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it’s not so often that I master a move these days– I haven’t been working at “moves” so much as just re-connecting to my hoop …and to what the spirit moves me to do inside of it, if you will.
But just now while I was leg-hooping (doing spunk, in the HoopGirl vocabulary, for all you lovely Readers and Owners and Buyers of the Book) I dropped my hoop onto the floor and managed to give it a kick with one foot and then knocked it higher with the other and got it going around my hips again, without it ever coming to a stop (whatever that’s called, a live kick start?)– which is a freaking FIRST for me, ladies and gentlemen. And I had one of those luscious experiences of mastery-satisfaction that are far and few between. (You know whereof I speak? You want to share your last luscious mastery moment?)
Just one more thing to celebrate, really.
Samhain: the day when the veil between the world of the living and the non-living is at its thinnest.Hence our celebration of All Hallow’s Eve. Last year on Samhain I danced in the Spiral Dance, invoking West, the direction of Water, with 2 other gorgeous dancers.
I missed the ritual this year, but was delighted to receive a bunch of photos from last year’s photographer, Richard Man.
All Hallow’s Eve, and Autumn in general: a time to step out of your self and into costume and, more importantly, into empathy/relationship with others — alive, dead, unborn…
9/9/09– together with hoopers around the planet celebrating hooping on this day, we Bay Area folk (over a hundred of us) met up at San Francisco’s Civic Center–right in front of (back of?) City Hall. (Maybe Gavin was watching.) There were Santa Cruz, NY, Austin, even Canadian and French hoopers there! What a treat. I caught the free tutorials from Nicole Wong of Cherry Hoops, Miss Rosie of Hero Hoops, Christabel of HoopGirl, Rich of isopop. I hope I caught something symbiotically from talking, hanging, and just a tiny bit of hooping with Fraulein Spiral and Brecken, too.
While on the platform in Oakland waiting for the train to SF, a woman approached me and asked about the hoop, whether I’d been to Burning Man…She–Susanne–is a photographer, and wound up coming with me to City Hall and shooting us for a bit. Turns out she collected me as a “stranger” in this cool “100 Strangers” project. Someone posted a comment on the Flickr page saying I look like a mermaid.
photo by Philo Hagen
This photo here is by my wonderful friend Philo Hagen, who covered World Hoop Day beautifully here.
My tank top, by the way, is from Hoopla Berlin (“guaranteed to make your hips smile”), 
and arrived the day before World Hoop Day as a surprise gift from my bestest Berlin girlfriend (bbg?) Uta. It seemed obvious I was supposed to don it for WHD. Since it’s yellow with day-glo orange, I decided to go all the way with the kawaii candy colors.
It was a nice way to go out with the hoopers of the Bay Area.
the 100 strangers shot (the "mermaid"!)
photo by Philo Hagen
There was a time when I wanted to write a book about the culture of hooping. My initial proposal (before it was, upon the advice of my agent, merged with HoopGirl’s book idea) covered influences and convergences–places where various forms of dance, movement, and music touch on hooping (e.g. bellydance, object manipulation, acrobatics, yoga, hip hop…) It also covered some key personalities: the innovators who have made a distinct mark on the art. I’m not going to name names, but you probably could guess them.
In any case, that wasn’t the book my agent thought would sell, and she was undoubtedly right. We hoopers are still a pretty tiny subculture. My agent said that would be a good 3rd or fifth book on the market on the topic, assuming the movement was catching on, but not a good first book, which needed to be something more akin to a hooping bible, laying the groundwork.
If in the future I do return to the original idea, though, I just spent a week gathering some good fodder for it, at the Spin Cycle Camp at Burning Man. The camp was designed and organized by Rich “Isopop” Porter and his wife Lauren, and built with capable crewmates Grant-Kenny-Ryan–for whom there can’t be enough gratitude. Our shadestars, their coverage drifting slowly with the sun’s progress (and the center post functioning as a sundial to boot!) were perfect, and were the envy of everyone who checked out our camp.
Most of the biggest names in hooping lived at Spin Cycle, and the few who didn’t dropped by a few times and came to our massive jam on Thursday evening. No classes were offered, and there seemed to be a sort of collective sigh of relief at not carrying that particular responsibility, which is always a part of every other kind of hooping gathering/conference/convergence that happens. We were really just there to build community.
