This weekend several performers from Pyromancy will be heading to August 2010 Wildfire Retreat for a weekend of workshops and fun. Wildfire is the East Coast’s premier spinning and fire arts training camp. This is a community oriented event, offering a diverse selection of over 105 classes on poi, hoop, dance, teaching, safety, business, performance, and more. This weekend-long event is held in Northeast Connecticut.

Gillian Tunney will be teaching an Intermediate Contact Staff workshop on FISHTAILS! This workshop will be held on Saturday August 21, 4:20-5:30pm.
Course Description:

Learn fishtails! Learn the basic reverse fishtail, and how to transition into and out of it. While this class is primarily intended for the fishtail-less, we will also touch upon variations to spruce up the basic move.

Fishtails are a challenging move that I learned in baton twirling when I was younger, and is commonly used in fire contact staff to link different moves together without having to grab the staff with your hand. The baton/staff does a 1-beat twirling motion that is balanced on the back of the hand. The name “fishtail” comes from the side-to-side swimming motion the hand makes ( also it looks like you are drawing an infinity symbol with your hand when viewed from the front ), this is needed to maintain the speed and balance of the baton/staff. Hopefully once I figure out what the best way to teach this, I will make a tutorial to post here in case anyone else is interested.

As of 8/18/2010 there are 30 tickets to August Wildfire remaining, so if you are interested in going you should definitely check it out!