Less than two weeks from the DVD release…. then I’m posting a ton of new music here. Isopop is about to drop the hammer :) In the meantime, here’s Brecken and I’s Flowshow performance.
Brecken
Spiral…
There is some thick competition for the Female Hooper this year, with a very deserving field. I consider each of these women friends and any one of them could win.
Beth is one of the most skilled, precise, flowing and humble hoopers in the world. Anah has greater control of her hoop than any other person I’ve ever seen on top of being a catalyst for this whole thing. Shakti is beautifully fluid, precisely choreographed, and innovative as hell. Brecken is a game changer, tearing down walls, and is quite possibly the sickest hooper I have ever seen.
The reasons behind my approaching Spiral to partner with me on Hoop Technique continue to be the reasons I’m stoked to be working with her today and the same reasons that she’ll be receiving my vote for Female Hooper of the Year.
Spiral has shaped so much of our community so thoroughly that many of the traits we just think of as modern hooping come directly from her creative input.
Spiral was the first person recognizing the strength of smaller lighter hoops, sparking the downsize race. We’ve all been following her lead on this since. She was the first person to research new plastics for regular hoops (which I later shared openly on Isopop.)
Spiral brought hooping to North Carolina. She and Jewels started the community in Carrboro that was later shaped by Bax to include the Hoop Path. The Hoop Path has since become one of the most influential forces in the hooping world and in my own personal hooping. Referring to the Hoop Path metaphorical mountain, Bax references Spiral as the top of that mountain. I’ve felt that way for years. At the last SF HP workshop, Bax talked about how he and Spiral created Warrior Style hooping, jamming for hours in his backyard and during long, late nights at the gym. That Warrior movement style has become the base of national tour and continues to be one of the sickest styles of hooping.
Dynamic stalls were created by Spiral shortly after she and Jewels concurrently gravitated towards sustaining spins within the hoop, attending a Sufi workshop together and posting the videos that coined the term. These moves were paired with with full, flowing skirts and popularized to the greater community by Spiral. Since, these movement ideas have infiltrated the entire community and are staples of modern hoop dance. They are beautiful techniques creating an amazing optical illusion that has inspired many.
On top of all this, she has invested herself deeply into the pursuit of hooping as a serious modern art. This isn’t just something she pursues for herself but as a way to legitimize what all of us do to the wider community. She literally trains 4 hours a day. She continues to expand upon hoop vocabulary by integrating acrobatics into her acts in non-traditional ways. I don’t believe there is another person who has put more hours into their practice than she has.
The pursuit of the legitimization of hooping as a modern art is what we founded Hoop Technique around. This principle is the single strongest guiding force in our vision. I’m honored that she has chosen to include me in her pursuit of this goal. We’ll see where this takes us…. regardless I’m confident and happy with my vote this year.
Don’t forget to place your vote on Hooping.org: here
Pure Brecken Badassery… A Week in Review …
Brecken – the beginning and end of the beginning of practice
Brecken at the Prop Box in the Vulcan. I’m looking forward to start choreographing the b-boy style hoop battle she and I will be doing for The Flow Show. We’ve been joking about doing it to Run DMC. Gotta get me some white adidas.
MiMosa – Pandora – “Psychedelic Stereo” EP Demo
This album will be released sometime in February. The only person more amped than me is probably Lauren. MiMosa is by far her favorite DJ to get down to on the dance floor. Hah… Brecken recently moved into MiMosa’s old room at the Vulcan in Oakland. Amazing things come out of that place.
Part of what Lauren and I love about the emerging dirty west coast wobble dub scene is the tempo. You get a house/trance/anything else for that matter DJ and they’ll likely be droppin 150 beats per minute (BPM). You talk to a happy hardcore DJ and they’ll be spinning 200+. Mimosa, Glitch Mob, and even BassNectar at this point are slowing things down. We’re back to 85-100 BPM. That’s very close to the Hip-Hop I grew up with, not to mention a lot of these DJ’s are remixing hip-hop tracks. This is the right pace for me to hoop too. If the music is too fast… I just hoop fast. If it’s a bit slower, I hoop slow but still can’t resist to break into fast fits.
Pandora – “Psychedelic Stereo” EP Demo
MiM0SA | MySpace Music Videos
53 – Sidecar, Brecken Demo for Hoop Technique
Last night Spiral, Lauren and I headed over to Brecken’s new place at the Vulcan to video her demo footage for the Hoop technique DVD. Brecken is loving the Vulcan so far and the place seems to fit her well. She has put a lot of work into polishing up her private space, even installing a brand new hardwood floor and giving it a slick new paint job. It’s great that we have another hooper immersed in the depth of the Vulcan tech approach to object manipulation.
