POI
Meet Brandon
Brandon Tyson sits at his workshop, surrounded by intricate lighting pieces he’s handcrafted; wood panels cut with sacred geometry radiate around him in a variety of patterns and colours. He speaks with the cool confidence of someone who knows what he’s doing. Closing his computer, he grabs his props and hops down the stairs, exiting towards a nearby park, his poi dangling from his fingers. He jumps up on various fountains and statues, spinning and moving to display a brilliant light show against the backdrop of downtown Calgary. As he spins his poi, he moves his body through them, dancing and grooving slowly – making it look seamless, like they are extensions of his own limbs. Watching him is at once completely exhilarating and completely relaxing.
Tyson has been spinning props for over ten years. Now 31 years old, he has built this hobby from the ground up into a profitable career and business. His introduction to the scene was strikingly simple. Over a decade ago, he went to a party and saw someone spinning poi. Entranced, he decided to give it a shot himself. He quickly realized he had a natural talent, and decided to run with it. While he has expanded into further props today, he maintains that his favourite has always been poi.
“I found out really quickly that I had a knack for it. I picked it up so fast, and just found myself expanding into every prop that I could find,” Tyson explains.
Tyson earned an early nickname as the “Copy Ninja” among the flow arts community. He garnered a reputation as someone who didn’t need tutorials, classes, or retreats – all he had to do was watch you perform a trick once and he was able to replicate it right afterwards.
He mentions that he often found himself getting bored with the pace of learning he found in classes, and preferred a learning experience where he entered a big group of people “having a jam” and watched them spin.
“It was incredibly meditative for me, and really helped me to get my life figured out at that time. It became a little bit of an addiction,” he admits, “I wouldn’t classify it as a bad addiction, but it was an addiction nonetheless.”
Over the past ten years, Tyson has watched flow arts develop into a major part of the electronic music community, a process he describes as “exciting.”
“It’s really cool to see people go through the stages of learning and development with props,” he notes, “you get the people who maybe come from a more difficult space in life, maybe there are self-confidence issues or something, and now they have an outlet that they’re confident with and you can see a shift in their entire personality based on this passion that they’ve found for themselves.”
In his own experience, delving into the flow arts made him “a lot more open to community, to be able to connect with people” – a seemingly universal feeling among flow artists.
Photo Courtesy of Third Eye Arts
“I can walk to a park and see someone over there spinning a hula-hoop, I don’t even know who they are, but we’re already friends. We’re already connected,” he says excitedly.
A common theme among flow artists is their love for the openness and non-judgemental nature of the community. Hear Brandon's thoughts above.
Creating a Career
An entrepreneur, Tyson springboarded his passion for flow artistry into a profitable business called Lightbox Project where he creates unique, customizable ambient light products. In this phase of his life, his devotion to the business side of things has overtaken his participation in the performance arena, but his ultimate goal is to one day be able to successfully merge the two. He’s already well on his way - his technical knowledge of lighting and design allows him to create his own flow props.
“I am a maker,” Tyson says confidently, “For me, there’s always got to be that level of personalization. I’m always adding new features to the ways I decorate [my props], or I’ll add certain elements to them to create drag or extra weight. I can fine tune them to what my body really enjoys to perform with.”
Many flow artists say that the number one challenge of being a performer is transforming flow artistry from a passion to a profitable career. As somebody who successfully made the switch, Brandon looks back on his experience and agrees it required perseverance.
“You have to be able to get your name out there. It’s a lot of just, going to shows and performing and sometimes you’re just wasting your time, sometimes it’s paying off. It’s high risk, high reward,” he says, “really, it’s about having to constantly put that energy in to get the word out there about what you’re capable of doing.”
Brandon talks about how he gets his work as a flow performer, and some of the highlights of his performance career.
One of the unique challenges Brandon has faced in his career is from the talent management side – managing larger shows that require up to six different performers. He describes the process as similar to “herding cats” – and cheekily places the blame on what he calls the performer ego.
“It’s not ‘look at me, look at me, I’m going to show off’, it’s about offering a service,” he says, “especially when you are hired as ambient performance, a lot of people always want to be the main show, right? But many times you are the sideshow, you have to listen to the client and do your thing while not pulling too much attention away from the actual show that’s going on.”
