Eric Shibuya is originally a native of Oahu Hawaii, but calls Fredericksburg Virginia home now. Eric first got involved in the flow arts through juggling when he was 13 years old. Eric first learned how to juggle to keep his little sister entertained whenever he babysat her. Eric kept up with the art through college where he saw the most improvement in his skills. Eric’s been juggling for what feels like forever now seeing how he’s 48, so 35 years give or take. It has only been in the past 5 years or so that Eric has branched out beyond juggling. In the last 3 to 4 years Eric has picked up other props like poi, meteor and Puppyhammer.
One of the biggest reasons Eric loves flow arts is because of the accepting people that compile our community. When Eric goes to flow and fire festivals, he’s conscious of how he’s in a place where while he doesn’t know 75% of the people, he’s aware of how trusting flow artist are considering they leave their things all over the place. It’s little things like that.
Going to Flow Festivals has also made Eric more forward thinking in how he approaches life and accepting of differences in others. “As an Asian guy in a predominantly white subculture, there aren’t a lot of people of color doing what we do, certainly not professionally. I think it opens my mind to a lot of different things. Not just color, religion.” and has made me more accepting of a whole lot of different things not just color and I just realize you’re not any of those types of things this all the different
Eric believes that the ability to translate skills is what’s special about flow art. One of the reasons why poi is a lot of fun is because you can make it looks a little bit like staff. If you turn staff into something else it can be like meteor and mini hoops are really just double staff or poi and he just love that kind of language translation.
As a juggler, Eric continues to delve deeper into the flow arts. He’s grown to love the language translation that exists between all the tools we utilize in object manipulation. He also loves coming to flow festivals to be able to translate juggling for other people into the prop of their choice. Eric is a teacher by trade and believes that in many ways people go into teaching not because it’s way to make money, but because that is truly what they want to do and so even here when he comes to flow Festival just to be part of the community and have fun, Eric can’t help but want to share and teach and that is the greatest love he has for this art.
You can follow Eric’s flow on Youtube