Muse Circle on Substack

We are here to share 35 years of inspiring (→muse) encounters with an expanding collective (→circle).

Muse Circle is a collective of diverse, tolerant, and accepting people expressing a wide range of perspectives in terms of language, country of origin, ethnicity, philosophy, gender, sexual orientation, neurology, body, and other human characterstics.

We promote environmental sustainablity by focussing on low-impact services rather than the sale of merchendise. Our activities include arts in nature, which promote an appreciation of simple expression and communing with a greater-than-human community. In an urban setting, we make use of existing facilities with responsible conservation and recycling practices. Our online activities reduce the need for communiting.

We are committed to the freedom of expression by offering a non-directive approach to learning and are dedicated to providing services to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford them by offering reduced rates and in-kind exchanges.

WhatHowWhy?

Remaining in the reflection of everything that makes us wonder, we don’t pretend to know anything. With you, we humbly explore a realm of possibilities, so why not title our articles with questions rather than declarations?

OurArt

Sharing what comes out of our imagination is another way of remaining in the realm of possibilities. Perhaps a performance, perhaps just a fragment of an unfinished piece, our music, dance, poetry, drama, memoirs and visuals are available for your enjoyment.

AskUs

Send us your questions, and we’ll do our best to answer. We invite you to try us on as your muses. They’ll inspire us, and you’ll become our muses, too!

HowTo

We share, from our experience, ways of doing art that might be helpful to you. We’ll suggest how to:

• Organize and facilitate conscious dance workshops

• Be artful in nature

• Jam with music, visual art, drama, movement, technology

• Be a creative (bio)logical family

• Build relationships and teams

• Creatively engage with alternative spaces

• Do things we haven’t thought up yet …

ListenUp

Sometimes you might just want to have us on in the background, your eyes on something else (or just closed). Keep your ear out for:

• Conscious Dance Mixes

• Read Alouds of Our Articles, Fiction, Poetry, and Memoires

• Soundscapes

SpotLight

We aim to share what inspires us most in the work of people we know and in that of the greater community.

MuseLists

We have so many favorites that sometimes it takes a list to gather them all in one place.

Who Is Muse Circle?

Flo and Thomas Vinton

Together since the fall of 1987, we are a couple who has chosen to live, work, and play together. Thomas grew up on the west coast of Florida, Flo on the southern coast of Brittany. We met in the South of France, where we are resettling after many years in the USA and Hong Kong. Jam culture is our lifeblood. Making spontaneous music, dancing wherever we are, playing out our drama, and capturing what our inner eye sees keeps us alive and vibrant. We are now setting up a new center where everyday people can express themselves in the studio and out in nature. We look forward to taking advantage of the area’s many natural and naturist resources to ignite and share our passion. We are particularly attuned to the needs of frontline caregivers who work with people facing difficulties of all sorts and invite them to join us in our adventure. Eternal risk takers, we continually move outside of our comfort to grow as individuals, as a couple, and as part of a greater creative collective. We wouldn’t ask you to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves.

Values

Our true nature … renewed through the arts

Renewing through the arts our true nature as living beings entails grounding ourselves in a truly natural environment and surrendering to its mysterious wonder. Our surroundings take on various forms from mountain, ocean and sky to wall, drinking fountain and ceiling. Many public spaces, including institutions of governance and learning, attempt to push nature out of its central role in our development. Many authentic learning moments escape our attention as we adhere to programs designed long ago to promote conformity and the status quo. Individuals and groups tend to adopt patterns that reward them with incentives, punish them with prescribed consequences and alienate them from their highest vision of themselves and society.

Production, transaction and consumption dominate public life and creep into the dreams of individuals who might otherwise be imagining and inventing greater goods. Nature is set aside as another commodity, taking the form of gardens, parks and conservancies. It becomes objectified as if we were not one in the same. We identify with artificiality and shun authenticity at every level, including our modes of creative expression. Our inner world risks becoming as sterile and impotent as the institutions we see wilting around the world. We find ourselves trying to change others while bending ourselves backwards to please them.

Perhaps the distress we witness out in the world reflects a loss we have already felt inside. Maybe if each of us recalibrates our inner landscape with the patterns found in water, air and land, we can relearn our own natural rhythms, melodies and harmonies. So we can dance a new dance that is as old - and wise - as the hills.