Some folks did have performances to do–you’d see them rehearsing with earphones on, or getting themselves done up in their fineries–flowers, leaves, feathers, metallics, whites…–but for the most part there was just a lot of chilling and laughing and hooping, punctuated by hibiscus with agave plus or minus tequila (thanks to S), pickled eggs (thanks to K), unaccountably healthful, freshly-prepared food from the kitchen of (another) K, and non-dairy ice cream and truffles (thanks to R, who secured her place in heaven by bringing such gifts).
The quality of hooping around camp was just over-the-top ridiculous–but I’d have to say I had most fun watching G, whom I’d never seen hoop before, and who really embodies grace despite gender and stature, and M, whose intimacy and imagination with the hoop melts me into a puddle of Desire. I had my own best hoop moment on the full moon Friday night, after we came back from the wedding (there was not just one wedding that went down, but two, among the campmates), when the Light One (L) and the Healer (R) and I took the unwatched stage with our hoops. Weird magic was afoot all that night, and channeled right into our dance.
photo by Philo Hagen
In the hushed undercurrents of the Spin Cycle, there were some old divisions and wounds, some of which found healing; and there were some romances, some of which came to fruition. There was some jealousy, as certain ascendant stars outshone other equally-talented folks. There were moments when I was reminded of the dynamics of high school: the cool kids, the jocks, the hippies, with me and Philo (editor of hooping.org) feeling kind of like the yearbook and newspaper staff, existing both inside the system, and observing it from the outside.
Overall, though, I couldn’t help but keep asking, as I did of A one morning at Center Camp, what makes hoopers such divinely wonderful people? Is it that hooping draws already-amazing people to it? Or is it that the hoop has a transformational effect on everyone who truly invests in it? A little of both, we decided…and there’s always more research to be done.
It’s been a while since I posted an update on my heartspace….Really, it was four years of healing, and of processing the lessons of my first go at long-term partnership-turned marriage, and of dating (first a ton, and then barely), and of getting clear about the partnership and partner I want… since leaving my ex at the end of 2005. Lying fallow.
Last spring, during a sorry-ass sick-of-being-single stint, I hauled out some old photo albums, going back to my college days. One image stopped me: it was my flame from senior year, an utterly beautiful and brilliant boy, pinning me down on the ground, my smile so wide it could crack the earth in two, totally blissed out and secure in his arms.
That feeling! I want that feeling again, I said. I pulled the photo out of the album and stuck it on my altar, next to my most magnetic objects. It wasn’t the boy in the photo I focused on (the boy, last I’d heard, was still happily married and fathering, and we’d had no direct communication for 14 years), it was the joy and ease. The bliss, trust.
So… I do believe we co-create and alter the life around us as we live and experience it. I believe that we–those of us privileged enough to be able to dedicate the necessary energy– can pull a certain aspect of reality into being by will and focus. But–could I have conjured a man “off my altar and into my arms,” as one friend put it?
Because almost exactly a month after that, I got an email from the boy in the photo. Subsequent emails revealed he was separating from his wife, while I was well underway with a move… to the city where he happened to live. And ever since then, we’ve been revelling in our re-discovery. Magic.
practicing several of the moves Brecken taught 8/24-25/09: swinging the hoop into an isolation behind you with the 180 body turn (2x, bookending the clip at beginning & end); the finger “flair” on the isolations (which I seem to need to stick my tongue out for); “bouncing” the hoop while isolating.
For days now I’ve been mulling over what to say about Brecken’s 2-day workshop that took place in SF this past Monday & Tuesday. Last night I was telling a non-hooping friend about how indescribable it was, and in doing so I came up with the best term yet: “liminal.”
Here’s what wiki has by way of a definition:
Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical state of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a “liminal state”) and in anthropological theories, a ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.
The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives.
Really, the word does a pretty outstanding job of describing both Brecken‘s style AND my experience of the workshop.
