Cultural Appropriation in the 'Flow Arts' Community: Is it a problem?

Background:

'Flow Arts' is a recent category for a very inclusive group of activities including the popular hula-hooping, juggling, and sometimes nunchaku, as well as the more obscure poi, staff, rope-dart, meteor hammer, fan, devil sticks and sometimes diablo. 'Flow Arts' is often called 'spinning', as most of the 'toys' or 'props' involved rotate or induce rotation in the participant.

Some of these exist in other, sometimes overlapping contexts: circus arts incorporate juggling, devil sticks, diablo, sometimes poi, and sometimes hooping; many types of fire-dancing uses fans, staff, and poi; poi originated with New Zealand's Maori people and is part of that culture's dance; martial arts studies nunchaku, staff, and rope dart; children play with hula hoops; ravers spin glow-sticks as poi (often without knowing what 'poi' is) and sometimes hoop. Important to the existence and development of 'flow arts' is that it encourages practitioners to bring their own techniques, styles, and knowledge to the community.

Images from a Google search for 'Flow Arts':

Spinning always happens somewhere between practice and performance; alone or with others, performance (possibly to evaluate oneself) is simply part of the experience. Thus, the 'secondary text' of dancerliness that accompanies the 'primary text' of the spinning itself is part of the craft, and so a practitioner's ideas about spinning style, culture, and origins are relevant to most every experience. Those aforementioned sources - circus, martial arts, child's play, raving - thus become the setting in which a spinner exists while spinning, which might be a few hours a day. As new sources of movement are incorporated into the existing canon of tricks, styles, and techniques, they change the culture of the community by providing fodder for people's 'flow-state' conceptions.

For example, someone who likes the idea of martial arts might spin a staff and take themself very seriously, not playing music and/or wearing simple colors, even considering spinning and 'flow-state' a form of meditation. Someone else might wear short-shorts and hula-hoop outside in the sun or at a rave, carefree. These styles are reflections of the participants' personalities and are usually revealed in the music or sometimes clothes worn by the spinner. 'Spinning music' ranges from joyous to serious (though must be very rhythmic).

These settings all exist simultaneously at a spin-related gathering, where song-to-song variation will usually satisfy everyone. In this way the different styles meld together, creating an identifiable and somewhat cohesive 'spin culture' and hence 'spinning music' is a valid genre, albeit a wide one. This community formation, developing right now, is really cool. Imagine if soccer didn't exist and people all over the country were discovering it and getting together to play and forming communities based around it, and bonding the way people do over sports, but without that sports community already existing. It's like that!

Now that the background is clear (hopefully):

The melding of various spin styles is a cool part of the fledgling spinning community. What I think might be problematic are some people's specialization into a specific style, which might be a highly appropriative one. People who find these styles cool, though they might not realize it, could feel that way because of essentializing notions about that original culture.

Can 'getting into' a style of spinning be a harmful form of cultural appropriation? There are spinners all over the country picking up poi, rope-darts, staves, and nunchaku (de-weaponized versions) without any guidance from a representative of the martial-arts community. Is it any more problematic to spin nunchucks than to juggle clubs? Then, is it any more problematic to consider oneself a participant of 'martial-arts tradition' while spinning nunchaku than it is to consider oneself part of 'circus-arts tradition' while juggling? Why?

Where does an amateur practice of nunchaku lie on the spectrum of appropriation that includes cooking in a wok, practicing Gamalan dance, twerking alone in one's bedroom, wearing an Indian headdress to a music festival, and twerking on television?

I think that it all depends on what one takes seriously. Obviously dabbling in the art form and using it as an excuse to appropriate aesthetic elements into one's life is a problem. If one finds that a good kick spices up their spinning routine, though, they might ask themself: is it because it references a necessarily secondhand stereotype of kung-fu badassery, or is it just a beautiful movement?

Personally, I really like to hula hoop and juggle. This very weekend, I'm attending 'Master Ong's Flow Retreat', an event hosted by a guy named Marvin Ong (whom I met juggling at Burning Man two years ago), a world-class juggler who's brought some of the best spinners in the world to teach workshops all weekend in a park near San Diego. Here's a picture from a website where he sells spinning/juggling props:

WHAT IS HE WEARING??? HOW DOES HE THINK THAT'S OK?? Well, I think it might be more complicated than it initially seems. Marvin is a performer and lives a pretty simple life: he spins and juggles all day every day, and recently, through this website, figured out how to make a living through that. He's basically substance free and is extremely nice. I think he just thinks that this imagery lends mysticism to spinning, and makes it seem more than just movement, which it may just be. To use some ambiguous, seemingly uninformed, non-differentiating stereotypical image of what seems to be a Chinese old man is pretty clearly harmful, though. Probably not, but it's possible that Marvin, who grew up in Malaysia, is trying to say 'Hey, some of this is rooted in an Asian tradition that I'm a representative of - it's not just a modern phenomenon.' Not necessarily redeeming, but another possible explanation.

This is on the Master Ong's Prop Shop website:

Master Ong, is a representation of our inner self. Many of us of this era are in search of the path or the direction towards the glorious sunset. But it lays within us, the direction, the answer, its the process not the product, the journey not the destination. The master in each of us lays within us, we are masters of our own time, our art.

So it seems Marvin is just very religious, with his religion being flow arts. Maybe, then, everything he does can be compared to any other sincere proselytizing, for better or worse.

Another non-straightforward case is, as I've mentioned, people setting their spinning in an equally ambiguous, uninformed, stereotyping context. See this link below:

Enter The Dragon-- Siri Khalsa performs Dragon Staff

By calling this routine 'Enter The Dragon', this man is placing it in a pseudo-martial-arts setting by leveraging and reinforcing a stereotype of 'ancient martial arts tradition', possibly demeaning an actual tradition (possibly not, but I don't know if this has anything to do with an ancient style and I doubt this guy does either).

Here's a video that references the broad range of 'spinning' in which Marvin talks about 'flow state', and how spinning can change lives (and the world?):

Spinning culture is a melting pot and, drawing from so many sources, it's not surprising that it doesn't treat them all with due respect. I think it's cool and that, as it becomes a more visible community, it will have to absorb some ideas regarding cultural sensitivity and awareness regarding appropriation. I really do think that it will!

I may follow up with a comment about whether or not I see anyone this weekend at the 'flow retreat' doing something on par with wearing a Native American headdress, etc, and how other participants respond.