We go into nature - literally - to commune with and learn from it. 

It speaks to us and directs our play, conducts our music and choreographs our dance - so we don’t have to.

We go into nature - figuratively - to remember it and reproduce it. 

All that humans produce may be considered artificial, but our production can also be natural.

For this to happen … 

…we must get out of our own way.

… we must get out of the way of our children.

Typically, a child given a drum plays it naturally with a steady beat and a lot of flourish. Usually, a child left alone to play will act out wondrous stories in detailed scenes. Ordinarily, a child with crayons will make art that would have inspired Picasso. Predictably, a child who hears music will dance like nobody's watching. Many of us have had our music, drama, art and dance trampled on. We’ve been regimented, measured, judged, critiqued and eliminated.

Or trained, rewarded, glorified, consumed and spit out. We may believe we have no creativity, talent or worthwhile skills. We may believe that others should be producing art for us to consume.  And yet, free expression is our birthright. Without it we wither. When we cease to express our true nature freely, we enable the Behemoth of antiquated, dogmatic systems to run us and our planet. These systems tell us what to think, feel, say and do.  They put temporary gains in front of sustainable practices.

​They dehumanize and artificialize us.

Fortunately for our children and us, we can engage right here and now with our natural creativity. If we are in an artificial environment, we can take steps to go back home to nature. Just paying attention to our own body is a great start.  We notice our breathing, our heartbeat and sensations throughout the body. Being in nature facilitates this process, but we can access it anywhere. We can bring nature into any environment and benefit ourselves and others.

Going into nature with others, especially people who have had some experience creating in the wild, catapults the spirit into a new dimension, one where we can experience the joy of being a musician-dancer- actor-artist.

We understand that we are at choice and can recreate a world that is just as real - actually more real - than what people refer to as the real world.

And with the renewed energy we receive by being in nature and being natural, we can go out into the real world and inspire our communities and our world.  

We aim to promote a harmonious learning environment, accepting of all without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, gender, socio-economic situation, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, gender identity or ability.

History

We founded Muse Circle in Austin, Texas, USA in 2003 and have been facilitating expressive arts activities for groups and individuals ever since. 

Originally focussing on after school activities, our offerings have always promoted individual and group expression over performance and virtuosity. 

Much of our work has served communities learning additional languages and very young children developing their first skills. 

Early on we discovered that people learn more when they forget they are supposed to be learning and are immersed in an experience that allows intuition and creativity to bubble up naturally. 

As we began working more with families and adults, especially in the field of conscious dance, we continued embodying the philosophy of non-directive coaching and sourcing creative flow without imposing steps or rigid structure. 

In our current phase, we are diving deeper into nature and bringing people out into the wild to become the wild creatures we are all meant to be as human beings. 

While we the founders, Flo and Thomas, have led Muse Circle since its inception, our children Swan and Tifenn, now adults with careers of their own, have been - and continue to be - an indispensable part of our story, participating in the creation and performance of nearly every interactive event we have produced since 2003.

2022-2023 Transition

Sarasota, Florida, USA; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Hennebont/Paris/Montpellier and surrounding areas, France

We pause to care for and commune with family members, to enjoy the natural environment and urban settings, to touch base with our birth places, to consult with expert colleagues in the field, to immerse ourselves in ecstatic dance and contact improvisation communities, to establish a new online presence that supports a digitally nomadic lifestyle, and to anchor ourselves in the land where Muse Circle founders first met 35 years prior.

2022

Lantau Island, Hong Kong

After serving Hong Kong’s international community for seven years, we cease normal operations and focus on creating original art-in-nature pieces and workshops in the wild, following up on experiments previously relegated to our spare time.  We develop and deliver a conscious dance facilitator workshop and pass on our weekly practice to a devoted group of leaders who continue to expand the collective we had been serving for 8 years (3 years as crew and 5 years as organizers and facilitators). 

2015-21

Hong Kong Island

We develop and facilitate after school arts activities that include early childhood and primary school music and movement, art and drama, in French and English for international schools, clubs and families.

