Good stilts

[Mike Weakley]

Here's another site I ran across for pole stilts... www.thespinsterz.com/stilts/peg-stilt.html. I've never used these, but they seem to be nicely made.

Mike

http://www.stiltfun.com

[martin ewen]

I've never bought stilts. I was trained to make my own and I've made many for other people.
I refuse to be seduced by shiny symmetry.
Stand on a piece of newspaper and go into a neutral stance, [or a putting stance if you don't have a movement or dance vocab]
Don't look down, look out.
Get someone to trace your feet with a marker pen or something.
Step back.
Look at the tracing and recognise the lack of symmetry.
Men are far less symmetrical than woman, I've noticed this in my experiences of this exercise. Not important but still interesting.

If you get help in the fitting of your stilts such that they conform and extend your natural stance then you are more able to simply extend your ground based movement vocab once you have developed your secondary body memory.

Maybe I take it a little more seriously than others need to but then I've specialised in stilts for 27 years and have had no real physical issues.

I'm looking at making my next pair out of the heart of the waxwood tree, [the central core of the tree] from China, it's the same wood Shaolin monks use for their staffs. My prior pegs were made from hand milled, naturally dried and vigorously pre-tested one inch square Hickory.

I'd do a workshop if enough mid level or above folk were interested.