World of Flow Arts is launching!

Hello everyone,

It’s finally happening! The first episode of the ‘World of Flow Arts’ YouTube series is out! In this YouTube series I take the viewers with me into the world of Flow Arts, the first episodes will be interviews with performers, prop builders & other spinners. Over time I hope to add more to this list by going into the history of the props, meet the inventors & show the Flow Arts places you can visit yourself. I’m open for ideas along the way too, this series is going to be a lot of fun to make. Watch the first episode here.

This newsletter is part of me showing the world of Flow Arts too. This is the spot where I gather up all the juicy research and insights, making it easy for us to explore and understand this vibrant artform.

So, for our first deep dive, I’ve been pondering the origins of the term ‘Flow Arts’. It’s a pretty new term still, so I’ve been digging into where it all began. I went a bit far into reading about the origins of creativity but in the end found it all ties together from the word Flow. The term ‘Flow’ refers to the state of being completely absorbed and focused in an activity to the point of being in a near-meditative state.

Flow Arts has became the term to describe a variety of movement-based disciplines that integrate elements of dance and object manipulation. Practitioners of flow arts use props such as hoops, poi, staffs, juggling balls and other object, creating a continues, flowing movement. It’s not just about the performance, but the experience and journey of mastering these movements. This is where you can hit that ‘Flow State’ in your dance.

The activity might not be all about performing, but still there are a lot of Flow Artists that showcase their art at many types of events. I’ve noticed that the term Circus if often used to describe the shows and so in my YouTube series I’ve asked my guests about the difference for them between Circus and Flow Arts. So far we’ve all come to the conclusion that Flow Arts is something that is done in the circus, but it becomes circus when you do something absolutely inhuman with it. You need to be the best of your craft to be featured in a circus. Flow Arts doesn’t need to be so much about skill if you don’t want to join the Circus. Flow Arts is more about reaching the Flow State and to dance and just be in the moment with your prop. You don’t have to have skills or a long time practice in it to do it. You can do it in your own way and be part of a community while at it.

So for when the term Flow Arts came around I don’t have a credible source except for what I’ve heard from talking with people in the Flow Arts world. Most agree it came up around the year 2000 and spread through the internet reaching a fast momentum around 2010 where most people acitvely used the term who were practicing the artform.

I decided to ask ChatGPT to see if I could pinpoint a source anywhere that would lead me to the answer. I have to admit, I was very dissapointed in how much knowledge ChatGPT has about Flow Arts. Then again, the artform is still pretty new and not many people are writing or talking about it, most people are just doing it. So I got a few sources I could track from ChatGPT leading towards Drexfactor, a known YouTuber and poi spinner in the Flow Arts world. He has done a lot of research already that I can build upon and also track. But when I asked ChatGPT about other sources I was pretty upset with the result.

So ChatGPT has been providing me with sources that then after asking about them, don’t exist. I had a few of these happen but also managed to get some sources that I could trace. It has been an interesting journey so far and if I come by any more interesting related knowledge, I will share it. For now, thanks fo reading and I hope to write again soon. Currently researching the performance world and the individual prop histories. When I’ve gathered enough information to share, you will get another e-mail. Until then, take care and go with the flow!

Sources:

Book: Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Video: Flow Arts - A Film by Nico Evers

Drexfactor website archive - a history of Flow Arts