Last week we started our discussion of the culture of the Flow Arts by defining the term and placing it in the context of the wider movement arts world. Today, we’re going to be talking about the history of the artform and how it came to be.

Giving a history of the Flow Arts is tricky for a couple reasons. The first is that in a lot of cases, the history of the art simply wasn’t written down. It was passed down either orally or done face-to-face, so there aren’t a lot of references or history to really look up. Secondly, because the Flow Arts have placed prop manipulation from many different cultures and backgrounds into a new context, it can be difficult to sort out the history of the props from the history of the art itself.

I’m not going to lie: it’s impossible for me to list off a history of the artform that will satisfy everyone. The best I can do is split it up into two distinct parts. In this first part, I’m going to be doing a general history of many of the props that are currently used in the Flow Arts, what their traditions are, and how they’ve changed over time. In the next part, I’m going to be covering the cultural changes that occurred that led to all these props coming together and giving rise to a new philosophical context. Basically, when did these props stop coming from their parent contexts and become the Flow Arts?

I’m going to do the best I can with the resources I’ve been able to access in the past few years, but this should not be considered a definitive history--I fully expect others to do a much more comprehensive job of this in the coming years and I hope to do an update of this video in the future when that happens.

So let’s start at the beginning! When did people start playing around with objects for fun? Probably for as long as there have been people and most likely a good long time even before that. Chimpanzees and other Great Apes frequently make use of objects they encounter for recreational purposes, so it’s likely that this behavior is something that dates back to our last common ancestor millions of years ago if not before.

The first time we know it appears in history, however, appears in two wall paintings from Egyptian tombs dating to around 2000 BCE. One appears to depict multiple people juggling small balls. The other shows two men playing with a hoop.

Both of these tools appear time and time again in the ancient world. We find evidence of toss juggling among the Greeks, Chinese, Indians, Norse, Native Americans, Polynesians...I mean to be honest you’re going to have a harder time finding a culture that doesn’t have a juggling tradition.

Hooping is a little bit more complicated, because for most of its history the most common use for hoops was bowling, that is, getting them rolling and trying to keep them going. Usually this was done with a stick and in some cases a skill game was made out of tossing an object into them. Hoop bowling was even endorsed as a form of exercise by Hippocrates, the founder of Western Medicine and we find scattered reference to hoops being spun around the body core as far back as in ancient Egyptian texts. There is also a strong tradition of hoop dance in some Native American cultures that first appears in written history by the 18th century.

One of the strongest sources for traditions of prop manipulation in history are the martial arts. The use of staves, whips, and swords are so common that again, we’d have an easier time naming cultures they didn’t emerge out of.

One example that stands out from the pack, however, is the use of forms in Chinese Wushu, or as it’s more popularly known in the West, Kung Fu. Rather than using weapons purely as martial instruments, these forms worked to cultivate the practitioner’s chi and made moving with weapons not just a great form of physical exercise but also an aesthetically pleasing art. Among the objects from Wushu that eventually find a role in the Flow Arts are the jian, gun, and shéng biāo or in English the double-sided sword, staff, and rope dart.

One of the most popular props in the modern flow arts began to emerge in the 13th Century when Polynesian peoples colonized the islands of New Zealand. These colonists, the Māori, began a group dance tradition known as haka. Haka include a number of different variants from war dances for intimidation to welcoming chants, but the dance we probably best know from this tradition is one that is traditionally performed by women dancing with small balls attached by cords to each hand, or poi. To the Māori, poi spinning has a strong ceremonial or storytelling significance and most modern flow artists would likely only recognize a handful of tricks associated with it.

Much more of the modern poi style can be traced to meels, or as they’re sometimes rather politically incorrectly known as, Indian Clubs. Meels emerge out of the near east in Persia and Egypt as both a strength training as well as dexterity building exercise and were a hugely popular form of exercise in the 19th century. The sport was so popular it was included in the first Modern Olympic Games but gradually shrank in popularity with the boom in team sports.

As meels were catching on among Victorian fitness buffs, they were also be adapted for use in that most ancient of prop manipulation styles: juggling. While balls, staves, knives, and a number of other implements had all been used for juggling throughout history, DeWitt Cook became the first juggler to adapt meels for use in the pursuit. Also at this time, juggling became a popular form of entertainment in both vaudeville as well as circus shows.

In 1936, Hinrich Medau introduced hoops into the world of rhythmic gymnastics, where they quickly became a staple of the sport. For much of the 19th century, moving a hoop around one’s body core began to become associated with Hawaiian hula dancing due to similar movements in the performer’s hips. In 1957, the Wham-O toy company produced the first plastic hoop meant for moving around the waist under the name hula hoop and a fad was born. If you grew up in a western country, it’s almost certain you encountered one growing up.

At dance festivals in Western Europe and Asia, a tradition was also emerging of twirling and tossing a single object into the air that was eventually adopted as a visual flair for armies marching in parades. They’d be led by a single rifleman who would spin their gun in a similar style for the crowd’s amusement. In many cases the rifle would be replaced with a mace. These riflemen were known as “drum majors,” and when this position was opened up to women the mace became smaller, lighter, and more evenly balanced--giving rise to “majorettes” and eventually the modern sport of baton twirling and flag spinning in color guard were born.

Baton twirling has gone on to become the basis of much of the basic vocabulary of modern contact staff.

As we get into the modern era, we find a diverse mix of traditions for moving with props. From martial arts to circus, gymnastics, dance, and more, the Flow Arts are something of a melting pot for a variety of movement arts from a diverse range of cultures.

So how did all the Flow Arts emerge from all these other art forms and why are they considered distinct? We’ll cover that next week.

One quick note: this post took a massive amount of research! You can read some of the sources I consulted below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_juggling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_martial_arts
http://www.wbtf.org/About/History
http://www.hooping.org/hula-hoop-history/
http://on.fb.me/22lw1Fg

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