Ascilith First Video

Here's my first fire spinning video. Hope you all like it

wow the 3 beat looks alot like a snail in parts of it

Two comments. 1. Spin slower! Control looks better then spinning fast. 2. Work on plane control. Cool video, happy spinning

I disagree with the above poster regarding speed - fast looks great. Spin at your own pace. I will say that the buzzsaw + leaning back move is really overdone though =P

I personally think speed depends on the music being played, and the move itself. I tend to do buzzsaws faster than normal ones. And when I have no music with fire I tend to spin at a snail's pace and I like it because the flames look enormous and it looks much cleaner.

first off i really am digging the way your spinning in this vid and the speed adds a rather interesting stylistic component to your spinning.
i do agree with the statement that everybody should spin at there own speed and everyone should do there own thing. that said reducing the speed you spin at can be very helpful. spinning fast is a natural tenancy for allot of people because it allows you to put allot of energy in the head and that makes it move in a more stable/predictable manor. but that same stability that it gives is its downfall because that instability when spinning slow is what you use to create a isolation by having your hand accommodate for it. isolations are one of the most valuable tools for doing transitions in poi via plane bending, stalls because when in a isolation within one circle of the poi you can change it to any plane(plane bend) or spin direction as well as switch between same time split time ect.
so because the hand has to in a 50% iso have to match directly the speed of the poi the speed of the poi cannot exceed the speed of the hand without reducing the isolation but as the speed increases and thus the amount of possible isolation decreases it takes more revolutions of the poi to make the same bend that you could do within one rev with a 50% iso. isolations happens when the poi are spinning fast if you wanna see it look to some one who is starting poi and working on plane control. the means they use to correct there planes is to make a small circle that each are just a few degrees off from each other. this in affect allows a bunch of smaller changes over many revolutions to add up to a big change. so while spinning fast may increase the speed of the poi it slows down the speed and freedom of transitions. so in effect spinning fast slows you down.

another thing i would like to note is that when it comes to matching your spinning to music there is a difference between the speed the poi is going and the speed you are going. you can match the beat of any song without speeding up the poi by using your own body movement. for example the same isolations that we where talking about before allow for a really interesting phenomena. by isolating instead of just the poi going through one beat both the poi and your hand go through 1 beat each making it so that in total there are two beats that spinner is setting just via that hand( this is not even looking at all the relative rhythms that the two poi can have to each other and to your body movement it self) versus the 1 beat it was making before in the same time frame. so out of all of the variables you can change to modify your rhythm the speed of the poi is the most limiting.
anyway sorry if this all sounds like babble i am writing this in Lou of sleep so it may be a little unclear. this is still something im formulating and trying to get in words and hopefully i will get something a little better written then this.
and Ascilith this is a pretty dope first video congrats!
happy spinning!!!
peace out

well glowsticking helped me transition at high speeds the part about iso's though i do agree with that fully

I find that as I get better, without music, I spin slowly with more control, but I mess up more when I do. But with songs I don't know why because I know know dancers and no one in my family or extended family dances. But I urge to dance with my body too. I find that to match beats of songs I mix of speed everything up, speed me up, spin the poi up, extend out my arms more, change between slow and faster in the middle of moves, and isolate random things, even just a little isolated because it seems to give a little flair to body movement.

I hope this helps some.

And it may not show up too much in my fire yet, but I tend to forget most everything I know when the fire comes out, knowing I'm on camera sometimes I do, and sometimes when people watch. Sometime I'll have to just tape myself practicing and edit it short to isolate a point where the music takes me away.

Dancing, to me, is something natural to everyone. It defines you. It's your body saying "This is me, this is how I will show it" I'm still working on isolations. But I'll learn. My next song will have more emotion and be slower. It ought to be a fairly decent spin.

If you want, I've had this song on my computer for like ever. My friend somehow find all of this random crap out of nowhere. Check out Random Rab for starters, never got too big into him, but he has some nice songs. I think he would have some more good songs, but I hate most of his music as is is mostly like Fantomas, Mr Bungle, Mustard Plug, and some other weird things. I also discovered Infected Mushroom because I've heard them mentioned here before. But you need to find slower paced music you like and that helped me a lot with spinning slower and more controlled.

Also, does anyone have any advice on making my body movements less awkward looking? Especially some certain things, Well, when I go slow whirling looks fine, but other than that whenever I move my body it tends to look pretty awkward.

It comes with practice. Just try to relax, follow the poi's lead. Play around in front of a mirror and try different poses and movements to go with certain moves. This is the advice I've been given, and I'm still not graceful but I think I look better than I did a few months ago, so it's a start.

Nice vid Ascilith. I may have the chance to try out fire for the first time tomorrow, don't know that I'm quite ready though... I have only a very small repertoire and haven't quite gotten the hang of linking what I know together yet.

As for the whole speed "debate": I agree that you should spin at whatever pace you like. I would suggest that when you are practicing, start slow with whatever move and just keep that move going, slowly gaining speed. This will help you gain greater control at the speed that you want to/are comfortable with spinning.

Ok, what you should do before starting fire: be able to spin 10 minutes without hitting yourself. That's what I did. So you go in with some confidence that you won't hit yourself.

That sounds like some good advice. My main problem with that is I'm not super used to moving around with the poi spinning yet and tend to move in a way that my poi don't jive with. Heh.

Off topic: How long (on avg.) does a burn run?

Mine are normally about 5.5 minutes My first one was about 6.5 minutes. The first burn of a piece of equipment is always the longest. Why? That was never explained to me.

Good to know, that way I can kinda plan. I plan on just flowing, but having an idea of the time frame for that flow helps me pick tunage to flow with.

Umm, I can tell you I can almost guarantee you'll forget everything you wanted to do. The first time you do it, most people are too busy being scared of being hit to flow really at all.