March, 2009:

I was asked to contribute my thoughts on hooping for Conscious Dancer Magazine. I figured I would share them here too. Look for the article in the upcoming June 2009 issue.

Is hooping a meditation? If yes, how so?
I believe hooping can be meditative or used for play or performance, or many other things. I find different facets that hooping can embody individually or simultaneously. The meditative aspect of hooping is an important one for me. I have a hard time quieting my mind. The repetition of one physical movement over and over again quiets my mind and allows me to drop into a meditative state which is otherwise difficult for me to find.

What is flow? How do you create it?
Flow is something one finds. It’s a state where you move in harmony with the hoop without having to think about it. For me flow is a state of mind and body, somewhere between the freedom of ecstatic dance and the harmony of meditation.

How is hooping a form of dance?
Hooping is a fluid movement art. Hoop dance aspires to express and react with the beat. I find that the hoop can be creating visual music. You can hold beats and tempos simultaneously through various scales of movement. For example my arm can carry the hoop in cadence with the beat while the hoop itself spins with the tempo and my body moves with the breaks and intensity of the song. Once you layer these things you begin to create complex patterns, one on top of the other that are spontaneously created with the music. The hoop is simply an extension of yourself that you can use to add more of these layers into your dance.

What are the aesthetics of men who hoop? How is it different than women?
Starting to hoop as a man is an intimidating process. Not only are you adopting the process of learning a new skill, but you are stepping into a nearly blank aesthetic slate. After two years, I still have moments where I have no clue what it is that a male hooper is supposed to wear or how he is supposed to move. There is no “supposed to” yet when it comes to masculine hooping. That’s both a blessing and a hindrance. It allows a lot of creative freedom but it’s also a lot to take on.

Within American culture, hip swaying has a strong female association and hoops have a childish association. Both of these aspects operate against the masculine societal norms. These two aesthetics become the anti-masculine and, by elimination, start to define masculine possibilities. The strongest emerging styles I see draw from martial arts inspired movements but you can also see influence from other forms of dance like break dancing, one of the few dance forms that is dominated by men. I would probably say that the strongest source of inspiration for my personal aesthetic is fire spinning which is another form of dance that tends to be lead by men.

If you perform hoopdance, why do you do it?
I’m starting to perform and this is something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about recently. I’ve always thought of myself as a hooper’s hooper rather than an audience hooper. It’s a very different mindset and journey which I think many artists can relate to. Catering to an uninformed audience as opposed to those possessing the knowledge of the physical skills changes the entire game. For instance, if I’m performing for an audience of hooper’s or other flow artists /object manipulators they tend to notice the slight details of how I manipulate my hand to transition the hoop from one movement to the other. They also tend to recognize and appreciate the more difficult moves, that often look easy, because they’ve tried to do that move themselves. An audience needs to be engaged to be entertained. They need to feel a personal connection to what they are seeing. Other hoopers instantly have a personal connection to what I am doing because of their own personal relationship with the hoop (or other object). It’s self referencing. To form that personal connection with an audience of non-hoopers one must possess skills outside of just hooping. Some think that to be a hooper alone makes you a performer. I honor and appreciate the skills needed to be an entertainer too much to take calling one’s self a performer too casually.

I’ve decided to start acquiring the skills to become a performer recently because I believe performing is an important avenue for advancing hoop dance as an art. Weather it is the right path for me or not, I do not know. Both the inventor/researcher hiding in the lab and the advocate that is spreading the word are important for any type progress to be made.

How can hooping make you feel like a kid again?
Hooping allows me to explore for the sake of exploring. I try things that have little if any practical purpose other than the joy I get from doing them. Hooping is like a puzzle that is being defined as you play. You don’t really know what the questions are until you are in the process of answering them.

Thank you to Christabel and Candice for allowing me to contribute my two cents. And thanks to Lauren for helping me (as always) with the nonsense I get myself involved with.

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