Brecken has a totally unique thing going on with her hoop: on the threshold between wobbly/sloppy/ drunken on the one hand, and precise/controlled/quick on the other. And surfing between planes nearly continuously. She stays relatively grounded, maybe bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, and then executes these crazy sideways/diagonal leaps where her body arcs through the air and mimics the curve of the hoop. (My core was *so* sore after Day One from twisting around in efforts to mimic that.) I should add “genderbending” to the title here too: her dance is simultaneously “masculine” (with strong pops reminiscent of Kahunahula & Rich) and incredibly “feminine,” the way she arches her spine or lets her hands waft through the air while doing angled rolls. She moves with total confidence once she’s connected with her hoop, yet she’s all shy and self-deprecating outside it, the most humble top-hooper, hands down.
And the workshop, being her second ever, felt like a birth of a new creature. Her explanations of her hooping motivations, inspirations, experiences took us down long windy undertravelled paths, wild green tendrils and jungle sometimes obscuring the way, until we’d arrive at some mountainside spring-fed pool of clarity. Sometimes I lost the thread entirely, but sometimes I made it there, to that remote gem.
Yeah, it felt like a rite of passage, for sure. I felt incredibly lucky to be there, surrounded by so much hooping talent, and learning from this capricious creature. Here she is (I watched this soundtrackless wonder, which really takes *off* around 2:30, with Cheb i Sabbah’s Jai Bhavani) :
Yesterday a postcard arrived in the mail, blaring amplified orange sunsets and artificially blue water and skies and the word Miedzyzdroje, which turns out to be the name of a Polish resort town on the Baltic. The card was from my mother, who apparently went on a golfing retreat there. Another golfing trip! This is the third or fourth she’s done in the last year or so, by my count.
So. I had a hard time adjusting to her new pastime at first (smacking of class privilege as it does, not to mention the herbicides, pesticides, dyes, fertilizers and other pollutants, and excessive water use…). However, at some point this Debbie Downer over here decided to squash my judgment and embrace it. My mum seems continuously happier than she’s been for at least 15 years, what with all that fresh air and walking and perfecting of her craft. Last time she called me the first words out of her mouth were: “I’m down to 18!,” meaning her handicap (and for the record, I can’t remember the exact number she told me, because these numbers have zero significance to me. But I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the upper teens.)
The funny thing is, she went through a similar evolution in her feelings about my hooping, at first dismayed by general “suggestiveness” of the dance, and close to disgusted by the outfits she saw me and the Allstars wearing, and then gradually realizing it was keeping me in better shape, and happier, than I’ve been at any other time in my life. (That includes the period when I was actually skinnier and more toned, during the couple of years when I worked out 5 days a week at the gym, mostly on stairmasters and ellipticals, fueled by my desire to keep my ex-husband’s wandering eyes on me… an era that my mother called “too thin and gaunt,” and during which I was certainly not very happy.)
The other aspect of all this that amuses me is that we are not a sporty family. Or a family that cultivated any kind of physical skills (unless you count knitting, sewing, cooking, gardening as physical, and all but the last would be quite a stretch in my book).
My father as I knew him was an intellectual, not a sportsm/fan (although yes, he was a jitterbugger in his first few decades). He did not watch sports (ever), we did not play catch together (ever), and we shared an indulgently-smiling tolerance of the annual father/daughter “field day,” an all-school (grades K-12) celebration of sportiness that made clear this stuff was not our forte. (Although I think once I won a ribbon for the 3-legged race, coming in second place—the three-legged race, being less about physical prowess, and more about partnership and communication, was one of the few events at which I stood any chance at all.) Give us a read-a-thon any day.
And while my classmates’ mothers were having tennis dates, squash dates, sometimes even golf dates, in the way that privileged women do, my mother was ashamed of never having learned how to do any of those things, having grown up in a pretty frugal postwar Germany, and never joined them in any of it. (Although she tried hard to get her daughter to embrace those kinds of upper-ish class trappings, sending me to ballet and tennis classes, both of which I totally disliked and bailed on. She tried so hard to persuade me to take horseback riding lessons, which most girls would have been stoked about!, but not me. Looking back I’m still not clear why I had such an aversion to all those pastimes. An unaccountably pinko child, I was. Ok, am.)
So I head off to my hooping gatherings and retreats, while mi madre goes to her golfing things, and so we nurture our happy, luscious bodies. Who woulda thunk it?
