January 02, 2019

Why Floorwork & Low Flow is on the Technical judging system

Floorwork & Low Flow moved to the Technical judging system in 2019.

Here’s Renee Wu, our logistics manager, talking about her vision for the new scoresheet:

We want to encourage routines that showcase a set of skills and techniques that are specific to floorwork and basework/low flow. That can be done with any style of movement and many different expressions - heels, no heels, sexy, not sexy, happy, sad, whatever you want. The concept of the piece can be anything and isn't category specific or quite as important relative to the Exotic, Dramatic, and Entertainment categories.

We WANT You TO Focus on Well-Roundedness

The Technical judging system asks for many of the same elements as Artistic, but the points are more evenly spread out. We would like to see a routine with a balance of strong elements (Technical), rather than a focus on conveying a concept (Artistic).

FLF has awesome opportunities for interesting technique around the base of the pole and on the floor. It’s not as important that this routine evokes emotion from the audience, tells a story, or has a strong character. In some sense this would be the best category for those who want to really focus on technical heels work. Impressive heels technique here would be relatively more rewarded than in Exotic, since you could pick up points in Difficulty of Individual Moves and Difficulty of Transitions, two elements that aren’t part of the Artistic scoresheet.

Difficulty is not equal to 2 points of contact

We also want people to remember that difficulty of individual moves isn't limited to up the pole tricks. I had this conversation with some of my students about what would be considered difficult within the context of FLF without doing a thousand low ayeshas, phoenixes, fish flops, and handstands. I pulled up videos from Marlo Fisken, Carmine Black, and Claudia Renee as examples of hard low pole and floorwork that doesn’t just rely on inverted two point holds as the obvious this is difficult benchmark.

Let’s Differentiate from Exotic

We know that there’s a lot of crossover between Exotic and Floorwork & Low Flow competitors. With the new scoresheets, it is possible that a great FLF routine is super sexy, and also that a great Exotic routine involves you never climbing the pole. But having Exotic on the Artistic system and FLF on the Technical system makes sure that we are differentiating between the categories. Why differentiate?

1. While FLF can be exotic, and frequently is, it can also be other styles. And when it was under the Artistic system, it seemed like people sometimes forgot that you could do non sexy FLF routines too.

2. We want there to be a difference in the focus of the two types of routines. An Exotic routine should be a expression of sexiness and sensuality, where the audience is impressed by how effectively you conveyed that concept. In an FLF routine, the audience should be impressed by how technically proficient you are at working within the height limitation (and if you happen to also have a clear concept, that’s an extra bonus).

All that being said, we still do want to see sexy FLF routines! Those routines just also need to be well balanced in a way that Exotic routines don't necessarily need to be.