He's not rotating his poi in the same plane, so when you look at it from the front in garbled 2D, it looks like the poi are spinning in opposite directions when in fact they are spinning in the same direction. Also, notice that when he starts twirling on his left side he accidentally goes into same-time. The fwd 5 beat weave video isn't that great either, but the rev one is really bad.Malcolm -- I think it would be a good idea to replace that video if possible. I don't think that it is very helpful at all.

Posted: 14th Jul 2001
I really wish I had some way with words so I could explain how the hand motions for the 5 beat reverse are. My 5 beat looks alot like ben's, I've never practiced it enough to try and get it into a uniformed kind of 2 circle appearing weave, but the basic hand motions are the same. When doing the 4/5 foward weave, you twist your wrist over each other to get in the extra spin. With a reverse 4/5 it's all in the timing of your spin, the wrist twist is more like you just prolong your hand on the opposite side. Like when your left hand is going across your body it will go under the right hand first, then over, and for the extra beat it sort of instead of twisting all the way around like the fwd, it continues it's twist over your arm to finish out the last beat. Hope that helps somehow.

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Posted: 14th Jul 2001
Thanks, Tiki--I suspect this is one of those things I'm just going to have to stumble over after making a lot of mistakes. The way I'm doing the fwd 5-beat may be a bit unorthodox (to the extent that there's an orthodox way in the first place), since I really let my harnesses wrap around each other more than my wrists do--it's probably something that wouldn't be possible if I were using different harnesses, or even wearing the same harnesses differently.Anyhow, I'm psyched that I finally got it going forward. I'll get it going backward eventually.Bassman--Malcolm is under a lot of pressure to minimize those file sizes because he gets charged based on the total download traffic from this site, so even squeezing a few KB out of one file can really add up. Yeah, the animation is rough, but it's the price of success in this case. It might be possible to host just the images on a geocities site or something like that, though it would be harder to manage and ethically dubious.

Laugh while you can, monkey-boy

Posted: 15th Jul 2001
Malcolm -- Do you really get charged by bandwidth? There must be a lot more traffic on this site than I thought. Do you mind if I ask how much bandwidth your site uses every month? Are you running it on a dedicated server, or a virtual one?

Posted: 14th Jul 2001
Ok, there are several ways of doing the 5 beat forward and reverse. And you guys are right about that animation not helping much, but the "circles of light" (COOL) video has several people doing forward and reverse 5-beat weaves. if you watch the COOL video you will see Daniel (that is me) and others do a forward 5-beat and the poi definitly look like they are doing a butterfly (from certain angles) It is just an optical illusion however. An effect of the timing. first time I saw someone else doing it in real life I thought (john) was doing a funky butterfly.Also, the 5-reverse is actully alot closer to a regular 5-beat than you might think, the instructions are basicaly interchangable.When I first learned the 5-beat forward {I thought I was doing a four beat }I was actually doing a wrap, But because of the optical illusion in the training video and poor resolution I didn't know any better. I started out by doing a regular 3-beat and just keep them on the same side for an extra rotation. The same-side-arm stays sticking out while the reaching-across-arm wraps the poi around the same-side-arm forarm. I then bring both arms over to the oposite side of the body to unwrap the wrapped one. (by the way, it helps to work with just one poi for a while to get the timing of the unwrap proceedure, before going full blast) you can do the entire proceedure on the opposite side of the body and end up getting a 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 beat weave (you can squeek a few extra rotations in there with the same side hand because it is just sticking out there while the other pio is being wraped around it. I think I even got a 12 beat weave once, but with out slow motion camera, there is no way I can count that fast.Long story short, you can also do the wrap going the opposite direction (reverse) and even if you only do a wrap on one side and an unwrap on the other, you will still be doing a reverse 5-beat weave. OK, now hear is the clincher, you can also wrap with your wrists. Or you can even wrap the poi around eachother for that extra beat or two or twelve. you can also let the wraping poi wrap an extra time or two, but it starts going faster as the line shortens.It might also help if you follow you instincts when you do it instead of trying to think about it, "cause if you have to take the time to think about it, it will already have happened" -santanatwo"Use the force, Luke. Let go Luke!" -obi wan kenobiWell I hope some of this helped, I know it was kind of long winded. All else fails, but the COOL video, actually I think every body need to get one, It has inspired me to new greatness!Good Luck

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Posted: 15th Jul 2001
Where as in the forward 5 beat your leading wrist wraps above the other, in the reverse 5 beat your leading wrist crosses under the other. The best suggestion I have is to hold your hands fairly high (shoulder level or higher). This seems to give you more clearance. I'm still not sure how to bring my hands to a 'normal' level without hitting myself, but I've got a good 5 beat when my hands are high.And the video of the 5 beat that they show in the lessons doesn't help at all.good luck

Posted: 16th Jul 2001
In retrospect, I have no clue how I learned the 5 beat weave from that video. Somehow I did so the answer is in there somewhere, just watch close. I must have watched that video 20 times and ran to my stix before something clicked. I have forward and reverse down perfect thanks to it so it's not bad, it's just not that great. Good luck everyone.Eric

Its about talent, not make up or costumes.

Posted: 16th Jul 2001
Wow Myst! I don't know how you did that either. I tried looking at it to figure out what was going on, but there was no way, so I just said f**k it, and tried visualizing in my head what it would look like if I reversed the 5 beat weave. I guess that worked ok cuz I did learn it eventually.

Posted: 19th Jul 2001
Cheers for the replies all, I'm getting there!! But the shoulders are still a nice shade of purple/black/blue!!For all fellow strugglers I'm sure we'll all get it soon, ain't no move too hard!!L8ersM:-)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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