While sitting in one of the Vulcan courtyards, we were talking to Sidecar Tommy of Beat’s Antique. I mentioned digging the “53 – Sidecar” track that he had posted on Soundcloud. (http://soundcloud.com/tracks/search?q=53+-+sidecar ) He asked which version I was talking about, his version or MiMosa’s. Although I posted the track here a week or two ago, I hadn’t realized that there are two versions of the song. This morning I looked it up and here they are. I appreciate being able to see the track in progress. Can’t wait to buy a copy once it is actually released.
At the moment, I think I dig Tommy’s version just a bit more than MiMosa’s but both are killer. They describe it nicely, the track is “pretty and dirty.”
MiMosa’s Version
53 – Sidecar T0MMY n’ Tigran MiM0SA by TigranMiMoSA
Tommy’s Version
53 – sidecar by sidecartommy
Khan – freakyhijicky
Khan is one of my closest friends and I often consider him my consigliere. In this video he’s bustin out at least a half a dozen new techniques. I particularly like the sequence from about 1:25-1:30 and his isolation technique from 1:50-2:00. The isolation hoop technique into the Brecken pop is a nice detail. Also, I really appreciate the two point technique flips at 2:25-2:30. I haven’t seen those before.
Last time we he and I had lunch, talk of the next Flow Show started floating around. I can’t wait to see this incarnation.
SF Workshops w/ Brecken, August 24th & 25th
Brecken is the shit. Hands down. I’m stoked that she’s coming to SF before we drag her out to the playa for her first burn. These workshops are a one time opportunity to learn from one of my favorite hooper’s. Be there :)
Purchase link is at the bottom of this page or email Brecken to reserve a spot: here
When: Mon & Tues., August 24-25, 2000
8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. (1.5 hour + break and jam time)
Where: The Margaret Jenkins Dance LAB
301 – 8th Street, 2nd Floor, Studio 200
San Francisco, CA 94103
Monday: Bridging Planes
The first class is an exercise in broadening the range of planar possibilities and accentuating the ones of your choosing. Designed initially to uncover horizontal/vertical transitions, it utilizes a somewhat visual holistic approach in creating a personal terrain for exploration that subverts the rigidness of the plane mentality, but allows for use of those planes when technical elements are applied.
Tuesday: Poise & Finesse
We can direct our breath toward forming channels to create lines as …let’s call them “emotional highways” for promoting elongation, lightness, and torque when it comes to the hoop. Pulling in to isolation techniques, it’s another method for expanding the range of focus, pairing explosive movements with more intimate ones and making everybody jealous. Several of the exercises are inspired by modern dance (a.k.a. you tube), but applied to hooping over a few months of trial and error. Time permitting, I’d like to tie it into the methods of the previous class and initiate the baddest hoop jam ever did doned. Teehee.
Brecken add’s:
It’s gonna be the bee’s knees and I’m coming from Jersey, so be there, bitches!! Kidding. Just kidding. But seriously, it’ll be cool and I’m really excited to be there, so a tremendous thanks to Rich and Christabel for all their work. It wouldn’t have happened at all without them.
plane wrecka
This is my favorite installation of NoelTech yet and it’s a mind bender for sure. The kinesthetic intelligence demonstrated by G in this video is hard for me to wrap my head around. All that I can say is damn…
Plane breaking can happen with a hoop. There was a time, say last Burning Man and before, when I didn’t appreciate the aesthetic of plane breaking with a hoop. I even talked at length one night about it with Bax, who firmly disagreed despite his own propensity to stay in plane. Because I held firm beliefs that plane breaking was a no-no, I didn’t do it.
Then I saw Brecken hoop and she went and wrecked all my rules. She popped my bubble. She breaks planes like it’s the way to hoop and she makes it look damn good… Brecken the plane wrecka… Seeing the plane structure I had imposed melt before my eyes opened up a ton of new moves. As opposed to the 2d planar style hooping that I predominantly do, plane wrecking opens up 3d shapes. In addition to Brecken, Michelle and Kuhunahula are two of my favorite hoopers who break plane a lot.
One thing I feel compelled to say about plane wrecking is that it can easily look like slop if you don’t have precision. I’m working hard to break planes quickly then stop the hoop precisely into another plane. I think that’s what G demonstrates so elegantly in the video here.
This video was shot in Sean and Prisna’s beautiful space for FlowToys. You can find more of G’s videos here. The video was produced by Noel Yee. His blog can be found here.