#plane breaking

[poividoftheday]

When G first came to the United States to show off his unique brand of plane-breaking in 2009, it was at once both tantalizingly close to what many Americans were already doing, yet challenging enough to require a systematic approach to breaking the moves down. Here's an awesome video PVofD editor Noel Yee did of G in the Flowspace that year, showing off how different timing and direction combinations could be used to take stalls and zero points into a truly 3D world.

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[poividoftheday]

2009 was my first year at Firedrums, and I remember it as the year that his plainspoken English lad came in and taught us all how to plane shift. I cannot ever remember a moment that year when G wasn't flanked on all sides by eager poi enthusiasts trying to figure out how he'd suddenly rocketed us into the world of 3D. This same year G performed at San Francisco's Decom to what by now is the most overplayed fire dancing song in the history of fire dancing songs. He was first out the gate, though, and what makes this performance really pop is how he accents the beats with the staccato rhythms of his plane-breaking. There is still nobody else with this much flair that can plane break this cleanly.

Sidenote: as an interesting point of comparison, G tried this same performance as a glow performance the following year at Spin Festival (you can view it here) and it's an excellent example of why fire and glow are two vastly different performance mediums. In a glow environment, the choreography is TOO staccato and G's beautiful plane shifts become unintelligible when the body isn't visible to provide a point of reference.

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[poividoftheday]

This has to be one of my favorite poi videos of all time--Yuta and Ronan, two of the greatest spinners in our history, meeting at the Vulcan and deciding to collaborate on this beautiful video. Each gets a few moments in the sun, showing off some of the moves we know them best for (Yuta stalls, pendulum stalls, etc) and then coming together for what are still some of the loveliest tunnels I've ever seen in any video. Special bonus: my friend Conway Jennings has a brief cameo in this one :)

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