Hoop and Holler

0 CommentsMonday • October 10, 2011 • by Imei

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If you follow me on my Facebook page, you might have noticed an entry about how my ear hurts. Having accidentally melted a small section of my oversized performance hula hoop on a hot light [oops!], I attended a hooping class with Thierany at Tin Can Studio, and borrowed one of her hoops. Unaccustomed to the weight of it, I hit myself in the head [and a couple of times in the ear] while trying to master the Vortex, a series of hand positions and turns that gives the audience the illusion of a smooth movement of the hoop traveling up above the head, back down to the hip, and above the head again. With the majority of bumps, bruises, and sore muscles of learning bellydance behind me, why on earth would I – or anyone – want to subject myself to masochistic injuries from a hard plastic spinning object?

WHY HOOP (AND HOLLER)?

The first time I dragged my hoop to the desert to learn how to make this circle of plastic piping dance around my middle, I could do nothing but pump and move around while pumping [whoop-de-doo]. When you watch professionals pump, it hardly looks like they are working it at all, but they actually are moving fast while making sure their hoop doesn’t lose velocity or enough contact at the two points of the circle that keep it going. After picking up a professional grade performance hoop, the first thing you notice is that there is enough movement going on for you to break a sweat in about five minutes! Hooping is no longer that thing you did in grade school with a light and flimsy neon-colored hoop. Hooping has become a serious art form and fitness craze, and it’s definitely not something as benign as copying a routine from Dance Central.  That being said, here’s some more reasons to take up hooping for more artful living.

1. Fitness. Yes, you will sweat if you take an hour long fitness-oriented hooping class. You will move, bend, duck, work your arms, legs, hips, and shoulders. But best of all, you will breathe, and that makes it — well, CARDIO. For a small investment of about $30, you can hoop at home and get a pretty decent cardio workout if you just keep moving.

At the advanced levels, you are doing catches and releases, floor work and lunges, kicks (passing the hoop under your leg as you do a high kick), and lots of spins [boy, am I glad I am comfortable with spinning].

2. Coolness factor. Do you have any idea how cool it is to hoop these days? You get great street cred and kudos if you can master a few hooping tricks because the speed of hooping makes everything look – well, cool and sometimes just down-right sexy.

Here’s a HoopGirl performance using LED hoops in a club:

BTW, HoopGirl founder Christabel was once a university professor before she found hooping, and now she teaches workshops internationally and performs hooping as her passion.

3. Fusion with present styles of movement. Hooping has the potential to be fused with a variety of dance styles. Do I need to spell this out for you?

4. Light (LED’s and fire). I’m ordering my first LED hoop from MoodHoops. While there are DIY videos and tutorials to help you make your own LED and fire hoops, I sense that I’d rather have someone who really knows what they’re doing make my hoop!

5.  Joy. Like most kinds of movement in dance, there is an emotion released right along with your sweat. A great reason to hoop is simply because it feels good, even if you never plan on performing in public [I, however, already have plans to perform in a show with other dancers *evil grin*].

What do you think? Would you like to give hooping a try? A few ways to get started:

* Purchase a hoop online:  Here is a link to an article on how to buy a hoop. http://www.squidoo.com/where-to-buy-a-heavy-hula-hoop

* Learn some basics from a DVD: I really liked HoopGirl’s hooping DVD, because Claribelle breaks down all the moves carefully, and shows front and back views clearly with professional video.

* Join a local class: just do an online search for “hooping”, “classes”, and your city. You should find a number of classes to join, or private lessons if you want to learn fast.

* Attend a hooping “festival”: there actually aren’t many hoop-centric festivals, but there are plenty of festivals of all kinds that invite hoopers to perform and learn from one another. My favorite is Burning Man, but Santa Cruz has also had a hooping contingent at their film festival, and other summer festivals often have hoop-crazed groups.

Ready… set… hoop!

Posted in: Art, dance

Tagged with: art, hooping, how to buy a hoop, how to get started at hooping, performance art, why hoop