In addition to facilitating directly at the Canadian International School, The Harbour School, The Repulse Bay Club and others, we develop parent and teacher trainings for arts integration at Discovery Montessori, ESF Language and Learning Centre, EtonHouse International, Fairchild Kindergarten, Hillside International Kindergarten and Kornhill International Kindergarten.

Our students engage in jamming, songwriting, recording, creating scenes, telling digital stories, making art, dancing and experimenting with sensorial games. 

Our focus is creativity and fun.

With adults, we host weekly conscious dance sessions and offer several nature-based workshops, including barefoot walking meditation and spontaneous art making in the woods. 

In response to the pandemic and to accommodate diverse needs, we develop a flexibility strategy that allows for dynamic shifts from dancing together in the studio to participating only online, moving outdoors and combining live and online learning.

We ally with local artists to produce live events and videos, becoming a regular feature of Le French May with frequent collaborator, May Yeung.

Other collaborators include Marloes Van Houten, David Yeung, Paul Yip, Ernest Chang, Kai Djuric, Elizabeth Ehrig, Lydia Liu and Liane Mah.

Our collaborative video series, The Fifty Flo Show, includes contributions from our wider circle, culminating in the music video, “Let Love Flow.”

We relocate to Lantau Island and fully immerse ourselves in its natural beauty and unique culture.

2013 - 2014

Nantes, France

Teaming with L’Atelier du Coteau, We launch arts activities and events, in English as the target language, for multigenerational gatherings and for every age group.

Events include spontaneous musical parades through the outdoor market, large group creative experiences in the studio and themed birthday parties like our interactive tribute to American Graffiti.

Our partnership culminates in the production of Identité à la carte, a live original stage production featuring a multigenerational ensemble performing on live instruments and dancing in front of an elaborate multimedia display. 

We also joined Urban Voices Nantes’ massive drum corps and choir Tambours à Nantes led by Karim Amour, learning call-and-response anthems from around the world and singing with a diverse group of people from all walks of life.

2004 - 2012

Atlanta, Georgia, USA

We develop arts activities for local schools, including Atlanta New Century School (ANCS), where we produce a dozen student shows, often featuring original music and student-authored dramatic scenes.

Our musical worship series, The Gospel According to Pop, an investigation into the power of mass communication in expressing spirituality, becomes a recurring Sunday morning service at the Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

We write and compose the original musical, Acoustic Mouse, Electric Mouse, and produce it first in English at ANCS and then in French at Lac du bois, Concordia Language Villages, Minnesota, where we are artists in residency for a summer.

We bring forward the importance of immersive language learning through the arts and develop activities in French for English speakers, featuring Chez Flo, an exquisite evening of French wining and dining, singalongs and interactive games.

The Forty Flo Show, a one-woman show produced by actor, teaching artist, and Muse Circle mentor Jaehn Clare, featuring our founder Flo and a cast of local heroes like Elise Witt, Virginia Schenck, and InTown Band pays tribute to the families and friends who have inspired the ethos feuling Muse Circle’s interactive cultural experiences.

We run a successful Kickstarter campaign to produce our video webseries, Atlanta to Nantes, which documents our transition from the US to France.

2001 - 2003

Austin, Texas, USA

Founder Flo teams up with artist Valerie Chaussonnet, whose home and garden become a nature-filled playscape for learning French through the arts, La Petite Provence.  

We launch Muse Circle with the release of the children’s CD and accompanying concerts, Nommi: My Name Is Nommi Girinkinin, featuring our founder Thomas plus family and friends.  

We develop our first after school program to facilitate collaborative songwriting.

Services

Muse Circle provides expressive arts facilitation for individuals, families, groups and corporate clients online and in person. Please contact us for more information regarding:

• Conscious Dance

• Arts in Nature

• Drum Circles

• Family Jams

• Couples Retreats

• Teambuilding

• Alternative Space Engagement

• House Concerts

• Online Learning

• Teacher Training

Who pays for all this?

Our plan entails making our content available using a multi-tier approach:

For now, everything we post is free for everyone. Soon we will ask for founding members and paid subscribers. Even then, we will create an avenue for a certain number of people to receive complimentary subscriptions, and some of our posts will always remain free for everyone.

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